I really think a smartphone docking into stations is the future. "Mannequin" Laptops, desktops etc that are activated once a smartphone is plugged in. You can now use a keyboard, external monitors, your OS slightly adapts... iOS becomes Snow Leopard (not exactly, you just have more functionality)
Once docked, a smartphone can unlock additional cores that would otherwise consume too much power, activate a more powerful GPU, possibly one even housed in the docking station itself...
I really think smart phones will become the magical little chip you place inside a cyborg to operate a larger, more powerful creature.
Imagine working at home off your docked smartphone computer (fully functioning OS), undocking and using your simple apps on the train to work (mobile OS, not much different than current experience), getting to work, docking into your station and you're right back at it (full OS)... portability with a familiar ui/ux feel... seamless experience.
Or gaming at home, undocking and going to a LAN party with your friends, not having to worry about whether or not the games / apps are installed, the docks are generic... plug and play.
(Ignoring the whole home to work aspect and security issues / work policies, of course)
Hardware is getting cheaper , for example the $25 raspberry pi computer. It will become likely that peripherals like the screen , case and keyboard will be more expensive than the actual computer itself (especially if the CPU etc are smartphone grade stuff).
If you have additional hardware inside your phone that is unlocked only when it is plugged into a docking station, then why are you carrying that extra hardware around in your pocket the whole time? Why not just put a very fast GPU inside the docking station for example and have some sort of high speed bus.
If you are making 2 versions of the same application with different UIs then that is really very similar to making 2 applications. Sure you can do a lot of code re-use, but this is possible anyway even when you are programming for separate devices.
Portable things like phones get easily lost of broken, imagine losing your smartphone and being basically unable to do anything until you replace it because there is no such thing as a "fat terminal" anymore.
Businesses are probably going to prefer bolted down systems (physically and in terms of software) that employees do not take home with them.
The internet makes this sort of a moot issue anyway, because if most of your applications are SaaS and all of your data is stored on a server anyway then anything with a web browser can become a dumb terminal, there is no need for your own hardware.
I don't think all applications will work cross dock.. Some sure, all no.
And in regards to housing the GPU inside dock, thats exactly what I was thinking. I believe you may have missed:
"Once docked, a smartphone can unlock additional cores that would otherwise consume too much power, activate a more powerful GPU, possibly one even housed in the docking station itself..."
> If you have additional hardware inside your phone that is unlocked only when it is plugged into a docking station, then why are you carrying that extra hardware around in your pocket the whole time? Why not just put a very fast GPU inside the docking station for example and have some sort of high speed bus.
Why are you assuming only? Only when it's charging, perhaps. Or only when you're using something heavy duty enough to benefit.
There are already 5 core Android devices out there with 4 fast cores and one slow, low clocked, low power core, that can step all the way fro using 4 fast cores to only the low power core when there's no demand for it.
That give you the flexibility to wireless stream (there are devices with "wireless HDMI" support around already) a complex UI to the flat screen in your living room, or the laptop shell, or just play a demanding 3D game on the go, and suck battery accordingly, or switch it all off.
Why would you want to pay for multiple extra CPU's and GPU's to avoid carrying around something smaller and lighter than a stamp, when your phone would need a decent CPU and GPU anyway?
> Portable things like phones get easily lost of broken, imagine losing your smartphone and being basically unable to do anything until you replace it because there is no such thing as a "fat terminal" anymore.
I didn't see him claim there would be no such thing, just that smart phones and "dumb" companions would be "the future" in the sense that it's what most people use. And as you've pointed out: Low end hardware is cheap. If we get to this world, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to pick up a basic pocket computer / smartphone in your local corner shop for a tenner as a temporary measure - the cheapest android tablets are already pushing their way down towards the low double digits.
> Businesses are probably going to prefer bolted down systems (physically and in terms of software) that employees do not take home with them.
