After many statements to the opposite it seems that Steve Jobs may have wised up to the netbook craze.

According to a story over at Fudzilla the Patron Saint of Mac is hard at work on designs for an over $500 netbook (possibly with $100 worth of parts) to offer to the Mac fans out there.

Jobs is scheduled to return to work in June which could indicated a launch date for the new product if these rumors of a 10" NetMac are true.

Read more at Fudzilla.

According to the WSJ the netbook will be larger than the iPhone/iPod touches, yet smaller than any of its laptops. Apple has placed an order for 10-inch touchscreens from a Taiwan distributor for delivery in the third quarter so the idea is that these could be for Jobs' new netbooks. However if this was true then it would kill off another popular rumour that Apple is about to release a tablet. They could be the same thing of course. Apple's netbook would actually be a tablet, but we suspect that the tablet would be a lot more upmarket than a netbook.