Netbooks – an open letter to Steve Jobs

Dear Steve

I hope that this letter finds you well and that you will soon be back at the helm, doing great things. But I was wondering, is there any chance that you could see your way clear to making a massive u-turn and having a word in someone's ear?

I want to make something really clear from the start – I am a MacHead, an Apple FanBoi, an iFan, whatever you want to call me, that's me. To me, Apple has some fundamental values and ways of working that should be celebrated. I guess it's just the way I am.

However, if someone else does something good, I'll happily admit it and sing their praises too – Richmond, I'm talking about you here! Equally, if Apple do something bad, I'll kick off.

And so it is that I begin to kick off...

Steve, I can fully understand that entering the netbook (TM Psion – for now) market could have an effect on sales of Apple's more expensive high end products but here's the thing – this is a massively expanding market. The reasons are probably two-fold. Firstly, we are in the middle of a recession and people are looking at every option (especially the cheaper options) and, secondly, a lot of us travel and need to be connected 24/7 either for work or because we have developed information OCD.

An iTablet thing will not be the answer simply because of the keyboard. Being able to type quickly on an iPhone is a completely different thing to being able to type quickly on a real keyboard. It is a tactile thing. Your fingers dance across a real keyboard in a way that is not possible on screen where they dance across the screen with all the grace that I am imagining Woz will manage on the tv programme that he's doing (although I may be doing him a great disservice there!). Typing on screens is a great thing and its implementation on the iPhone is superb – but at the end of the day, nobody in their right minds would write massive articles on a iPhone.

We need a proper Apple netbook, Steve. We just do. If you really believe that it will slow the uptake of MacBooks and MacBook Pros, then you underestimate both how good those products are and how much you still need a full size computer when you are using a netbook. In my mind, if you had an Apple netbook, your natural choice after experiencing the joy and wonder of OSX would be a full size MacBook.

Sadly, it is because of Apple's steadfast refusal to enter the netbook market that I am now the owner of a white Samsung NC10. It is a lovely bit of kit. It is well built and if it wasn't for the stickers on it proclaiming that it is filled with Richmond's 'finest', you would think it was a diddy white MacBook. Steve, do you remember the diddy iBook that sold so well? Do you? My fondest memory of it was when I went to magical Reykjavik. It seemed that you could not pass a coffee shop without seeing a crowd of people, huddled around giant mugs and tiny iBooks. Everyone seemed to have one. Imagine how that could have evolved, Steve, if you had not made that frankly ridiculous decision to stop making it. What was that about?

Now, I'm not condoning this and I'd go so far as to say that it is wrong, but does you wonder why people in the hackint0sh community are going to such great lengths to get OSX on to netbooks? Much success has already been had with the MSI Wind and the Samsung NC10 as well as a few others. Some of them will be doing it for the challenge but lots are doing it because they want a machine running OSX. So do I, Steve. So do I. But I will not load it on to another machine because it is wrong – so you've pushed me to use XP.

So, there you go. I'm an Apple FanBoi who, after purging his entire house of Richmond related garbage, has just gone out and bought an XP machine. And, Steve, it's your fault.

Apple's position on this is complete madness. I know that you will not want to just produce another netbook and that you will want it to be special but we both know that, if anybody can, Apple can. Imagine the MacBook Nano Air (you can have that name on me). Fantastic.

Come on, Steve. Get well soon and sort out this netbook situation. Please

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

James