Dave, regarding Steve's quote...When I read that, I basically realized that Apple MUST BE working on a $500 computer. Here's why: Historically, steve has slammed "Video on an iPod" right before the iPod Video was introduced. He slammed having an SDK for iPhone right before announcing the SDK plan for iPhone. There are numerous other examples, but the strategy is actually very good. By saying that we don't know how to make a $500 computer without it being a piece of junk, that will get everybody and their mother talking about Apple's $500 computer when they release it, virtually guaranteeing that it will be an overnight success.
So my prediction is that we are less than 12 months away from a $500 Apple computer.
dave
· 1 year ago
Yes of course. It's how SJ signals his intent. :-)
ampressman
· 1 year ago
That seems to be Markoff's theory - his blog post linked above is titled "Read My Lips: Apple Is a Netbook Maker." Or did I misunderstand him?
grvaughan
· 1 year ago
Yeah, seems to be a pattern. Made me think also of X-Plane creator Austin Meyer's adamant email about how he couldn't produce a version of X-Plane for the iPhone, sent days before announcing just that.
Wonder if he picked up that idea during couple of weeks he spent in Cupertino getting X-Plane for iPhone ready.
I'd love to see some smaller-format and less-expensive Macs, it's amazing what you can buy on the PC side these days. Apple is once again losing ground on price.
Nitin
· 1 year ago
Dave, you omitted "Has a regular keyboard" - I don't want a large iPhone like device on which I am forced to "type" on a glass surface.
dave
· 1 year ago
I thought of that, but...
I'm not sure it needs to be said.
Thinkin about it...
jungleg
· 1 year ago
I like my Wind MSI because now my subway ride (35 minutes each way) has become my writing time. Yes, the subway is now my writing studio. :)
Brandi
· 1 year ago
i just bought the dell mini 9 and i agree that netbooks are great products! i have a 17 inch laptop and its ridiculously heavy and awkward and its not really as portable as i'd like. it's a pain when going through airport security too! i'm very pleased with it with my new mini laptop!!
I have a question for all you netbook experts then: if you could buy one today, which one would you get, and why?
I'm *very* interested!
sameasiteverwas
· 1 year ago
Probably the best buy at the moment is the Asus EEE 900 series (like Dave's), which can be found in a variety of configurations (Linux or WinXP, hard disk or SSD, etc) from $300-$500.
If you want to buy from a "name" vendor, Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 is a strong competitor to the EEE 900s.
If you want a near-full-size keyboard, Asus' EEE 1000 series will get you there for about $100-150 more than you'd pay for a similarly configured 900.
Foomandoonian
· 1 year ago
Thanks! I'm torn between the 900 and the 1000 series, and confused by all the others manufacturers.
dave
· 1 year ago
If I had it to do over again, I would have gone for the 1000. Bigger screen, keyboard, and a hard drive. It helps to have all three.
Eric Sink
· 1 year ago
Interesting. Remarks like this make me wonder if I should give the 10-inch netbooks another look.
I have a 901 and I love it. I take it everywhere. The netbooks with the 10-inch screen just look so much bigger. I think it would be more like carrying around a laptop.
Foomandoonian
· 1 year ago
This is my big reservation. For the £350ish I could spend on a 1000 model, I could get a full laptop (albeit not one I desire). I think I'm going to go for it though - the 1000's are still plenty small enough to fit in my bag.
sameasiteverwas
· 1 year ago
Go somewhere where you can try out a 900 in person (I know they have them at Micro Center and Best Buy, probably places like Fry's too). Put your hands on the keyboard and type something. You will know right away whether you can live with the 900's smaller keyboard or not.
Foomandoonian
· 1 year ago
Thanks for the link - Liliputing is a great name for a netbook blog :) I've tried the 900's, and I think I would struggle with one. Shame, because I really prefer the size. Thanks for the advice!
sameasiteverwas
· 1 year ago
Oh, and if you want to stay on top developments in this segment, the Liliputing blog is a good place to start; they cover netbooks exclusively. They also have an excellent netbook database you can use to compare various netbooks feature-for-feature.
Fanfoot
· 1 year ago
Like others here I would recommend Micro Center. They generally have several netbooks out that you can actually touch, including a couple of Eee models and an Acer Aspire One. This will give you some idea of the size and by trying out the keyboard you can figure out whether you can live with the compromises inherent in an 8.9" keyboard. And screen I suppose, though I don't actually think that's all that important.
