Kevin Tofel over at jkOnTheRun wrote a good summary of why we’ll probably see an Apple netbook sometime this year. He listed three very good reasons why Apple will produce a netbook, and I agree for the most part – I differ on the issue of timing, but I’m not so sure that Apple has a choice on timing at this point. With one of the last holdouts, Sony, even saying “we have to participate“, Apple will be the only major player without a netbook.
Kevin’s reason:
1) Apple is way overdue on MacBook Pro refreshes and designs (important when taken in context with the other reasons). His reasoning – a lot of new technology has come out since the MacBook Pros were first released, and a major refresh would take advantage of those newer technologies.
2) The 13.3” MacBooks could possibly be absorbed into the MacBook Pro line, based on what HP just did (HP has released the 13.3″ Pavilion dv3500t which has an NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS graphcis chipset while the MacBook is relying on Intel’s integrated graphics chipsets, and the dv3500t is in the MacBook price range). If Apple adds better graphics to the MacBook, then it would be very close to the MacBook Pro (as Kevin points out, one of the key differences between the consumer and pro Apple lineups is the graphics chipsets).