I'm sure some do, but in the last 10 years, I've never worked anywhere where they cared. Of course there'll be a market for other solutions too for those that do care, but I think you'll see things converge. Few places buy big desktops any more. They are shrinking. They will shrink further.. The main thing here is that we're moving towards a situation where mobility or not is decided by policy and need rather than practicality of actually moving the hardware and whether it's designed as a phone or intended for more permanent infrastructure.
> The internet makes this sort of a moot issue anyway, because if most of your applications are SaaS and all of your data is stored on a server anyway then anything with a web browser can become a dumb terminal, there is no need for your own hardware.
There are several problems with this:
1) We are very far away from universal connectivity. I commute through densely populated parts of London, and yet I lose my internet connection several times during the journey. Never mind more remote locations. When computing power is getting as cheap as it is, it becomes pointless to rely only on dumb terminals.
2) Latency. For some things it doesn't matter, but for lots it does. Try going on vacation to China if your data is stored in Europe, and if you're "lucky" enjoy the extra latency of your data going through the US. We're far from a situation where our networks are even remotely as good as they can get, but even if they were, there's that pesky issue of the speed of light, which actually will matter if you travel. Won't affect everyone, but it does mean we can't go al dumb terminal.
3) The emotional need for control of data whether the reasons are sound or not. Personally, I'm clawing my data back: I sign up only for services where I can backup my data to my personal server, because I've seen enough seemingly stable companies fail, or change in ways detrimental to their users.
4) People want access on the go. So we will already be carrying at least one device with us. If computing power is cheap, there's no reason to not make use of it to solve the above three issues. And conversely: Cloud services make it cheaper. If I was to dispense with my laptop, I'd need my phone to have about a TB of storage. If I am to dispense with my home server, it needs about 6TB of storage. And that is now, when my movie collection doesn't have a single Blu Ray in it, never mind 2160p 3D movies. But if I can put a small NAS in the corner and/or sign up with a cloud service, it only needs to store enough for those times when connectivity isn't great, so the threshold where I can make my phone my primary computer is significantly lowered.
Apple's newfound fortune was built on the understanding that mobile computing is fundamentally different than desktop/laptop computing. That understanding is the reason they were able to break touch screen interfaces into the mainstream.
Steve Jobs is laughing in his grave at stuff like this.
Form factor is just the topping. Using web apps and cloud storage is so far the most accessible way to have a seamless computing environment (versus experience, which must be different like Jobs knew). Apple or anyone else could side step those entire industries by making powerful portable smart phones that acted as a driver or data storage for other operating environments.
I'm not suggesting they need to be fundamentally the same.
Apple has taken steps to give iOS and OSx some key similarities in look and feel, the lines don't need to be blurred any further, in fact for this concept to be successful, I don't think they should.
It won't just be what you do in the office either. Modularity like this would help speed up iterations in car nav technology. (Why should GPS units be so tightly coupled with the display tech? Why did it take several years after the first iphone before we saw multi-touch GPSs? Shouldn't I be able to upgrade the voice command module in an older-generation car?)
I like what Peter F. Hamilton imagined in his Commonwealth Saga. Your personal computer expands out to available resources as you move from place to place.
The "cloud" is still ultimately hardware. And it'd be much nicer if a good chunk of that hardware is light enough to be carried around in my pocket so I don't have to deal with network outages or latency issues, and instead have it form it's own little mini-cloud with nearby devices combined with synchronizing to more remote large scale cloud services to safe keep my data.
That's already sort of here: My data exists with external providers but is nearly all backed up to my home server, which serves my set top box, and serves as a backup point for my phone and laptop (before shuffling the data on to external backup), and my phone can tell my home server to push a movie to my TV via my set top box using DLNA, or my laptop can push it to my phone. Or my phone to my TV. Or any of them can pull it straight from the file server.
No "hardware integration" necessary other than the networking and power supply.
I love the power consumption charts with no numbers, not units and basically not information whatsoever. Gem of marketing, really.
