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.)

And so it begins. We all know this would happen as Apple started getting a little bit more market share. ZDNet has an article going back to the malware found in iWork ’09. Showing the first DDOS attack tracing back to it.

iBotnet – Researchers Find Signs Of Zombie Macs : via Packet Storm

USB to Serial cable

So after starting to buy and setup all this Cisco gear, then screwing up and forgetting to set the telnet password, and dragging it across the room to plug it back into the serial port, i decided i needed this.  A stupid USB to DB9 adapter for my Mac.  Yes, i know i could make a long crossover out of ethernet cable, but that isn’t as much fun.  And in typical fashion, drivers for USB to DB9 are not great.  So thankfully i found an article by NERD Logger. Pointing out the easy way to just use the source forge driver and screen to use the adapter in shell.