How apple could kill the Chromebook.
Chromebooks are early and unpolished. The browser is not yet ready for primetime except for power users and technologists. Apple can bring these benefits mainstream with polish like no other. Pushing the envelope in this direction locks users in even tighter to the ecosystem and helps sell even more Macbooks and devices.
Here’s how they can do it:
Arm Chips on the low end.
Lots of articles point to apple testing ARM based chips for the Macbook Air. Somewhere in Cupertino there lies a Macbook Air running on ARM. Switching out the chips for an ARM chip would allow for cheaper machines and huge improvements in battery life. The Macbook Air already gets best in class battery life. An ARM switch could mean pushing into revolutionary 20+ hour notebook battery life or thinner, cheaper lighter 10+ hour battery life. Either way, a win for Apple and the user.
The Mac App Store.
Apple has full control over what gets sold inside of their Mac App Store. This has led to continuing conversations on either side of the conversation. The amount of control Apple is able to wield over developers could allow for this switch to ARM to go smoothly. More importantly, The Mac App Store is already positioned to compete with Google’s own “Chrome app store”. Hosting all of your application purchases and installs across all your devices. This cloud centric approach to application distribution allows users to never fear or wonder if they will have all their apps on their next machines.
iCloud Drive.
In OSX Yosemite iCloud Drive makes all your files and folders cloud centric. The missing piece here is pushing all of your settings down t0 the wallpaper to push too and back up using your Apple ID. Once that’s done, the difference between an Macbook and a Chomebook are just in the initial login time. If they were smart about the way things pulled down during login they could get this to feel seamless to the user. From this point the user never has to worry about backup or managing files.
Why?
It’s good for the user. Apple puts the user first in design and development. Wether or not it’s an overnight change this will be the direction the lower end laptops will go. Inevitably this trend will push into the higher end as well. For now, professionals will probably opt for configurability over convince.