Also, I don't really think this is a good idea. Phones have different power and thermal envelopes, so even with Moore's Law, dedicated desktop is always going to be more powerful than laptop, and laptop is going to be more powerful than this. Same goes for storage, memory, graphics and everything.
And one more thing, after playing one of the games in lastest Humble Bundle that was originally released for iOS, I am of the opinion that touch and mouse/trackpad interfaces are incompatible in both ways, that using mouse or trackpad with touch apps is as impractical as using touch interface with traditional desktop apps.
The thing is most people who have a need for a laptop, don't have a need for a beefy laptop. Its the form factor they care the most about. Sure you and me need something more beefy. I have emulators, and simulation programs, and virtual machines running. My brother on the other hand has 3 spreadsheets, a word doc, and about 5 tabs open in chrome. A smart phone could probably handle his workload. I would take a guess that the average computer user has more in common with my brother then myself. To them there's probably a lot of value in having this all on one device.
A smartphone probably could handle his workload, but a CPU/motherboard design that was less constricted by size would be able to do it faster.
Also would your brother want to dock/undock his phone with his laptop all the time? I generally just leave my phone in my jacket pocket most of the time so if I want to go out of the door I don't have to hunt it down. Under this system your going to have to go find your laptop and unplug it before you can leave.
Under this logic it would have made sense for Apple to launch the iPad as simply a "big screen" dock for the iPhone. Instead they launched it as a separate device with faster hardware.
I predict that tablets will start to become far more powerful than smartphones in the long run as demand for high end graphics will increase whereas smartphones will become more optimized to reduce power usage.
... so even with Moore's Law, dedicated desktop is always going to be more powerful than laptop, and laptop is going to be more powerful than this.
I agree, but I think it's a matter of what's acceptably powerful enough. At the risk of holding up anecdotes as data, I know some people who pretty much just use their phones and iPads (v2); maybe we've hit a point where these devices are powerful enough for a non-trivial segment of the market?
I'd say there's no maybe about it, in terms of raw power. A half-decent phone is more powerful than my high-end laptop of six or seven years ago, which is itself still fairly usable by most people's standards.
The only thing I see even remotely challenging to these devices is the fact that laying out a web page is a legitimately complicated algorithm, which we've secretly been pouring more and more processing power into over the years. Other than that these things have more than enough power for anything most people want today. There's a class of applications coming in the augmented reality domain and such that people will want more power for tomorrow, but they can buy that power tomorrow at tomorrow's price's.
But eventually the new technology becomes "good enough", and that's what matters to most people. That's why laptops have already surpassed PC sales years ago, and that's why people are buying more and more tablets, while being satisfied with their performance. So the "X will always be better than Y" argument is almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, when it comes to the mass market.
Do you believe in statistics? Honestly, its not so difficult to make one. Lets appreciate them for not coming up with bogus stats, like many other do.
Actually if you think about it, its not really a marketing gem, when compared to what Apple does for its technically inferior Mac book Air line-ups. (Hint: Google for Mac vs Pc on Youtube)
Even a ballpark indication of price would be helpful. I have a bad feeling that it will price itself too high to be useful (especially considering I'm in the UK and tech seems to use bizarro $1=£1 exchange rate).
Prices in the US don't include sales tax (VAT). In the UK they do. Take the new iPad for example. $499, add 20% UK VAT ~$599 which at today's rate is ~£385.
The UK price for the same iPad is £399. Yes there is a discrepancy, but you're not being ripped off as much as you think you are.
Could also be due to licensing regulations etc etc.
There seem to be a million and one EU directives regarding different levies placed on tech. For example if something can record more than 30 seconds of video I believe it's classed in a separate category and carries with it hefty levies.
It seems wonderful compared to Brazil, where $599 is "converted" to R$1.549,00 ($766), even if there is a Foxconn factory here now. It makes no sense at all.
