Mac Rumors has a great post up summarizing today’s call.

Also from today’s call:

This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps, in our opinion. While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.

Ben Brooks was right.

Steve Jobs, in today’s earnings call:

Our goal is to make the best devices in the world. Not to be the biggest—Nokia’s the biggest, and we admire them. But we don’t aspire to be like them. We want to be like us, and we want to make the best ones.

This sums up Apple so well, the company could print it on employees’ business cards.

Another record-breaking quarter for Apple.

Hilary Stout for The New York Times:

Along with fears about dropping and damage, however, many parents sharing iPhones with their young ones feel nagging guilt. They wonder whether it is indeed an educational tool, or a passive amusement like television. The American Academy of Pediatrics has long advised parents not to let their children watch any TV until they are past their second birthday.

Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, a pediatrician who is a member of the academy’s council of communications and media, said the group is continually reassessing its guidelines to address new forms of “screen time.”

We always try to throw in the latest technology, but the cellphone industry is becoming so complex that we always come back to the table and wonder should we have a specific guideline for cellphones,” she said. But, she added, “At the moment, we seem to feel it’s the same as TV.”

I know our two-year old just about hurtles himself across the room if he sees me with my iPad. We try to be deliberate about limiting his time with technology but the simple fact is that it is a hard thing to do. We try to balance this by keeping very few electronic toys out for him to play with it. Thankfully, most days he’d rather push his toy trains around or build with blocks than stare at the iMac.

Without a doubt, this is one of the trickiest thing about parenting in the 21st century. I hope we all get it right, for our kids’ sakes.

All indications are that Apple will preview the next version of Mac OS X on Wednesday. In keeping with the tradition of Apple-centric blogs, I’ve got some predictions about what the company has up its sleeve.

The iPadification of Apps

If the new MobileMe web apps are any indication, Mail, iCal and other OS X applications are going to get a serious visual overhaul to bring them more inline with the iPad’s apps, which isn’t a bad thing. iCal is stale, and Address Book in 10.6 looks like Address Book in 10.2.

However, I really hate when UI developers add things like leather and woodgrain to make apps look “real.” Apple has dabbled with this on the iPad, and I really don’t want it on the Mac. Please Apple, keep the madness at bay.

UI Refinements

Historically, Apple has used iTunes to quietly introduce new UI elements. iTunes 10 shipped with a muted appearance — gentle colors, sunken graphics and the horrifying vertical window controls. I hope there’s more of the first two on the way.

FaceTime

This really is a no-brainer. While the Mac has done video chat for years, adding the ability to video chat with someone on an iPhone or iPod touch will add some sparkle to a feature most people probably rarely use.

Finder

All I want out of Finder is tabs. And better network drive support. And tabs. And WebDAV that doesn’t blow up anytime I try to use it. And tabs.

Performance

It’s 2010, and ridiculous that OS X doesn’t include SSD TRIM support.

I’m sure 10.7 will boot faster than 10.6, wring more power out of modern GPUs and run smoother. For the most part, new Mac OS X versions run faster than the previous version, which is an impressive feat.

While Snow Leopard tightened up a lot of things under the hood, there is still work to be done. Hopefully Lion will be the next step to a leaner, more compliant OS.

I’d imagine the minimum requirements for 10.7 will be an Intel-based Mac and 1.5GB of RAM — up from Snow Leopard’s required 1GB RAM.

iOS Tie-ins

I don’t think Apple is going to start merging Mac OS X and iOS at this point. While I’m sure the two shall meet, I don’t think this is the time.

How Loud Will Lion Roar?

Snow Leopard, while a solid OS, is just a refined Leopard. It’s almost certain Lion will be a bigger revision. My guess is that it will be as big of a jump as 10.5 was from 10.4. While Tiger was a great OS, Leopard make it look dated immediately. I think we’re in for the same experience this time around.

Editor’s Note: Be sure to see my thoughts on the rumored 11.6" MacBook Air, which may also be introduced this week.

