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If you look at some of the things people are making with mircocontrollers, you can see that something Apple II level is quite achievable.

Getting under $12 is difficult for one-offs but if you make a huge number it is easier. For example one Parallax Propeller if $12.99 but if you buy 5000 it's $7.53 (leaving $4.47 if you are going for a $12 box). The AVR has less power than the prop but still way more than an Apple II. if you directly drive a video signal from the processor, it costs you quite a bit.

I've seen sources for sub-$5 keyboards, sticking a microcrontroller inside the keyboard gets you a computer quite easily. At that sort of level the bigger cost is just getting cables and power supply.

In a way, they should be using the zx-80 as a guide. A bare bones design like that with a decent micro ath the heart would be fairly usable.

True, and there is proof that it doesn't extend to OSes: Bill Gates. Mind you, the original dude behind DOS, Tim Paterson, has quite a beard.

Also doesn't work with FOSS OSes - RMS has GNU (and Hurd) and beardless Torvalds has Linux. :\

wireframe vector graphics in Spectrum BASIC anyone? Anyone? No, didn't think so...

Uh? Don't you remember the CIRCLE, PLOT and DRAW commands? Sure they were slow (I can remember watching as large circles were drawn clockwise to the screen), but they were there.

Examples are here: http://www.1000bit.net/support/manuali/zxspectrum/chapter_17.htm

I'm just happy he appears to be over that whole "cube" fetish. I was worried we were two years away from an iBook the size of a milk crate.

That was the Mac Portable.

try a chiclet. works for me.

Seriously, though, this is a company that has made it's living on how things look. When they tried to put out standard PC-looking beige boxes, their sales went into the toilet. If it isn't pretty, it can't be an Apple product.