The fact that they run in a special window suggests that the applications actually run in Android, but that they are composited in/on the Linux desktop.
Isn't it ironic how just a few hours after somebody posted the wikipedia article on Betteridge's Law of Headlines (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880), two of such headlines make the top 2 of HN :)
More on topic, this looks like Palm Foleo re-invented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Foleo). I always found the Foleo concept great so I wouldn't mind seeing another attempt. That said, the success of iPad and other tablets is going to make this device even more niche than the Foleo would have been. It'll be a tough sell.
>That said, the success of iPad and other tablets is going to make this device even more niche than the Foleo would have been. It'll be a tough sell.
You are probably right - but not necessarily. This, after all, fills a different niche to a tablet. You can't put a tablet in your pocket and tablets are expensive because of having their own processor, memory, etc. This way you can use all the facilities of your highly portable phone on a laptop sized device that should, in theory, be a lot cheaper than a laptop or tablet.
Devices like this still have a screen and battery and mechanicals. Instead of $20 of CPU and $10 of RAM they have a $10 CPU that includes RAM. That's pretty much the only savings available.
On the other hand, tablets sell in huge volumes; this is a niche market. So it's quite probable that tablets and/or notebooks without a CPU will be more expensive than ones with a CPU.
To be honest, who cares about the hardware design here? This is very obviously a fake (or a cheap Chinese ripoff). Outside of China, nobody in their right mind would release something that's such an obviously MacBook Air clone.
What's interesting here isn't the actual hardware (which either doesn't exist or is cheap crap), it's the concept.
I'm by no means an expert on trade dress, but look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress , especially the law itself (which is pretty straightforward) and the section on distinctiveness. The key point is that to win a trade dress suit, you must prove that consumers are actually confused about who made the product.
Now look at me. Now look at the clambook pictures. See how it prominently says "clambook" when it's open, and prominently shows the clambook logo on the back? I suspect that it would be hard to find a meaningful group of people who would answer the question "who made this" with "Apple." If you know enough to associate that design with Apple, you know it's not going to have a picture of a mollusk where the Apple logo's supposed to be. No customer confusion == no trade dress problem. (This isn't a hypothetical -- they literally do this kind of survey in trademark cases.)
Incidentally, not all IP law is the same, and trademark/trade dress law in particular is a Good Thing. You don't want to buy a knockoff Apple power charger thinking you're getting the real thing. You don't want to pay French champagne prices for California bubbly, or Coke prices for store-brand soda. The basic question in trademark law is "how often does this product succeed in tricking someone into buying one thing when they meant to buy something else?" Obviously courts will get the answer wrong sometimes, and there might be areas where the line should be drawn a little differently, but for the most part this is an area of IP law you should vehemently support.
I'm far more interested in this. If I could have full productivity features with Android, I'd take a serious look at making it my only device. As it is, tablets simply can't bring enough to the table to convince me to ditch the laptop.
Same here. I've just bought a new Windows laptop, and I'm planning on getting a new "machine" around 2015 or so. The hardware should be "good enough" by then (quad core 2.5-3.0 Ghz Cortex A20 - or whatever they are calling the next-gen 64 bit chip after A15), and I'm hoping Android will be mature enough as an OS by then with a lot of productivity apps, that I can just use an Android machine (like a Transformer device) for everything.
I'm also on the lookout for a Windows alternative in the future, as I'm not liking the direction Microsoft is taking with Metro at all. But Google needs to become a lot more serious about tablet (and desktop) apps by then. So far I've not seen that, but maybe things will change when they launch their own Android tablet at I/O, unless they will keep pretending phone apps are good enough for larger screens.
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I really think a smartphone docking into stations is the future. "Mannequin" Laptops, desktops etc that are activated once a smartphone is plugged in. You can now use a keyboard, external monitors, your OS slightly adapts... iOS becomes Snow Leopard (not exactly, you just have more functionality)
Once docked, a smartphone can unlock additional cores that would otherwise consume too much power, activate a more powerful GPU, possibly one even housed in the docking station itself...
