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CES: Intel takes wraps off netbook app store, dubbed ‘AppUp’
Excerpt
Intel this week unveiled a beta version of its application storefront for netbooks, designed to make downloading and purchasing applications similar to the experience on App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Called the Intel AppUp center, the download destination will be included in future low-cost, low-power netbooks from manufacturers including Acer, Asus, Dell and Samsung. The beta client, downloadable from intelappup.com, is available for Windows machines running the Intel Atom processor. Support for Intel’s Moblin operating system is said to be planned in the future.
The first applications available fall into categories similar to those on the iPhone App Store, including education, entertainment, games and health. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said his company expects to expand the business model to other platforms in the future, including traditional PCs, handheld devices and smartphones, TVs, and other platforms that utilize Intel processors.
Comment
This feels like another example of people taking Apple’s lead and running with it in all sorts of random directions.
An app store for netbooks is not necessarily a bad idea, except that it’s not clear whether netbooks themselves are a good idea. Especially in the area of PC laptops, you can get a “regular” laptop for just one or two hundred dollars more than a netbook. Soon enough the term netbook will just mean junky cheap computer with less functionality.
Furthermore, Apples app store works because all the devices are compatible. But I’m not sure that’s the case with netbooks, I can’t see why it would be. So is Intel ready to guarantee that all apps on their app store work on all netbooks? If not, how will they organize the compatibility issue? If they solve it just like PC software solves it, by having the developers worry about compatibility, that won’t make it easy to write apps, which is part of what make’s Apple’s app store work.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens, but this doesn’t feel like an idea that’s going to work.