It kinda fits the gap for me. In terms of functionality, it's a netbook pretty much. The only difference is it's got a smaller screen, and a touchscreen instead of keyboard.
Sure, it takes a little more fiddling, but I can easily ssh to servers, and fix things from my iphone, as well as any webapp/website things I need to do.
The only difference is it's got a smaller screen, and a touchscreen instead of keyboard.
Which are huge differences. Sure, I've had an ssh client on my phone for about six years now (Sidekick II first, and now a G1), but I can't do work on my phone, even though it has a reasonable keyboard for such a small device. But, my Mini 9 is actually a pretty reasonable device for most of the work I do, up to and including development (though its obvious sweet spot is email and forums and such, which I do a lot of since support is a huge part of my business; and using the phone would be way too slow). I wouldn't consider it a replacement for the big 15" lappy or my desktop machine for serious development or graphics work or whatever, but when I am travelling light, it's exactly the right size and form-factor.
What axod was suggesting was that the people who need a laptop that small might be well off with what the iPhone's capable of. Certainly my iPod touch is what I use when I'm on the move, and it's capable of everything up to responding to people on Hacker News.
Capable but not pleasant. Using my netbook is like using a slightly-slower version of my desktop machine. No compromises. (I carry around my HHKB with it, so the input experience is the same.)
(Fortunately, Linux doesn't have this problem. It supports Atom out of the box.)