If you want to go on price, buy an Acer Aspire One. They're the cheapest, and apparently quite nicely built. Crap keyboard layout, but that's pretty common.
Want to mod/upgrade it? Then an ASUS Eee or the Dell Mini 9 are the best choices.
Want a decent keyboard? Then the HP Mini 1000 or the Samsung NC10 are your best bet. Nice full-sized right shift keys.
Want it to be bullet-proof? Go for an SSD. If you don't want to spend a TON then this will be a small SSD like 8GB or 16GB. If you need more space go for one with a hard disk. Windows XP itself will fit in 4-5GB or so. Linux in less.
Want long battery life? Go for a 6-cell battery. The Samsung NC10 has the best out of the box battery life of any netbooks so far. But it looks like ASUS is switching to a different "denser" battery for the Eee 901s now, so it could get interesting.
Foomandoonian
· 1 year ago
Thanks!
I am writing this on a two-week old Asus Eee PC 1000 (Linux, 40GB SSD). I quickly installed the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and have been pretty happy with the results.
I have wanted an Eee since the first models, but there was always a better model around the corner. That race will probably go on for a few years, and the price of each new model always goes up. £350 was a good cut-off point for me, and like I say - no regrets so far.
bijan
· 1 year ago
I love my macbook air but the lack of removable battery is the deal killer for me.
I hope apple comes out with a real netbook soon
in the interim I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get the new MacBook. wish it was smaller but it has more of what I need adn it's much smaller than the MacBook Pro.
baiss
· 1 year ago
I just spent a month in China where my iPhone served as a netbook. I found no wifi, but did find hard-line ethernet and I had a way around the wifi from a traveling companion who had a modem with him. "iPhones are too locked to be netbooks" They are open enough for me, I had no loss of software. It's true I didn't need to disturb the two servers back home, for which I would have needed Terminal.
Jordi Soler
· 1 year ago
Should I suggest that you try Ubuntu eee on your Asus? I just installed it today and it works like a charm: it suits the Asus 900 like a glove!
dave
· 1 year ago
You could suggest it, but it wouldn't work for me -- I have Windows-only software (also runs on Mac but not Linux).
The smartest thing Microsoft did recently is cut special deals for XP for netbooks. I don't think this would be a category if they hadn't.
Of course it's great that Linux is there, otherwise Microsoft would probably screw with us! :-)
Jordi Soler
· 1 year ago
Maybe there is room for a little dual partition? :)))
OK, I'll stop or you'll think that I'm related to Shuttleworth...
sameasiteverwas
· 1 year ago
WINE might also be a solution, depending on how closely the software in question sticks to the WIndows APIs. I've found it to be much better and more dependable in recent releases than it used to be.
The only thing missing form your list in the Apple MacBook Air, I believe, is low price. So what would the price point have to be for the Air to be considered a Netbook?
dave
· 1 year ago
I totally disagree. Whether its small or rugged are subject to question, but it only has one USB port and the battery is not removable. I don't know what it is but it's no netbook. It doesn't match any of the use-cases for a netbook (which is something I should add to the list).
A reasonable usecase would be: It makes it from Berkeley to Manhattan on one battery charge. My Asus actually did that last month, with juice to spare!
Steve Jobs
· 1 year ago
Dave you are simply being disingenuous here.
The Macbook Air being small and rugged is NOT subject to question. Based on the specs at the Apple website vs. your Amazon link, the MacBook Air is about 0.6 times smaller than the Eee. It's 57 cubic inches for the Air vs. 92 cubic inches for the Eee (go ahead and average the taper if you want to do the multiplication yourself to check my math).
If you want a narrower or shallower MacBook Air you will have to say so specifically, because in the "Smaller" and "Thinner" departments the Air beats the Eee by a country mile.
The Air's unibody enclosure, the first to be machined from a single piece of aluminum, has also proven to be very rugged: http://forums.macrumors.com/printthread.php?t=4... and they did not add a glass trackpad to the newest redesign for a reason.
And if you want longer battery life you can simply underclock the Air with CoolBook. Users are reporting up to 5.5 hrs of battery life on the old MacBook Airs with an SSD using CoolBook: http://forums.macrumors.com/printthread.php?t=4... I'm assuming that CoolBook will work even better on the new MacBook with its 45nm processor and 17Watt TDP (the old processor was 65nm and 20W TDP)
More to the point (in an attempt to give Apple some real specs to actually build to), you simply want an underclocked MacBook Air with the hidden battery and usb ports exposed. That's it, correct?