Apple Insider’s Kasper Jade:

Apple next Wednesday will unveil its latest bid to cater to consumers in the market for a true sub-notebook with the introduction of a smaller, 11.6-inch MacBook Air redesigned from the ground up, AppleInsider has been able to confirm from several independent sources.

The first models, which are certain take the form of an 11.6-inch notebook, have been in rolling off Apple’s Taiwanese manufacturing lines for at least a week now, placing their availability on or shortly after their introduction next Wednesday at the company’s “Back to the Mac” special event, according to person with a proven track record of pinpoint accuracy.

Back in January when Apple announced the iPad, Steve Jobs said this about netbooks:

Everybody uses a laptop and a smartphone.

And a question has arisen lately: is there room for a third category of device in the middle? Something that’s between a laptop and a smartphone. And of course we’ve pondered this question for years as well. The bar’s pretty high. In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks.

Better than a laptop. Better than a smartphone.

Now, some people have thought…that’s a netbook. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything. They’re slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky old PC software. So, they’re not better than a laptop at anything. They’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops. We don’t think they’re a new category of device.

Let’s look at the 11.6-inch MacBook Air rumor through the lens of these comments.[1. Of course, Steve Jobs has a funny history of doing the opposite of what he said he would do. Remember the video iPod thing?]

The Display

An 11.6 inch display would make this rumored notebook one of the smallest notebooks the company has ever shipped.[2. The original PowerBook Duo had a 9.1“ screen, but the later PowerBook Duo 270c had a 8.4” color display. Crazy.] This change to the Air would bring it close in line with the 12-inch PowerBook line.

When talking about a display this size, it’s all about pixel density. Shrinking the current 13.3“ panel into an 11.6” panel would make for a fairly dense display, and could make things too small for most people’s comfort. However, decreasing the density too much could make for a ton of scrolling — something that is common on most netbooks.

I know when I ran OS X on a HP Mini 1000 and later a Dell Mini 9, this was a huge annoyance. Some programs like System Preferences were too tall, leaving me guessing as to what I was doing blindly with the keyboard.

A smaller screen, while tricky, doesn’t have to be a curse. One of my main complaints about the current MacBook Air is that it is built around 13.3" screen. I wrote this back in October 2008:

It’s really thin, but has the same footprint as the MacBook.

An Air built with a smaller display means the entire machine would take less space up on a desk. Which would be a good thing. The iPad smokes the Air in terms of portability — this could be the Mac’s chance to catch up.

The Software

Software has been an issue in the netbook world since the very first Eee PC. Back in the day, they mostly shipped with XP, which didn’t adapt well to low-powered machines with small screens. Ubuntu is a great netbook OS, but very few people like to use Linux. Windows 7 runs better on netbooks than XP, but still feels weirdly cramped on small displays.

Mac OS X, on the other hand, scales pretty well. It feels good on 13-inch MacBooks, 27-inch iMacs and everything in between. Dropping down another inch and half isn’t a big deal.

A smaller MacBook Air could most (if not all) the software full-sized Macs run. Even if the screen size was an issue for some apps, I’d imagine it’d be the pro apps, which would be pretty painful to run on Air, anyways.

This is pretty much a non-issue when it comes to the rumored 11.6" Air.

The Keyboard

When Apple announced the MacBook Air, Jobs said it was better than other ultra-portable machines because its 13" frame housed a full-sized keyboard, just like larger notebooks. This of course was a jab at netbooks, which usually ship with shruken keyboard.

While it is true that most netbook keyboards are terrible,[3. The HP Mini 1000 has an excellent keyboard, however.] the keyboard thing is also a non-issue here.

The keyboard Apple uses on all of it’s MacBook Pros is the same width — 10.75“ wide. That means it could fit into a smaller frame without too much trouble. 11.6” seems just about right.

In Conclusion

It sure seems like this rumor has picked up steam over the last few days. I think there is probably some merit behind it. While I don’t think this machine will run iOS as some people do, I do think that will be a far better option to those who want the portability of an iPad with the flexibility and power of OS X. If Apple does indeed have such a machine ready to go.