I really think smart phones will become the magical little chip you place inside a cyborg to operate a larger, more powerful creature.
Imagine working at home off your docked smartphone computer (fully functioning OS), undocking and using your simple apps on the train to work (mobile OS, not much different than current experience), getting to work, docking into your station and you're right back at it (full OS)... portability with a familiar ui/ux feel... seamless experience.
Or gaming at home, undocking and going to a LAN party with your friends, not having to worry about whether or not the games / apps are installed, the docks are generic... plug and play.
(Ignoring the whole home to work aspect and security issues / work policies, of course)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3902051
Hardware is getting cheaper , for example the $25 raspberry pi computer. It will become likely that peripherals like the screen , case and keyboard will be more expensive than the actual computer itself (especially if the CPU etc are smartphone grade stuff).
If you have additional hardware inside your phone that is unlocked only when it is plugged into a docking station, then why are you carrying that extra hardware around in your pocket the whole time? Why not just put a very fast GPU inside the docking station for example and have some sort of high speed bus.
If you are making 2 versions of the same application with different UIs then that is really very similar to making 2 applications. Sure you can do a lot of code re-use, but this is possible anyway even when you are programming for separate devices.
Portable things like phones get easily lost of broken, imagine losing your smartphone and being basically unable to do anything until you replace it because there is no such thing as a "fat terminal" anymore.
Businesses are probably going to prefer bolted down systems (physically and in terms of software) that employees do not take home with them.
The internet makes this sort of a moot issue anyway, because if most of your applications are SaaS and all of your data is stored on a server anyway then anything with a web browser can become a dumb terminal, there is no need for your own hardware.
And in regards to housing the GPU inside dock, thats exactly what I was thinking. I believe you may have missed:
"Once docked, a smartphone can unlock additional cores that would otherwise consume too much power, activate a more powerful GPU, possibly one even housed in the docking station itself..."
Why are you assuming only? Only when it's charging, perhaps. Or only when you're using something heavy duty enough to benefit.
There are already 5 core Android devices out there with 4 fast cores and one slow, low clocked, low power core, that can step all the way fro using 4 fast cores to only the low power core when there's no demand for it.
That give you the flexibility to wireless stream (there are devices with "wireless HDMI" support around already) a complex UI to the flat screen in your living room, or the laptop shell, or just play a demanding 3D game on the go, and suck battery accordingly, or switch it all off.
Why would you want to pay for multiple extra CPU's and GPU's to avoid carrying around something smaller and lighter than a stamp, when your phone would need a decent CPU and GPU anyway?
> Portable things like phones get easily lost of broken, imagine losing your smartphone and being basically unable to do anything until you replace it because there is no such thing as a "fat terminal" anymore.
I didn't see him claim there would be no such thing, just that smart phones and "dumb" companions would be "the future" in the sense that it's what most people use. And as you've pointed out: Low end hardware is cheap. If we get to this world, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to pick up a basic pocket computer / smartphone in your local corner shop for a tenner as a temporary measure - the cheapest android tablets are already pushing their way down towards the low double digits.
> Businesses are probably going to prefer bolted down systems (physically and in terms of software) that employees do not take home with them.
I'm sure some do, but in the last 10 years, I've never worked anywhere where they cared. Of course there'll be a market for other solutions too for those that do care, but I think you'll see things converge. Few places buy big desktops any more. They are shrinking. They will shrink further.. The main thing here is that we're moving towards a situation where mobility or not is decided by policy and need rather than practicality of actually moving the hardware and whether it's designed as a phone or intended for more permanent infrastructure.
> The internet makes this sort of a moot issue anyway, because if most of your applications are SaaS and all of your data is stored on a server anyway then anything with a web browser can become a dumb terminal, there is no need for your own hardware.