Sounds pretty easy. And guess what? I want that exact same product, and I'm willing to pay for it, so I don't care if it is expensive.
ps. if you are going to say you want a significantly smaller screen just to save half a pound, well... I just can't back you up on that decision.
Dave H
· 1 year ago
The MacBook Air has a small volume because it’s way thin, and excessive thinness doesn’t matter. Being excessively thin won’t help it fit into my coat pocket (like the Aspire One does, just).
tommorris
· 1 year ago
I have to say, bar the little accident of dropping the thing on the floor and destroying the screen, I love my Acer AspireOne. Disagree on XP. I have one machine that runs XP and it causes me more headaches than all the other machines I have combined. Ubuntu, though - whew. It's beautiful. Alas, there's no decent outliner available for it - but for everything else, it's superb.
Looking forward to getting it back. My MacBook Pro may actually be the last Apple machine I buy. Maybe. There's about four apps I use which are Mac/Windows only. If I can find decent Linux equivalents, then I can exorcise both Bill and Steve from my life.
Andres Lucero
· 1 year ago
Most of your points are just descriptions of products already on the market, not really defining what the concept of a "netbook" means. To me, a netbook is an ultra-portable notebook computer with wireless connectivity to the Internet. The type of processor or number of USB ports doesn't really matter in the end; specs will evolve over time as companies iterate on their designs, but the concept will stay the same.
I don't think price is really a defining factor, either, although the low price is part of what's attractive about the EEE 901 or Aspire One (as opposed to the Macbook Air).
AndrewBurton
· 1 year ago
I think the low price is a deciding factor, it separates Netbooks from the UMPC markets, which are rarely-if-ever below $600-700. The low cost of Netbooks is what makes them attractive to people (like me) who might not otherwise be able to justify the cost of a laptop.
efliv
· 1 year ago
I recently attended a presentation by a senior level marketing manager from the Windows group at Microsoft. He said that Windows 7, or some variant thereof, is being specifically developed for netbook hardware. If Apple thinks the market is "nascent," Microsoft clearly does not.
I find it hard to believe that Microsoft and Apple truly see such a difference in the potential of the netbook market. Likewise, I have to believe an Apple netbook isn't too far off.
dave
· 1 year ago
Right, that's why I think Apple is bluffing.
Carl Dowthwaite
· 1 year ago
Perhaps a fuller version of Steve's quote might have been "We don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk with acceptable margins and which won't eat into existing mac sales."
I think this points to Apple launching when it believes that it can achieve sufficient differentiation between the MacBook and an Apple netbook. Given what many people use their Macbooks for I don't think that this will be easy. One radical way of achieving this might be launch an ARM based machine - very good power consumption but much less powerful than Intel based macs.
Josh Bancroft
· 1 year ago
A netbook conference, eh? That is a BRILLIANT idea. It started wheels turning, anyway... :-)
Greg Spira
· 1 year ago
Reading between the lines, the key may be how Jobs defines computers. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a notebook based on iphone software from Apple fairly soon. It wouldn't be able to run Photoshop or MIcrosoft Office. It would be like an iphone with a much bigger screen and a mini-notebook size keyboard. Apple would, of course, maintain control over the whole ecosystem. You could browse the web, make basic documents, and do almost anything you can do with a normal Internet browser and the web. Plus, of course, there will be an apoplication store, run by Apple, which will sell aps designed exclusively for the product. But it wouldn't be a computer in the sense that other netbooks are - it would not run linux, xp, or even the mac os. Apple will initially price it at $499, which many people will complain is too expensive for such a limited product, but it'll sell well anyway and 6 months after release the price will fall to under $400.
Ranjit Mathoda
· 1 year ago
If Apple comes out with a netbook they won't call it a netbook. It'll be a closed machine that is elegant in design, both hardware and software, it'll sell at a premium, and it'll have features current netbooks don't have while leaving out things you realize you don't really need.
ix
· 1 year ago
macbook mini and macbook touch seem a shoe-in for MWSF2009
the whole point is them being cheap and convenient, i dont see how apple can roll one out for less than 50% more than the competition, but that might ust work
Tumbleweed
· 1 year ago
The Mac mini *could* have been much cheaper if they hadn't insisted on making it so small just to make something that small. The market wasn't clamoring for something that small, it was (and IS) clamoring for an affordable headless Mac. If they hadn't insisted on making a 'design statement,' and made it just a bit bigger, they could've used NON-laptop class parts and saved some money. Laptop harddrives and RAM are more expensive than their desktop equivalents. And now comes word they're possibly cancelling the Mac mini altogether. Dumb move. They could've designed this thing better and made a real HTPC out of it, but since they don't "know how" to make what people want, they're just going to cancel it. Smooth. Jobs is simultaneously the best and worst thing that happened to Apple, Inc.
