So i am going buy a mobile phone with 3g, a data card/ usb dongle and have a sim in my laptop so i can pay 3 times for the same thing.. .sounds about right.

Aside from the low end of the market, who else needs a mobile sim inside their laptop, given that laptops are either changed fairly often (like mine) or they are not changed atall.

Either way the consumer is better off keeping vodafone et all away from our laptops!!!

Apple's successes have been on anticipating what the market wants, that other manufacturers are not offering.

The market is being flooded with 3G netbooks at the moment - if Apple brought one out too, it would just be a more expensive version of what is already on offer. I can't see them going head to head with things like the Eee PC; for Apple, it's small fish.

I think Apple are more likely to keep punting the iPhone; it's in their interest to convince consumers that the web on a small screen is acceptable, and they don't need a keyboard.

When have the Analysts ever been right about Apple products?

Here's the sequence: Some doofus predicts something stupid, everyone jumps on the bandwagon, Apple releases something decent, stock price tumbles.

Great stuff. I anticipate a complete lack of HSDPA MacBook, just like the lack of $800 MacBook and the oft-predicted tablet Mac. Smart money buys AAPL just after they announce the lack of Moon Ponies, but just before people realise they're being daft.

Right. Diversify your products into a confusing mess of models until you can't support your noodly appendages anymore and the entire company crashes down in a pile of steaming Vista... I mean, rubbish.

Or subsidize your rubbish to the point that it's no longer a premium item in the consumer's eye, and watch profits tank (RAZR, anybody?)

Does anybody take analysts seriously anymore?

Erm... isn't the iphone a small form factor internet device? Why would they need to make a netbook as well?

Spot on. All the "SIM in laptop" is a hassle. Apple doesn't do hassle. They just removed the frikkin FireWire from Macbooks so people do not get too confused about what constitutes a consumer laptop. If you want 3G, you just BT-link your lappy to your darn 3G phone (well, ok, not to your iPhone, because that would be a little confusing, you know) and you're done. Or you get a dedicated USB-dongle. Or a PC-Card. Zero need for "your SIM here" slots in Applebooks that just add to the price.

Also, I want to be an analyst. Pretty please. I can make random Apple-related predictions that at some future point will or will not come true any day of the week while I sit on my italian leather sofa in my briefs watching HD-porn, drinking Absolut and munching Cheetos. Give me that job. Seriously, contact me.

making a notebook that isn't a over-priced buggy, flawed, feature poor piece of shit?

Only the died in the wool Apple Kool Aid Drinker in the Fantasy Land of Denial will argue that Apple has had a LONG history that runs right to current models of SERIOUSLY FLAWED and BUGGY notebooks.

Way back to the PowerBook 1400/2400's, Katana's (fires), G3 Wallstreets - Lonbards - Pismos (fried LB's and broken hinges), G3/G4 iBooks (TOO LONG to list the bugs), G4 Tibooks / AlumiBook (flaking / pealing / chipping paint - Tibooks, LCD cables, LBs, easy denting, etc), MacBooks and Pros with - LCD, paint, noise, dead RAM slots, and on and on and on BUGS; Apple has proved that they sell CRAP.

Meanwhile the AppleTards falsify the magazine yearly polls of perfection by doing the Osama Obama tactic of "Vote Early and Vote Often". Apple has the biggest phony image of good products as Obama has of being a "centrist" and not a marxist.

Come on, I've written for and know the magazine people - they know it happens and so do you!.

Now lets see if the big libs at The Reg will censor this one too?

Oh dear, now you decide you hate Obama as well as Apple? Hmm, ok not relevant on a UK IT website.

Now Webster tell us all what you *do* like?

How about Rainbow, bunnies and McCain? That Kinda thing.

Theres an election thing going on somewhere? Woo!

Webster has spoken, all bow to Webster. What a first order Twat! Oh hang on, no, that can't be right, Twats are useful. Well at least ole Webbers is consistent. His own personal RDF is intact and functioning at 100% power.

I won't say "Never before have I read such utter crap" because that would be a lie. WF himself writes nothing other than, and so this is more of the same, to be expected stuff of nonsense.

Meanwhile, back on topic - a 3G Macbook Net (remember you read that name here peeps) would be a welcome addition to the line, if for no other reason to add completeness. Sure, it won't be for everyone, but then isn't that the case with anything and everything made? But if Apple believe there is a sufficient market they'll produce something like this inevitably.

USB sticks as a substitute? Only if you want your laptop looking like its got a stiffy sitting on your lap on the train. And what do you do when some fat bird squashes down next to you and snaps the USB stick clean off in the socket?

What can we expect next from the naysayers? Wire coathanger arials for our WiFi cards? Rubber duckies for our Bluetooth? Bollocks, give me it all in one box please.

Paris, cos she likes it in her one box also.

Thanks for taking time out from your pimple squeezing to provide us with another laugh. A delusional mind can be a very amusing thing :-D

*Yawn*