I remember watching a call with someone from Dell on CNBC during the last US recession (2001 recession and "jobless recovery" the following couple of years). He said that Dell was basically going to cut prices like crazy and actually lose some money in order to gain market share during the down time so they could capitalize on it when the economy swings back up again.
I wonder if Apple has something like this in store in terms of the "cheaper laptop" rumor. We're (sort of) already seeing this with the iPhones. ("Cheaper" but higher monthly rates which nullify the savings in the long run.)
I too am keenly interested in seeing how Apple works the premium product angle in response to the netbook segment. It's pretty obvious that they're going to have to do something, but exactly what doesn't seem obvious.
Sort of... Honestly I don't have a particularly charitable opinion of the iPhone: you can't touch type on it, which makes it effectively consume-only for email, and it's also consume-only for video (and recorded audio for that matter).
The iPhone is a shot across the bow for Blackberry and Windows Mobile, in my opinion. Always present, capable of doing text composition in a pinch, and a pacifier or Game Boy for (near-)adults.
I believe that the netbook segment represents the future of notebook computing, in that they're for task oriented ("I'm sitting down to write a chapter of a novel at the coffee shop", or "I'm checking up on my myspace and facebook accounts"; contrast with "I'm bored and have a second and would like to see if someone responded to me on facebook" in the mobile case) use. They're big enough to touch type on, and they generally can accept USB devices, so you can create content on them.
From my POV the Asus Eee PC stands for everything that the Apple notebooks do, it's just a little smaller, as sexy, and a lot cheaper. It's obviously not as gratuitously sexy as the MB Air, but at $2500 that's not even on the radar of the vast majority of the computing public.
Since OS X and the Bondi Blue iMacs Apple has had a really weak foe in the Windows hardware vendors. Sony had the engineering prowess but no cohesive design language, IBM had the design language, but it was ugly as sin (I say this as a ThinkPad fanboy). There was nothing that integrated well enough with Windows to make it feel monolithic or whole.
Asus has a game changer on their hands with the Eee in that they have full control of both the hardware and the UI, and the price point is substantially below typical laptop prices. This, combined with downward price pressure from conventional laptops means that a response from Apple is inevitable.
Apple could well ride it out for another two years, but like any other business they do better when they stake their claim (integrated iPod + iTunes + store, best served on an iMac) as opposed to reacting to a market trend (Newton, back in the PDA days, or the megahertz wars).
I wonder if Apple has something like this in store in terms of the "cheaper laptop" rumor. We're (sort of) already seeing this with the iPhones. ("Cheaper" but higher monthly rates which nullify the savings in the long run.)