George Galla
· 1 year ago
Dave,
Glad you picked on that remark by steve j. First i want to say that I love apple and love steve j. I have a mac mini and like it a lot. I am constantly impressed by the amount thought that went into the design. That being said I also have a acer laptop with a 14 inch screen, vista and I like it a lot. The acer cost 479 and it is not junk. It is a capable computer. It can do many things the mac cannot.
Bob D
· 1 year ago
I read Jobs' words as saying that Apple will do a netbook, just not yet. "we have some ideas:, etc,
There is a huge, obvious gap in Apple's product line between 3.5" and 13" screens. I could see at least two products - a larger iPod Touch. maybe with a 7" screen, and a netbpok with a 9-10" screen. With netbook prices climbing, Apple wouldn't have to hit the $500 price point, even $600-700 wouod be OK.
I keep waiting for a small (the Air is light, not small) Apple. When they announced the Air, I bought an iPod Touch. When they announced the new Macbooks, I bought an Asus 901 (Linux version). I carry it in preference to my Macbook unless I need to do something that it just can't do. It can't do games well, but I use the iPod Touch for portable gaming. I would love to have a small OS X machine, though.
I think you will see an Apple netbook when the price of 64GB solid state drives get cheap enough (it's almost there now). Jobs is obsessed with light weight and thin, and eliminating the hard disk would help.
Michael Horowitz
· 1 year ago
I agree that Netbooks are the dawn of a new era in computing. Their price and size will result in people using them for things we haven't yet imagined. I purchased two for the same reason as Dave, the new device category is fascinating. With halfway decent marketing for Linux based machines, Netbooks could be serious competition for Macs. Problem is, getting halfway decent marketing is not likely.
Yes, a Netbook conference is inevitable as is a new trade association to push it.
When Netbooks have a similar always-on Internet connection to the Kindle, the game will *really* change.
For now, I have only used a 9 inch Netbook, but based on that I'd definitely opt for a 10 inch model.
Pete Prodoehl
· 1 year ago
I paid about $400 for the Asus Eee 701 when it first came out last year, and it's nice. It is small and light and I carry it in my bag everywhere. It runs Linux, and it can handle browsing, email, and I can manage servers and some of the stuff I want/need to do. A MacBook is bigger, and heavier, and more expensive. Still, if there was a comparable Apple netbook, I think I'd pay twice as much as I did for the Asus, just because it runs Mac OS X, and I could do pretty much *everything* I normally want/need to do, with the software I use everyday on my desktop. Linux is ok, but I do most of my real work on OS X.
Richard Cunningham
· 1 year ago
I think Apple must be working on a netbook, but it won't either be cheap (#2) or have #8 since it will run OS X and no other non-Apple netbook will do that. I would have thought they will make a 10 inch mac book air - i.e. thin / no CD drive / decent sized keys. I expect when it's unveiled Jobs will claimed to have invented the new form factor.
Personally I wouldn't buy one because I couldn't see wanting to run anything but Linux and doing that on a Apple would just be an expensive waste.
hawken king
· 1 year ago
I still use my powerbook G4 12" everyday - take it with me everywhere. Wasn't that apples netbook?
Fanfoot
· 1 year ago
Well, we're all hoping Apple *does* do something in this space and sooner rather than later. There's certainly room for them to improve things, and of course charge their usual premium.
Make it thinner than the other netbooks. Something along the lines of the ASUS S101, or even thinner.
If its going to have that big Apple trackpad, it seems unlikely it'll be an 8.9" model. A 10-incher is probably a better choice anyway if they're not going to do both, which they obviously won't. The good news is they can do the new trackpad with no buttons, saving on vertical space, which is critical on a netbook.
Push the limits a little--edge to edge keyboard a la the HP Mini 1000. Maybe even a very thin bezel around the screen to make the screen bigger while keeping the device the same size, i.e. "a 10-inch screen in a package the size of other 9-inch netbooks". Or an 11.1 inch screen in a 10-inch package.
Increase the screen resolution? No issues with Windows limits here, so go crazy. Like 1024x768 in a 10-inch display, or 1366x768 in an 11-inch. Or something. Just more than 1024x600. At least a little more vertical.
