Apple netbook... or notbook?

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches rumors swirl about an Apple netbook. Not to mention Fidel Castro, unplugged...

Preston Gralla takes a break from berating Redmond:

As I've written before, if Apple is going to thrive, it needs to release a netbook. Now an article by the Chinese-language newspaper Commercial Times reports that such a netbook will ship, complete with a touchscreen, most likely by the third quarter of this year.
...
Wintek, based in Taiwan, will supply the touch panels for the Apple netbook ... shipments will begin in the third quarter ... Quanta Computer will manufacture the netbook.

Yvonne Yu picks up the story:

Wintek revealed that it is currently working with Apple to develop some new products, but it said it does not know what applications the new products are for. Wintek added that no shipment schedule has been worked out yet, but shipments are likely to begin in the second half of the year.

John Paczkowski recalls:

That would seem to belie claims by the company’s leadership that the term “Apple netbook” is an oxymoron. Asked during Apple’s Q4 earnings call last year if the company will ever enter the netbook market, CEO Steve Jobs said, “We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.”
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Apple COO Tim Cook was similarly dismissive of the netbook category during the company’s Q1 earnings call this year.

Dan Frommer predictifies:

[It's] more support that Apple is working on what we've been calling the "iPod touch HD" -- a touchscreen, portable Internet device that's bigger than the iPhone ... Not a smoking gun, [but] it makes sense that Apple would be working on something between the iPhone/iPod touch and its Mac lineup. The netbook market -- small, relatively inexpensive PCs -- is exploding. And Apple's multi-touch gadget platform has been a big hit. So a marriage of the two makes sense.
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We don't think Apple will make a device that looks like the miniature laptops that PC makers like Asus and Acer are selling ... Rather, we think Apple will take advantage of its expertise in multi-touch screens and virtual keyboards to make a device that's about four times the size of an iPod touch, selling for around $600 to $700.

Mike Elgan, too:

I think both these visions are wrong, or both right, depending on how you look at it ... if Apple does ship a netbook, and if the Taiwanese reports are true, the most likely netbook will be ... the form factor I've called the laptop of the future: A dual screen clamshell running the iPhone OS and Apps.
...
This form factor is so appealing and usable, so innovative and bold that I believe Apple may not only ship it, but dominate netbooks like they did cell phones.

Seth Weintraub has been thinking:

I don't have to tell you about the netbook Hackintosh phenomenon. This is where people go out and but a netbook and (hopefully) pay another $129 for Leopard on top of the OS they already paid for with the laptop. That usually brings the total to around $600 for the same sub-Apple quality-hardware. Dell Mini 9's, MSI Winds and EEE 1000HA's seem to be the most popular Hackintoshes.

Surely these hackers would pay a few extra bucks more for a machine that is guaranteed out of the box to work optimized for OSX because it is from Apple ... [And] Snow Leopard has been touted as a full redesign of Leopard with the goal of being more efficient than ever before. This fits right in with a netbook.

Meanwhile, Dan Lyons goes all meta on us:

This is total non-news, since no actual product has been announced yet, and since, believe it or not, the entire fate of the ****ing world does not hang in the balance on whether Apple makes a new, slightly larger iPod.
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So, to recap: Frommer re-reports something on Alley Insider that Paczkowski re-reports on AllThingsD that DigiTimes re-reports from Commercial Times. You gotta love the way the Internet takes all the friction and inefficiency out of the fusty old news business.

But Thomas Ricker delivers the kicker:

Take this one with a grain of salt though -- while these two Taiwan-based magazines tend to be accurate with insider info related to Taiwan-based companies like Acer and ASUS, they can often be wide of the mark with rumors related to foreign companies.

Unless of course we missed the launch of the Blu-ray Xbox 360 and G5 PowerBooks.

And finally...

• Castro, unplugged [a few naughty words in subtitles]

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Stephen's Wolfram Alpha: snake oil or Skynet?
• TomTom fights Microsoft to protect GPL?
• Obama: we need a CIO before a CTO
• ...more

Buffer overflow:

• Schneier on Security: History and Ethics of Military Robots
• Zack Urlocker: Cisco to get disruptive with Flip video acquisition?
• Katie Fehrenbacher: Green Social Network Startups Tap Competition to Fight Climate Change
• Coding Horror: The Computer Performance Shell Game
• Online Storage Optimization: Dedupe for Primary - Another Shade of Blue
• Jason Perlow: Extreme PCs and "Homebrewing": Rest in Peace
• Dong Ngo: Seagate demos 6Gbps hard-drive transfer speed

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Michael Horowitz: Version 1.1 improvements apply to hardware too
• Lucas Mearian: Twenty-four SSDs strung together for 6TB, 2GB/sec throughput
• SJVN: Novell's SUSE Linux futures
• Dan Tynan: ZillionTV: Part Deux
• Mark Everett Hall: Cloud computing safer than on-premises
• Shark Tank: And you know which method he'll choose
• Shark Bait: Computer terminal making funny noises
• ...more

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.