By Harry McCracken | Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 1:47 pm
PCWorld’s Jason Cross explains how the MacBook Air is like HP’s HP 35 calculator from 1972, and why that’s bad news for today’s PC makers (HP included):
HP’s market research said they shouldn’t make and release it – it was going to cost at least $350. At twenty times the cost of a slide rule, nobody was going to buy it! Bill Hewlett said, “I don’t care, I want one of these things” and pushed the project through. It was so revolutionary, so visionary and transformative, that even at a cost of $350+ (that’s 1972 dollars!) the orders were over 10,000 a month.
August 15th, 2011 at 8:17 am
Not really. The price vs. the specs isn't going to cause PC manufacturers to notice.