Multi-touch gesture support. Actually a lot of netbooks already have this.
A non-plastic case. Most likely the same machined aluminum as other MacBooks, but something... carbon fiber, something.
And of course it runs OSX, and comes with Apple support and software.
An SSD drive, necessary to allow it to hit the battery life and thinness targets. By waiting they can introduce the device with an SSD that has better performance than the others.
Price is flexible, but only because its Apple. Everybody else has to be under $400 at least for 3-cell versions. I think Apple could sell this for as much as $799 or so and still find buyers, and that's not even for the most expensive version...
All Comments
So my prediction is that we are less than 12 months away from a $500 Apple computer.
Wonder if he picked up that idea during couple of weeks he spent in Cupertino getting X-Plane for iPhone ready.
I'd love to see some smaller-format and less-expensive Macs, it's amazing what you can buy on the PC side these days. Apple is once again losing ground on price.
I'm not sure it needs to be said.
Thinkin about it...
I'm *very* interested!
If you want to buy from a "name" vendor, Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 is a strong competitor to the EEE 900s.
If you want a near-full-size keyboard, Asus' EEE 1000 series will get you there for about $100-150 more than you'd pay for a similarly configured 900.
keyboard, and a hard drive. It helps to have all three.
I have a 901 and I love it. I take it everywhere. The netbooks with the 10-inch screen just look so much bigger. I think it would be more like carrying around a laptop.
I've tried the 900's, and I think I would struggle with one. Shame, because I really prefer the size. Thanks for the advice!
If you want to go on price, buy an Acer Aspire One. They're the cheapest, and apparently quite nicely built. Crap keyboard layout, but that's pretty common.
Want to mod/upgrade it? Then an ASUS Eee or the Dell Mini 9 are the best choices.
Want a decent keyboard? Then the HP Mini 1000 or the Samsung NC10 are your best bet. Nice full-sized right shift keys.
Want it to be bullet-proof? Go for an SSD. If you don't want to spend a TON then this will be a small SSD like 8GB or 16GB. If you need more space go for one with a hard disk. Windows XP itself will fit in 4-5GB or so. Linux in less.
Want long battery life? Go for a 6-cell battery. The Samsung NC10 has the best out of the box battery life of any netbooks so far. But it looks like ASUS is switching to a different "denser" battery for the Eee 901s now, so it could get interesting.
I am writing this on a two-week old Asus Eee PC 1000 (Linux, 40GB SSD). I quickly installed the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and have been pretty happy with the results.
I have wanted an Eee since the first models, but there was always a better model around the corner. That race will probably go on for a few years, and the price of each new model always goes up. £350 was a good cut-off point for me, and like I say - no regrets so far.
I hope apple comes out with a real netbook soon
in the interim I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get the new MacBook. wish it was smaller but it has more of what I need adn it's much smaller than the MacBook Pro.
"iPhones are too locked to be netbooks"
They are open enough for me, I had no loss of software. It's true I didn't need to disturb the two servers back home, for which I would have needed Terminal.
The smartest thing Microsoft did recently is cut special deals for XP for netbooks. I don't think this would be a category if they hadn't.
Of course it's great that Linux is there, otherwise Microsoft would probably screw with us! :-)
OK, I'll stop or you'll think that I'm related to Shuttleworth...
The only thing missing form your list in the Apple MacBook Air, I believe, is low price. So what would the price point have to be for the Air to be considered a Netbook?
A reasonable usecase would be: It makes it from Berkeley to Manhattan on one battery charge. My Asus actually did that last month, with juice to spare!
The Macbook Air being small and rugged is NOT subject to question. Based on the specs at the Apple website vs. your Amazon link, the MacBook Air is about 0.6 times smaller than the Eee. It's 57 cubic inches for the Air vs. 92 cubic inches for the Eee (go ahead and average the taper if you want to do the multiplication yourself to check my math).
If you want a narrower or shallower MacBook Air you will have to say so specifically, because in the "Smaller" and "Thinner" departments the Air beats the Eee by a country mile.
The Air's unibody enclosure, the first to be machined from a single piece of aluminum, has also proven to be very rugged: http://forums.macrumors.com/printthread.php?t=4...
and they did not add a glass trackpad to the newest redesign for a reason.
The MacBook Air also has 3 extra usb connections, you just can't get to them:
http://www.maushammer.com/systems/mba/USB.html
And if you want longer battery life you can simply underclock the Air with CoolBook. Users are reporting up to 5.5 hrs of battery life on the old MacBook Airs with an SSD using CoolBook:
http://forums.macrumors.com/printthread.php?t=4...
