Apple has just bragged about some mighty impressive financial figures, with iPhone sales surging by 626 percent in a year. But as ever, the real gossip has come out of the Q&A held with Cupertino’s bean counters after those stats were outed. Once again an Apple netbook was the hot topic, with any plans being slapped down by Jobs’ right–hand man. Read on to find out just what was said about an Apple netbook.
Only a few weeks ago, plans for a 9.7–inch screen Apple netbook were rife. But now Apple’s Peter Oppenheimer has said such a move is still very much on the backburner.
During Apple’s sales conference call, Oppenheimer answered questions about an Apple netbook in typically bullish fashion. Saying the Mac maker only wanted to produce “the best computers” and still hadn’t worked out how to do that at “the $499 level.”
iPhone sales set new profit high for Apple
Warming to his theme, Oppenheimer said, “People want a full-featured notebook, some of the netbooks being delivered are very slow, have software technology that is old [and] don’t have a robust computing experience.”
Saying that Apple will, “…only play in things where we can be very innovative and be proud of,” his comments clearly suggest a cheap Apple netbook is not likely to land soon. That certainly reflects Steve Jobs’ previous statements.
But while it may not sound like Apple is plotting a cheap netbook, it doesn’t rule out unleashing a pricey Sony Vaio P style machine. Now that seems far more likely.
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why wait? I have two Apple netbooks fashioned from dell minis (9 and 10v), each for $400 or less. While there are definitely usability compromises with the 9, it has huge portability pluses when you need light word processing, email, web browsing, PDF reading, and even a machine to offload photos to. It’s great for that. The mini10v is even better–very good keyboard (crappy touchpad, though) and good enough performance to replace my MacBook Pro for all but heavy-duty photo and video editing.
I can’t see Apple coming out with a netbook any time soon. They’re doing extremely well with their notebooks – why take a chance disrupting that success? I wrote extensively about why Apple shouldn’t release a netbook here:
http://bit.ly/15BPlk