If you look at the geek complaints about the iPad, the obvious trend that emerges is that what the geeks really wanted from Apple was a generic $350 Mac netbook. But the more you think this through — the idea that Apple should have shipped a netbook rather than the iPad — the less sense it makes.
Netbooks work on the same paradigm as traditional desktop computers; they’re basically the desktop user experience, but slower, smaller, and cheaper.
If you’re not playing the meaningless “Apple vs. The World” game, and you’re looking at things purely in terms of Apple’s own unit sales (and profits), Apple’s approach is obviously better.
Let’s say instead of the iPad, Apple had introduced a $350 Mac netbook. As a Mac — firmly situated within the established desktop platform ecosystem — it would have been subject to the same forces that have stopped the Mac platform generally from breaking into the mainstream over the last decade. It wouldn’t have really offered unique advantages against Wintel netbooks, unless you were already interested in running OS X. Which also means it would have cannibalized Apple’s higher end Macs to some extent; people would buy it instead of a $999 MacBook. Finally, Apple probably would have had 10-15% profit margins on such a device (typical of the netbook market) instead of the 20-30% profit margins they’re probably running on the iPad (typical of iPod and iPhone).
With the iPad, Apple has a device that appeals to the existing Mac user base but won’t cause much cannibalization, and also has much more appeal outside of the existing Mac user base because it offers unique capabilities other than desktop OS X. So they’re likely to sell several times as many of them, with fewer losses to their higher end laptop sales. Oh, and they probably make 2-3x as much money from every one they sell, vs. a Mac netbook.
Looking past just the bottom line, the critical strategic issue is the whole “breaking into the mainstream” thing. With the iPhone, Apple has had its first real taste of mainstream success with a computing platform in a couple of decades, and they wanted more. And what they’ve realized is that the battle for the traditional desktop OS market has been over for a long time, and Microsoft won. So the way to get more is to launch another platform outside of that market. Except unlike the iPhone, the iPad platform has the capability to grow, over the years, into something that really could replace a traditional computer for many users.
[...] Apple shipped the iPad, rather than a Mac netbook: http://morescaryrobots.com/2010/04/06/why-not-a-netbook/ [...]