I'm assuming that CoolBook will work even better on the new MacBook with its 45nm processor and 17Watt TDP (the old processor was 65nm and 20W TDP)
More to the point (in an attempt to give Apple some real specs to actually build to), you simply want an underclocked MacBook Air with the hidden battery and usb ports exposed. That's it, correct?
Sounds pretty easy. And guess what? I want that exact same product, and I'm willing to pay for it, so I don't care if it is expensive.
ps. if you are going to say you want a significantly smaller screen just to save half a pound, well... I just can't back you up on that decision.
Looking forward to getting it back. My MacBook Pro may actually be the last Apple machine I buy. Maybe. There's about four apps I use which are Mac/Windows only. If I can find decent Linux equivalents, then I can exorcise both Bill and Steve from my life.
I don't think price is really a defining factor, either, although the low price is part of what's attractive about the EEE 901 or Aspire One (as opposed to the Macbook Air).
I find it hard to believe that Microsoft and Apple truly see such a difference in the potential of the netbook market. Likewise, I have to believe an Apple netbook isn't too far off.
I think this points to Apple launching when it believes that it can achieve sufficient differentiation between the MacBook and an Apple netbook. Given what many people use their Macbooks for I don't think that this will be easy. One radical way of achieving this might be launch an ARM based machine - very good power consumption but much less powerful than Intel based macs.
the whole point is them being cheap and convenient, i dont see how apple can roll one out for less than 50% more than the competition, but that might ust work
Glad you picked on that remark by steve j. First i want to say that I love apple and love steve j. I have a mac mini and like it a lot. I am constantly impressed by the amount thought that went into the design. That being said I also have a acer laptop with a 14 inch screen, vista and I like it a lot. The acer cost 479 and it is not junk. It is a capable computer. It can do many things the mac cannot.
There is a huge, obvious gap in Apple's product line between 3.5" and 13" screens. I could see at least two products - a larger iPod Touch. maybe with a 7" screen, and a netbpok with a 9-10" screen. With netbook prices climbing, Apple wouldn't have to hit the $500 price point, even $600-700 wouod be OK.
I keep waiting for a small (the Air is light, not small) Apple. When they announced the Air, I bought an iPod Touch. When they announced the new Macbooks, I bought an Asus 901 (Linux version). I carry it in preference to my Macbook unless I need to do something that it just can't do. It can't do games well, but I use the iPod Touch for portable gaming. I would love to have a small OS X machine, though.
I think you will see an Apple netbook when the price of 64GB solid state drives get cheap enough (it's almost there now). Jobs is obsessed with light weight and thin, and eliminating the hard disk would help.
Yes, a Netbook conference is inevitable as is a new trade association to push it.
When Netbooks have a similar always-on Internet connection to the Kindle, the game will *really* change.
For now, I have only used a 9 inch Netbook, but based on that I'd definitely opt for a 10 inch model.
Personally I wouldn't buy one because I couldn't see wanting to run anything but Linux and doing that on a Apple would just be an expensive waste.
Make it thinner than the other netbooks. Something along the lines of the ASUS S101, or even thinner.
If its going to have that big Apple trackpad, it seems unlikely it'll be an 8.9" model. A 10-incher is probably a better choice anyway if they're not going to do both, which they obviously won't. The good news is they can do the new trackpad with no buttons, saving on vertical space, which is critical on a netbook.
Push the limits a little--edge to edge keyboard a la the HP Mini 1000. Maybe even a very thin bezel around the screen to make the screen bigger while keeping the device the same size, i.e. "a 10-inch screen in a package the size of other 9-inch netbooks". Or an 11.1 inch screen in a 10-inch package.
Increase the screen resolution? No issues with Windows limits here, so go crazy. Like 1024x768 in a 10-inch display, or 1366x768 in an 11-inch. Or something. Just more than 1024x600. At least a little more vertical.
Multi-touch gesture support. Actually a lot of netbooks already have this.
A non-plastic case. Most likely the same machined aluminum as other MacBooks, but something... carbon fiber, something.
And of course it runs OSX, and comes with Apple support and software.
An SSD drive, necessary to allow it to hit the battery life and thinness targets. By waiting they can introduce the device with an SSD that has better performance than the others.
Price is flexible, but only because its Apple. Everybody else has to be under $400 at least for 3-cell versions. I think Apple could sell this for as much as $799 or so and still find buyers, and that's not even for the most expensive version...