Apple Going Atom, Netbook Next?

There is now confirmation that Apple will be using dual-Atom chips and the new Nvidia Ion graphics chip for the Mac Mini, the computer maker's entry level Mac machine. A refresh could come sometime by March or April, around the CeBIT expo in Germany.

The Mini's performance, though slower in processing power, could match the MacBook series in terms of graphics performance. According to Electronista:

The chipset is primarily designed to overcome the characteristically slow visual performance of netbooks and nettops, and supports full hardware decoding of H.264 up to 1080p as well as casual 3D gaming and general-purpose computing tasks. It already supports NVIDIA's proprietary CUDA language for general code but should also support OpenCL when the standard is fully ratified and implemented into drivers or to whole operating systems, such as Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

With the Mini to get increased graphics performance at a trade-off of slightly slower processing power and increased power efficiency, could Apple have a netbook in store soon? Apple's CEO Steve Jobs have went on record stating that the computer firm doesn't know how to make a netbook around $500 that doesn't suck, alluding to the many tradeoffs that netbooks have to make to achieve such a compact size.

Apple may need to enter the netbook market sooner than later as there has been increased interest and sales of the portable device. According to Apple Insider, Apple had lost some market share to Acer, falling to fourth place in computer shipments to the maker of the Aspire One netbook among other portables. Lower cost alternatives are becoming more attractive in the tightening economy and Apple's achievement with the Mac Mini may bring the same technologies to a netbook.