Today Apple reported a pretty impressive profit of $1.21 billion. MacRumors has the transcript of the conference call, which has a pretty decent Q&A session. What gives me the best hope is this quote:

Q: New thoughts on the Netbook at this point?

A: For us it’s about doing great products. When I’m looking at what’s sold in the Netbook market, I see cramped keyboards, junky hardware, very small screen, bad software. Not a consumer experience that we would put the Mac brand on. As it exists today, we’re not interested in nor would it be something customers would be interested in the long term. We are looking at the space. For those who want a small computer that does browsing/email, they might want an iPhone or iPod Touch. If we find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas. The product pipeline is fantastic for the Mac. We’ve historically exceeded the market rate of growth, especially given this economy is an extraordinary achievement. These netbook sales are propping up the unit numbers for the industry. We are very pleased with our performance.

I have been looking for a netbook, after I decided that I needed one this week. I want something that will sync up well with my MacBook, and has the same standby mode, allowing it to be ready to go 3 seconds after I open the screen. I am afraid it won’t work out, mostly because when I think netbook, I think sub $300 range. And we all know that product + Apple Tax will not be under $300. Maybe linux is the best way to go, I haven’t installed Gentoo on a netbook yet, and a nice metasploit machine would be handy!

(Via MacRumors.)