Apple boasts record Q1 as revenue tops $10bn

Apple alumni wax nostalgic

The bit about Apple IP vs. Palm reduces to whether Palm either licenses

or cross-licenses from Apple. Likely not. The bad blood also has to do

with a few ex-Apple emps who went to Palm, including Donna Dubinsky,

Dave Nagel, and lately Jon Rubinstein and Fred Anderson, not to mention

Bono's interest.

It gets more interesting from a patent perspective in the case of Microsoft

buying Palm. Does Microsoft still have a patent cross-licensing arrangement

with Apple? Are patents transferrable across boundaries of a subsidiary?

About the "Pre", what does the physical keyboard do, anyway?

Seems like a redundant mechanically breakable softspot, and otherwise

a me-too product -- Apple copycats never seem to win...

IP infringers?

He's probably talking about Pystar et al.

Netbooks

I wouldn't pay any attention to Apple's statements on Netbooks, it's missdirection. I'm pretty sure Apple are at least prototyping Apple netbook designs, even if they decide not to bring them to market. Apple are well known for dismissing a product category, then launching their own product in that category (e.g. video ipods). I'd guess the issue is that for Apple, they design and sell based on the features, rather than the price. Netbooks are price first, features second - I'd say it's hard for Apple to see how to compete there...

I'm more interested in them bothering to update the Mac Mini...

Netbooks

Tim Cook's Netbook statement is the simple truth. A simple minded interpretation is that it's misdirection and Apple will soon sell a netbook. Netbooks are certainly close to the core of Apple's market. For now, Apple doesn't care about Netbooks; it only needs a small share of PC unit sales; for example with 16% of US retail units, Apple takes 32% of retail revenue, and probably more than double that share of retail profits. Think about that - 16% of units; more profit than all the others put together. In other words, if Apple gets up to 30% of retail units, they may take more than 100% of manufacturer profit from retail PC sales. At some point they will attack netbooks, but there's no need just yet. If it's to be soon, I suspect (exclusive) carrier subsidy, plus proprietary IP to enance performance and battery life is the way Apple will begin to eat into the netbook market at decent margins.

Mis-reporting rather than mis-direction

It would help if El Reg wouldn't spin so much. Cook wasn't as dismssive of the netbook category as this article implies (go read the full transcript of what he said to help get a clue). What he was saying was that the quality of the hardware wasn't there for *Apple* yet, and that they also didn't think much of the software available (a dig at both Linux and XP). However, he clearly states that it is a category that Apple has its eye on and could enter once the time is right. Apple obviously have the software in place (OS X), especially so because of the iPhone, but want to get their timing right so that they don't enter the space as "me-too" types and instead have something unique to offer it.

@ David Simpson

If you are so informed how come you aren't aware that Konfabulator was a 'direct' rip of something that shipped in 1984 as part of the first Mac OS? All that Knofabulator did was amalgamate the "widget" concept with the concept of Sherlock or Copernicus. That is it. They couldn't have patented it even if they had wanted to as there were lots of examples of prior art, many of which belonged to and were invented at Apple.

"We think the products there are inferior."

Doesn't mean they're not getting into the netbook market, it means that nothing out there right now is what they think a netbook should be like. Just like the way Apple considered phones before the iPhone to be "inferior".