There are several problems with this:
1) We are very far away from universal connectivity. I commute through densely populated parts of London, and yet I lose my internet connection several times during the journey. Never mind more remote locations. When computing power is getting as cheap as it is, it becomes pointless to rely only on dumb terminals.
2) Latency. For some things it doesn't matter, but for lots it does. Try going on vacation to China if your data is stored in Europe, and if you're "lucky" enjoy the extra latency of your data going through the US. We're far from a situation where our networks are even remotely as good as they can get, but even if they were, there's that pesky issue of the speed of light, which actually will matter if you travel. Won't affect everyone, but it does mean we can't go al dumb terminal.
3) The emotional need for control of data whether the reasons are sound or not. Personally, I'm clawing my data back: I sign up only for services where I can backup my data to my personal server, because I've seen enough seemingly stable companies fail, or change in ways detrimental to their users.
4) People want access on the go. So we will already be carrying at least one device with us. If computing power is cheap, there's no reason to not make use of it to solve the above three issues. And conversely: Cloud services make it cheaper. If I was to dispense with my laptop, I'd need my phone to have about a TB of storage. If I am to dispense with my home server, it needs about 6TB of storage. And that is now, when my movie collection doesn't have a single Blu Ray in it, never mind 2160p 3D movies. But if I can put a small NAS in the corner and/or sign up with a cloud service, it only needs to store enough for those times when connectivity isn't great, so the threshold where I can make my phone my primary computer is significantly lowered.
Steve Jobs is laughing in his grave at stuff like this.
Apple has taken steps to give iOS and OSx some key similarities in look and feel, the lines don't need to be blurred any further, in fact for this concept to be successful, I don't think they should.
It won't just be what you do in the office either. Modularity like this would help speed up iterations in car nav technology. (Why should GPS units be so tightly coupled with the display tech? Why did it take several years after the first iphone before we saw multi-touch GPSs? Shouldn't I be able to upgrade the voice command module in an older-generation car?)
I like what Peter F. Hamilton imagined in his Commonwealth Saga. Your personal computer expands out to available resources as you move from place to place.
That's already sort of here: My data exists with external providers but is nearly all backed up to my home server, which serves my set top box, and serves as a backup point for my phone and laptop (before shuffling the data on to external backup), and my phone can tell my home server to push a movie to my TV via my set top box using DLNA, or my laptop can push it to my phone. Or my phone to my TV. Or any of them can pull it straight from the file server.
No "hardware integration" necessary other than the networking and power supply.
Why though? To save the screen having a processor behind it?
Also, I don't really think this is a good idea. Phones have different power and thermal envelopes, so even with Moore's Law, dedicated desktop is always going to be more powerful than laptop, and laptop is going to be more powerful than this. Same goes for storage, memory, graphics and everything.
And one more thing, after playing one of the games in lastest Humble Bundle that was originally released for iOS, I am of the opinion that touch and mouse/trackpad interfaces are incompatible in both ways, that using mouse or trackpad with touch apps is as impractical as using touch interface with traditional desktop apps.
Also would your brother want to dock/undock his phone with his laptop all the time? I generally just leave my phone in my jacket pocket most of the time so if I want to go out of the door I don't have to hunt it down. Under this system your going to have to go find your laptop and unplug it before you can leave.
Under this logic it would have made sense for Apple to launch the iPad as simply a "big screen" dock for the iPhone. Instead they launched it as a separate device with faster hardware.
I predict that tablets will start to become far more powerful than smartphones in the long run as demand for high end graphics will increase whereas smartphones will become more optimized to reduce power usage.
I agree, but I think it's a matter of what's acceptably powerful enough. At the risk of holding up anecdotes as data, I know some people who pretty much just use their phones and iPads (v2); maybe we've hit a point where these devices are powerful enough for a non-trivial segment of the market?
