I am a Mac user who would like a smaller Mac.
The Air is thinner not smaller.
I own a 12″powerbook which like the newer Macbook pros has a separate graphics card.
Right now any person who uses computers a lot has to buy the 15″ Macbook pro if they want any performance.
The 13 inch Macbook is not small.
What is needed is the return on the 12″ in the Macbook pro form.
I see this product as an integration of the Macbook pro and the iphone in a 12″ form factor.
How long can Apple keep out of the mini computer market? It seems strange for them to be absent from a new segment of the computer market.
It is a long product jump from the iphone to the Macbook 13.

the Macbook air is Apple’s ‘netbook’ in terms of portability.

What apple may make is a 12″ macbook pro, which is hard to say given that they already have the macbook air. For even more portability, they’ll just stick with the ipod touch/iphone lines.

@Jose and Fazal,

A “netbook” is pretty much a cheap ultraportable. While TZ’s and U110’s and Air’s are all probably great machines, they cost about 4 times what a well-built netbook does and don’t offer much more in performance, functionality, portability or battery life.

The answer is obvious: a MacBook Air, priced less. I have a SSD Air, and it’s a near perfect device for its purpose.

I have to admit that I’ve had a lot of trouble with the whole “netbook” category. When it was a 6″-7″ device with a simple linux OS it seemed easy to identify these notebook offspring, but once the screen size reached 10″ and started using a full blown OS, the line really got blury. The only differentiating factor that I still see is what JK pointed out in the first place: price. I have both an IdeaPad U110 and a TZ, both of which are 11″ screen devices. They are just as light and portable as the 10″ ‘Netbooks’ so what makes the netbook a netbook and the notebook a notebook? Of course the TZ and IdeaPad have Core2Duo processors as opposed to an Atom, but the only true difference I see is the ~$2,000 cost for one versus a ~$600 – $700 cost for the other. Netbook, Notebook, Laptop, UMPC, MID…these names have all lost meaning to me.

The only way I will ever have an Apple device is if I am given one for free.

Woadan

@c.k.

I just ordered a tx2500z over the weekend. It’s hard to resist with the crazy stacked rebates and free RAM upgrades HP has going right now.

741.99 shipped for a screaming tablet that’s absolutely loaded. Un-freakin’-believable. I can’t wait to get my hands on this thing.

Do you have yours yet?

I think Apple will most likely come out with a small tablet computer this fall. Why do I think this? Because I finally gave up waiting for one and bought an HP tx2500. That ensures that we’ll all see a Mac Tablet priced just out of the realm of reasonable this fall. Yep. *sigh*

@Nate

I made the mistake of reading 12 pages of posts on Psystar’s countersuit in the MacRumors forum last night.

Thinking about this again, I am 100% sure that Apple won’t release a netbook. Why would anyone buy a Macbook Air for $1800 when you could get an Apple netbook (at the same weight, with the same performance, with the same OSX and maybe even more ports) for $1000 cheaper?

If Apple releases anything, it will be a Newton-like jumbo iPod Touch that will be declared “revolutionary”, will be difficult to type on and will leave out one or more major functions that most of us require.

Thanks for the laugh ben.

Next time you need to figure out where to work in the term “Winblowz”. I think that’s about the only thing you missed.

I want it to be 1000 dollars cheaper than Apple is sure to sell it for.

I think Apple are more likely to release an 7/8.9″ multi-touch tablet type device. I’d pay $600 for such as device. Add their nice Bluetooth external keyboard (as an $$ extra) and you get a netbook – especially if they can be clipped together.

Loosing the keyboard would save money (not a lot in volume) and also differentiate their product on the market.

Sort of a big screen color OS-X Newton.

And yes, I know I should just by a Macbook if I want a cheap Apple laptop and that I shouldn’t ever question Apple’s prices or their profit margins.

I know that if I don’t like Apple’s current product line I don’t have to buy anything from them and that I’m not cool enough to understand the Apple aesthetic and that I’m probably jealous and just too poor to be able to afford Apple kit and that I should just stop whining and go back to my parent’s basement and stop eating cheetos because I am probably a fat loser with no girlfriend.

If they did release a netbook, I’d want it to have a netbook price (< $700), at least 2 USB ports, a HDD and a keyboard. Unfortunately, I think they'd release something like a jumbo iPod touch or something equally useless.

I agree with James about the price. Unless Apple releases a $500 model, it shouldn’t be called a netbook. However, if it was running a stripped down version of Mac OS X optimized for Internet, I’d reconsider.

I’d be more convinced if Apple were to take the netbook concept a step further and make Dashboard the OS. Dashboard is basically a front-end for the WebKit engine. Wouldn’t be hard to roll in a web browser and email app. Then you could use Dashboard as the main UI, switching to the regular (but still stripped down) OS X side for settings and whatnot. Hard to argue a notebook using a web rendering engine to drive its main interface is not a netbook.