It certainly appears that Jobs has no desire to sell the $10 hammer, which has kept a lot of people away from the Apple OS to begin with. I would include myself in that category.

IMHO, and it's only an opinion, I think the recession is going to drive people away from more expensive devices toward those that are a perceived bargain. Thus, if Apple can target that $10 hammer market, I think they'll do well. Jobs might think otherwise, and he's entitled to do so.

I will remain skeptical as to whether or not people will pay $1000 for something that costs much less if it's running Windows for Netbooks or Ubuntu. Again, I agree, there's a niche market for those $20 hammers, but will it sustain itself during "Recession 2009"? That remains to be seen.

Because the whole intent of a netbook is to give people a device that does less than a typical laptop, but more than a typical PDA. Thus, I would expect a netbook to lie somewhere between the iPhone and the Macbook.

I follow your logic, that you'd prefer the Cadillac over the Chevrolet. Such is your choice. However, if my goal is to own a netbook, the Dell hardware, which runs OS X very nicely, will suffice. If I want to do multimedia editing, graphic design, etc. I'm pretty sure a Mac netbook won't do. If it does, I'm not sure I would call it a netbook.

What will the price point be on this device? If it's in the $499 range, it might be worth a look. However, when I can buy a Dell Mini with a 16 GB SSD and 2 GB of memory for less than $350, and install Leopard on it for $85 + the cost of a couple of USB flash drives, why would I want to pay much more than that?

I couldn't agree more with the parent post. There is no quicker way to ensure that IT jobs get offshored than to unionize. Additionally, I don't want to answer to a monolithic quasi-political organization with an agenda that likely does not match my own. Those of us who do IT work and are opposed to unionization likely are in IT primarily because we love what we do. If you don't like long hours, Blackberries, and being on call, then by all means, find another career path because IT isn't likely your cup of tea.