The only thing I see even remotely challenging to these devices is the fact that laying out a web page is a legitimately complicated algorithm, which we've secretly been pouring more and more processing power into over the years. Other than that these things have more than enough power for anything most people want today. There's a class of applications coming in the augmented reality domain and such that people will want more power for tomorrow, but they can buy that power tomorrow at tomorrow's price's.
Actually if you think about it, its not really a marketing gem, when compared to what Apple does for its technically inferior Mac book Air line-ups. (Hint: Google for Mac vs Pc on Youtube)
Yes. Statistics is the collection and analysis of numerical data. Science is nothing without statistics.
Don't you believe in statistics?
I know the HN community is diverse and getting more so, but this is a surprising question here nonetheless.
The UK price for the same iPad is £399. Yes there is a discrepancy, but you're not being ripped off as much as you think you are.
Unless you buy an Apple TV, that is.
this makes a lot more sense now..
Also, in the fine print at the bottom:
"The images on this website are examples only. Actual products may not contain the same design or functionality as featured on this website. "
This seems to work more like Asus' Padfone, so when the phone is docked, you get ICS on the larger screen, and get to use all Android apps.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/ubuntu-for-android-announ...
The fact that they run in a special window suggests that the applications actually run in Android, but that they are composited in/on the Linux desktop.
Isn't it ironic how just a few hours after somebody posted the wikipedia article on Betteridge's Law of Headlines (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880), two of such headlines make the top 2 of HN :)
More on topic, this looks like Palm Foleo re-invented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Foleo). I always found the Foleo concept great so I wouldn't mind seeing another attempt. That said, the success of iPad and other tablets is going to make this device even more niche than the Foleo would have been. It'll be a tough sell.
You are probably right - but not necessarily. This, after all, fills a different niche to a tablet. You can't put a tablet in your pocket and tablets are expensive because of having their own processor, memory, etc. This way you can use all the facilities of your highly portable phone on a laptop sized device that should, in theory, be a lot cheaper than a laptop or tablet.
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/New-iPad-32-GB-4...
Devices like this still have a screen and battery and mechanicals. Instead of $20 of CPU and $10 of RAM they have a $10 CPU that includes RAM. That's pretty much the only savings available.
On the other hand, tablets sell in huge volumes; this is a niche market. So it's quite probable that tablets and/or notebooks without a CPU will be more expensive than ones with a CPU.
What's interesting here isn't the actual hardware (which either doesn't exist or is cheap crap), it's the concept.
I don't support IP whatsoever; I'm vehemently against all these laws. I'm just curious how they're planning to get away with it.
Now look at me. Now look at the clambook pictures. See how it prominently says "clambook" when it's open, and prominently shows the clambook logo on the back? I suspect that it would be hard to find a meaningful group of people who would answer the question "who made this" with "Apple." If you know enough to associate that design with Apple, you know it's not going to have a picture of a mollusk where the Apple logo's supposed to be. No customer confusion == no trade dress problem. (This isn't a hypothetical -- they literally do this kind of survey in trademark cases.)
Incidentally, not all IP law is the same, and trademark/trade dress law in particular is a Good Thing. You don't want to buy a knockoff Apple power charger thinking you're getting the real thing. You don't want to pay French champagne prices for California bubbly, or Coke prices for store-brand soda. The basic question in trademark law is "how often does this product succeed in tricking someone into buying one thing when they meant to buy something else?" Obviously courts will get the answer wrong sometimes, and there might be areas where the line should be drawn a little differently, but for the most part this is an area of IP law you should vehemently support.
I'm on a horse.
I'm also on the lookout for a Windows alternative in the future, as I'm not liking the direction Microsoft is taking with Metro at all. But Google needs to become a lot more serious about tablet (and desktop) apps by then. So far I've not seen that, but maybe things will change when they launch their own Android tablet at I/O, unless they will keep pretending phone apps are good enough for larger screens.