How the PC industry killed the ultrabook

How the PC industry killed the ultrabook

commentary Well, it was fun while it lasted.

The personal computer industry backed a promising candidate in the ultrabook concept, convincing even a skeptic like myself that a new class of superslim, superlight laptops was the key to exciting consumers. Ultrabooks were well on their way to becoming the PC form factor of the future.

And now, it's already over.

In record time -- something less than six months -- the ultrabook term has become so overused and amorphous that it's well on its way to being useless.

Liberal terminology
The first major examples of this new ultrabook rift are two laptops we recently reviewed. The HP Envy 14 Spectreand the Samsung Series 5 Ultra are both 14-inch laptops pitched as ultrabooks. The idea of bringing the ultrabook concept to larger laptops is a reasonable one -- the initial wave of ultrabooks were all 13-inch systems -- but they need to be nearly as thin and lightweight as the 13-inch models.

Instead, both the HP Spectre and Samsung Series 5 Ultra weigh a hair under 4 pounds, about a full pound more than a 13-inch MacBook Air. Both are also about one-tenth of an inch thicker. That may not sound like much, but when less than an inch is your baseline, it makes a noticeable difference in the feel of the laptop in your hand.

The biggest deviation from the ultrabook model to date is the 14-inch Samsung's use of a standard 500GB platter hard drive. The ultrabook platform is supposed to be built around faster, lighter solid-state drives (SSDs), and Samsung includes a tiny 16GB SSD as a secondary drive, which allows it to meet the letter, if not the spirit, of the ultrabook specifications. This system also includes an optical drive, which is another difference from previous ultrabooks.

It's relatively thin and light, but should it be an ultrabook? CNET

What you end up with, especially in the case of the Series 5 Ultra, is a perfectly fine midsize, mainstream laptop that can stand toe to toe with anything similar in the $850-$950 range. If we had seen it eight months or a year ago, our initial impression would be, "Wow, that's a pretty thin 14-inch laptop."

But today, there's absolutely nothing about it that says "ultrabook," which is bad news for this promising new category.

The origins of ultrabook
So, what is an ultrabook supposed to be, anyway?

Seeing the success of Apple's MacBook Air, Intel and PC manufacturers wanted to find a way to replicate it for Windows-based consumers in systems that could be sold at a reasonable price. The idea was pitched as an entirely new laptop category, although the name "Ultrabook" was a trademarked Intel marketing term, and the systems that were going to use it had to meet a series of Intel-set system requirements.

In fact, Intel even set aside $300 million to help PC makers develop these new systems, saying in August 2011 that it would "invest in companies building hardware and software technologies focused on enhancing how people interact with Ultrabooks such as through sensors and touch, achieving all-day usage through longer battery life, enabling innovative physical designs, and improved storage capacity."

The $799 Toshiba Z835. CNET

From that original big idea, and the subsequent challenge Intel presented to PC makers, came the first generation of laptops to use the ultrabook name. These systems, from companies such as Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, and Asus, came off very well in our initial reviews and we were surprisingly impressed with the platform, especially as prices declined, offering buyers systems with 128GB SSD drives for as little as $799.

Ultrabooks 2012: From noteworthy to no big deal
But a few months ago, at CES 2012, I warned that the road ahead looked foggy, saying: "The ultrabook is in danger of being oversold by both Intel and industry watchers overeager to get behind the Next Big Thing."

And that seems to be exactly what is happening here. The ultrabook idea was a hit. It even seemed to have high name recognition with CNET readers, who would e-mail us with specific questions about which ultrabook they should buy. Now, everyone's rushing to join the bandwagon and the bigger 14- and even 15-inch ultrabooks hitting stores feel like they dilute the concept far too much.

For an example of this kind of branding done right, think back to the early days of wireless networks, when Intel's Centrino name meant that a laptop was able to connect to Wi-Fi and do most of the other networking things you needed it to, without you having to delve too deeply into the spec sheet.

In this case, instead of looking for an Intel ultrabook sticker on a laptop and knowing that it's going to be very thin, very light, rely on SSD storage, boot quickly, and run for a long time on a battery charge, now consumers will have to go back to checking the size and weight specs carefully.

How is that helpful for anybody?

Expect to see more laptops that look like this. CNET

The ultrabook is dead; long live the new laptop order
But the ultrabook, as originally presented, is still an idea whose time has come. Apple's MacBook Air proved that consumers could live without optical drives and large-capacity hard drives, and valued long battery life and portability over ports and connections (in that sense, systems such as the Dell Adamo were ahead of their time). Also, ultrabook branding is certainly not going away anytime soon, and we'll all see dozens of new ultrathin laptops both with the ultrabook label and without during the rest of 2012.

The real long-term victory is that the ultrabook is rewriting what it means to be a mainstream laptop. By this time next year, I find it hard to believe that any midprice, midsize laptop won't be well under 1 inch, and closer to 3 pounds than 4 or 5. Optical drives will continue to fade away, as will dedicated Ethernet jacks (although I'm still convinced you'll eventually need one in a pinch). If you're a PC maker and most of your future laptops aren't at least trending toward ultrabooks and the MacBook Air, you simply won't be in the game.

So, yeah: I'm no longer sure what "ultrabook" means anymore. But if most future laptops are going to be thinner, lighter, and faster -- whether or not they get an Intel-approved sticker -- maybe that's not such a bad thing.

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Smart glasses are getting ready for an iPad moment in 2022

Smart glasses are getting ready for an iPad moment in 2022

Many products shown off at CES 2022 were about future tech, like cars that change color, robot butlers or invisible headphones. But with rumors that Apple may announce its own take on an augmented reality or virtual reality device sometime this year, companies already making such products are getting dragged into the present.

