Just say no, and sound like Steve Jobs when you do

Steven Williams has an article in The New York Times about netbooks and Apple:

Don’t say Apple and netbook in the same breath. In fact, contempt may be too kindly a term to describe the attitude of Apple’s COO Tim Cook toward the mini-laptop category that’s making waves in the market, but not, apparently, in Cupertino.
During a conference call to analysts earlier this week, Cook said— and it’s worth running the whole quote— said this about netbooks: “They have cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience, and not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. And, so, it’s not a space as it exists today that we are interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in. It’s a segment we would choose not to play in.’ In other words, what part of “no” don’t you understand?
Of course, this is the technology marketplace, and no doesn’t always mean no indefinitely. But one can persuasively argue that Apple makes a sub-netbook already in the form of the iPhone and iPod Touch, devices that entertain with music and video and surf the Web wirelessly. With a new iPhone due to be introduced in June, the anti-netbook line from Apple—which was stated in no uncertain terms intitially last year by CEO Steven Jobs—isn’t likely to change soon.
Earlier this month, colleagues Ashlee Vance and Matt Richtel, in a Times business story, called netbooks “the next stage in the personal computer revolution”, with some expected to sell for less than $100 by the end of the year, and that the market shift would put pressure on companies like Intel and Microsoft.
By the way, while Apple still isn’t likely to catch McDonald’s hamburger count (“billions and billions sold,” as of yesterday), the company crossed a milestone this week when a teenager from Connecticut downloaded an application called Bump; it was the one billionth download from the App Store since its inception nine months ago. Bump is a free app, where users can swap data between a pair of iPhones by…well, bumping them together.

Rico says he'll wait (with some difficulty) for the next iPhone, but will get Bump now...