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Of course, when you are in the process of announcing a 10 BILLION DOLLAR quarter, the largest in company history, you can be forgiven for doing a little strutting.

In Apple’s earning’s call, COO Tim Cook took some time out from dignified crowing to shoot down a couple long standing rumors (no nothing about Steve Job’s health, thank God) and do some interesting posturing.

First the rumors…the ballyhooed iPhone Nano was buried once and for all, with Cook making clear that Apple will never go the WinMo route of one OS on many different devices. Stating that it is better for developers, he said that Apple will stick with a single device and keep it’s legendarily closed ecosystem closed for the foreseeable future…save of course for all the officially derided but sometimes tacitly condoned hackintoshs out there. Specifically he said…

Software is the key ingredient, and we believe that we are years ahead of our competitors. Having different screen sizes, different input methods, and different hardware makes things difficult for developers.

No word on how arbitrary and arcane application approval processes DON’T make things hard on developers, but hey, at least they approved the iFart.

Then, following the official Doctrine of Steve, Scientist he shot down the somewhat pie in the sky dreams of a Mac Netbook in the near future, saying…

Right now, from our point of view, the products in there are principally based on hardware that’s much less powerful than we think customers want, software technology that is not good, cramped keyboards, small displays. Et cetera. We don’t think that people are going to be pleased with those type of products. But we’ll see…

How this jives for the enormous sales and popularity of Netbooks I am not sure, since it is clear that such views aren’t held by a massive slice of the market. Of course, he may be describing the reactions of just the Apple faithful, which may be who he means when he says “People”. Personally, I think that Apple is still making a mistake about this. Netbooks are being accepted more and more as a “second or third computer” in support of a larger more powerful main machine. I doubt I would ever consider buying an Apple as my main computer, but a lower cost, limited functionality Mac NetBook? I would absolutely pick one up just to play with it. As for the cannibalizing problem which is a legitimate concern for a luxury product company like Apple, simply spike the OS and make it clearly less capable then the full OS on a proper MacBook. Limit functionality to what suits the size and niche and see what happens. An entry level Mac may just sell the OS to doubters and pennypinchers and actually increase the sales of their more expensive machines.

And what about the posturing? Cook took a few shots at those companies he says may be poaching on the iPhone patents, saying they will absolutely be met in court. All pundits agree he means Palm, specifically the multitouch screen on the Palm Pre. I find this interesting as this is the first iPhone rival Apple has bothered to even notice, let alone threaten. Sounds like Palm is definitely onto something here. It is going to be an interesting few months in the smartphone world.

Zealot (473 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).