I don't know what your previous (1) has to do with this (1) ;) But I agree. I think elblanco agrees with you also, only he/she managed to give a reason. I've re

I don't know what your previous (1) has to do with this (1) ;) But I agree. I think elblanco agrees with you also, only he/she managed to give a reason. I've reread this thread a few times and still can't figure out why you two seem to be disagreeing over agreeing on this. (2) Apple closed the loop on this when they killed off their clone market. Done right, hardware sales can bring in more money than pure software sales. Allow me to be contrary on one point. "and there is nothing in law or standard business principle that allows us to dictate to Apple how they package their products". Supply and demand would seem to dictate that you should supply what the consumers demand. Apple's done an effective job at controlling/predicting/creating what their consumers demand (for example, I didn't even think about a mult-touch mouse before, now I'm drooling in anticipation of getting one). But they seem to have gone a bit off-kilter here w/r to ultra-small notebooks. The 13" Macbook is huge compared to the 10" netbooks I see at Costco. If it weren't for their ridiculous battery life, I could see trading in my Macbook for a netbook since that's a hugely compelling feature for me.