Chinese TV maker TCL, for example, announced at CES its RayBan-style NXTWear Air glasses that overlay computer-generated images on the real world. Sony used CES to make a surprise announcement about its hotly anticipated PlayStation VR 2 headset, which promises to trick your brain into thinking you're inside a computer-generated world. Qualcomm and Microsoft, meanwhile, announced a new partnership for head-mounted technology chips.

Indeed, technology built around the digital worlds of the "metaverse" was a central theme of 2022's Consumer Electronics Show, which took place both online and in-person in Las Vegas last week. The roughly 2,300 companies that participated showed off all sorts of products, like backpacks and wallets with beacon locators and shockingly close-to-human robots. But a good deal of the buzz at the show focused on head-mounted technology, particularly the headsets from TCL and Sony.

That buzz was there for good reason. The tech world has repeatedly been surprised by competitors that sweep in and take the industry by storm. Amazon did that with its Kindle reading device, which sold out within hours of its initial launch in November 2007. Smartwatch startup Pebble pulled off a similar surprise with its 2012 Kickstarter campaign that topped $7 million in a matter of weeks. 

And then there's Apple, which regularly influences and upends the industry. That very specifically happened 15 years ago in January 2007 when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs announced his company's first iPhone during the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. That happened the same week as CES, pulling attention away from the show and the new phones, which the iPhone ultimately killed off in the marketplace. 

"The industry doesn't want to be burned like they were with the iPhone," Moor Insights and Strategies analyst Patrick Moorhead said.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs lounges onstage with the newly announced iPad in 2010.

James Martin/CNET

But they were burned again pretty quickly. In 2010, a rush of tech companies including Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and Dell announced competing tablets ahead of Apple's expected introduction of the iPad. More than a decade later, Apple leads the industry with more than 31% market share, according to IDC. Motorola, meanwhile, no longer makes its once-hyped Xoom tablet. HP and Dell, whose devices were stars of CES 2010, sit far below other industry leaders like Samsung, Lenovo and Amazon.

"The industry's a lot more ready for this one, and it's been investing in years," Moorhead said. "You have all these people who are like, 'never again.'"

Apple, which didn't respond to a request for comment, typically doesn't discuss rumors of upcoming products.

Still, Apple CEO Tim Cook has teased his company's interest in AR and VR, either through its software tools offered to developers or statements that the technology is a "critically important part of Apple's future" that will "pervade our entire lives."

"I think AR is one of these very few profound technologies that we will look back on one day and went, 'How did we live our lives without it?'" he told tech YouTuber iJustine in September. "I'm AR fan No. 1. I think it's that big."

The Oculus Quest 2 appeared to sell strongly during the 2021 holiday shopping season.

Scott Stein/CNET

800-pound gorilla

Apple is already one of the most highly valued companies in the world, built largely on the success of devices like the iPhone and iPad, which together make up well more than half its $274 billion in net sales last year.

As longtime tech watchers often note, Apple was a relative latecomer to both markets. Microsoft had built tablet technology into its Windows PC software since 2001. It had also created software for computer-phone hybrids, often called "personal digital assistants," alongside then-market leaders Palm, Handspring and Research in Motion. But when Apple introduced its devices, it offered significantly easier-to-use software and a promise of high-quality apps and data syncing over the internet.

"One thing Apple does differently from everyone else is to create an ecosystem of hardware, software and devices," said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, adding that Apple's strengths will likely help it even more in the headset world.

Sony's been slowly revealing its PSVR 2 headset. So far, it's only shown the device's controllers.

Sony

As CNET's Scott Stein notes, VR technology itself is still in flux, "with companies aiming for products that are smaller and more able to be connected to devices like phones." Right now, the Oculus Quest 2, the $299 VR headset from Meta (nee Facebook), is considered the market leader with one of the most popular VR app stores and one of the most affordable devices alongside Sony's $299 PlayStation VR.

Meanwhile, there are no consumer AR headsets that have gained widespread popularity. Microsoft's $3,500 HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap's $2,295 namesake headset are both focused on business customers.

That leaves Apple with an opportunity to jump in, analysts say. "Apple's headset reveal will be a powerful statement that it means business when it comes to metaverse," Loup Ventures analyst Gene Munster wrote in December, adding the company's "investing heavily," a sentiment backed by years of reports about prototypes and initiatives coming out of Cupertino.

One more thing...

Apple's headset may face a larger challenge than competitors from Meta, Sony and Microsoft, analysts say. Apple will also need to overcome consumer apathy.

The tech world's gone gaga over VR and AR before, with relatively few sales to show for it afterward. In the 1980s and 1990s, VR experience centers in malls and Nintendo's Virtual Boy excited techies about the promise of the new technology, but the experience didn't come close to the hype, and sales failed to materialize. The industry imploded before it got a chance to get off the ground.

"I'm AR fan No. 1. I think it's that big."

Tim Cook, Apple CEO

In 2016, VR went through somewhat of a repeat when Facebook's Oculus Rift headset launched after four years of public testing and development. Phone maker HTC introduced its Vive around the same time, as did Sony with its PSVR. Initial sales were lower than expected, according to people familiar with data surrounding Oculus and Microsoft at the time.

Six years later, Oculus appears to have found its niche as a tool for entertainment amid the interminable COVID-19 pandemic. The HTC Vive has largely been used by businesses. VR, AR and the virtual worlds of the metaverse, such as Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, have also offered a way to socialize with people amid quarantines and social isolation.

Apple may be able to supercharge that trend, taking advantage of growing interest in the technology for entertainment and social communication, which are among the most popular categories in its App Store.

Until then, CNET's Stein says that even as more and more companies beckon us to join their digital worlds, Apple will remain "the elephant in the metaverse."

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