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Please no! Laptop makers have enough trouble keeping traditional batteries from catching fire.

[I can picture it now]

FTC to Michael Dell: "You shipped 20,000 laptops with defective fusion generators."
Michael Dell: "Shite! Call the lawyers!"

Please no! Laptop makers have enough trouble keeping traditional batteries from catching fire.

[I can picture it now]

FTC to Michael Dell: "You shipped 20,000 laptops with defective fusion generators."
Michael Dell: "Shite! Call the lawyers!"

Please no! Laptop makers have enough trouble keeping traditional batteries from catching fire.

[I can picture it now]

FTC to Michael Dell: "You shipped 20,000 laptops with defective fusion generators."
Michael Dell: "Shite! Call the lawyers!"

have a looksee at Insulting Partners Is Fun on AtAT. that is probably the best written artical on the subject i could find ;)

Apple has not sued As the Apple Turns, and their site is much more Mac-like than this. In fact, a simple search will reveal dozens of Mac news sites using some variation of the "Aqua' appearance. Apple does not need to sue everyone who makes shiny objects with rounded edges in order to protect their trademark.

Part of being an Apple zealot is going into stores and fixing the Macs up. I don't get why Apple can run such terrific retail stores themselves, but doesn't try to persuade CompUSA and Sears employees that, no, iMacs shouldn't have smoke coming out of them.

As the Apple Turns noted yesterday that yesterday's announcement was pulled until today, presumably to match nVIDIA's own announcement.

For what it's worth, Certron's quoting As the Apple Turns, a consistently hilarious Apple news site that has, in recent months, become surprisingly reliable as a rumor site as well. Their original story is worth a look here.

There were still copycats after the fiasco was over. A year or to ago I was channel flipping and saw another imac look-alike on the Home Shopping Network. Looked exactly like an imac, but the price was attrocious. I forget what it was exactly, but it was around $1599 or $1799. They opened it up on stage and it was obvious why. It was a standard motherboard with a flatpanel display in it. I doubt that these took a serious bite out of potential imac sales.

I don't think Apple will sue OEone. It doesn't use translucent polycarbonate plastics and right now no one really cares about the old imacs. It wouldn't be Apple's best interest to sue someone over an old design. It would probably cost more to sue than the sales they would lose, and seeing a press release saying "Apple sues OEone for copying old imac design" would distract from the excitement the flatpanel imac is trying to generate.

Which brings up the question, who's going to try to copy the flatpanel imac, and what will it look like? The design is so "far out" and "out of this world" and other '80s phrases that it would be a challenge to get a copycat.

Isn't there a single Mac user in the USPTO? At least in the Mac community, it is well knows that Steve Jobs invented the RDF. See http://www.appleturns.com/scene/?id=96

As the Apple Turns has some pretty compelling arguments on why this is probably a hoax (albeit a very well done one).

The thing they reminded me of is that SpyMac also released photos of the "iWalk" the day before the iPod was announced - and today's photos are completely different. The whole analysis is good - it's todays first scene at As the Apple Turns - They also did a frame by frame analysis of the Spymac video footage and found inconsistencies.

Comparing these general stats against the stats against a technologically biased site is absolutely absurd.
Yes, of course it is. But there are a number of non-technologically-biased sites that nonetheless attract a far different cross-section of users.

Imagine doing a study of browsers hitting Yahoo, and then doing a study of visitors to Google - Google will show a far higher percentage of Linux users (conjecture, mod me down), simply because it's more popular to the sort of person who's likely to use Linux.

What LowEndMac's rebuttal is trying to point out is that because different websites attract different groups in much the same way that different operating systems attract different groups, there will inevitably be some degree of statistical clustering present. Nobody is proposing that we use Slashdot or a Mac-centric site to determine marketshare among desktop OSen - for the simple reason that trying to determine marketshare based on visits to a website is logically flawed.

--
I am Ghorak Zo, hear me roar.

Re TV musicals: I get all the Buffy exposure I can handle from AtAT and don't bother watching, myself. And Salon's TV critic (last I saw which admittedly was over a year ago) is obsessed with the show in a way that's almost creepy. But the show that has done the most recently with musical numbers and other ideas is Drew Carey. I'm not a huge fan of that either but the musical gimmicks tend to be really good, as are the other stunts. For instance, it's the only TV show to do something interesting with a live broadcast (having improv done during it) instead of it just being an ego thing for the cast.

Of all the post-Seinfeld comics to drop their act directly into a sitcom, he's the only one to do anything interesting and novel.

Sounds crazy, but it's Apple so nothing is ever out of the question.

First, there's the face-value geopolitical take on things. Provided you can get past the standard "if we let them interrupt business as usual, then the terrorists win" rhetoric, you shouldn't be surprised if Steve is primarily concerned for the safety of the conferencegoers-- not to mention his own skin. Granted, last week's attack was on U.S. soil, not in Paris, but in light of brewing military retaliation, we wouldn't be a bit surprised if our government has told Apple that Paris might not be the safest place for a large and highly-visible American corporation to be next week. If the U.S. decides to flex its military muscles and innocent people therefore turn into "collateral damage," then a U.S. corporation abroad might suddenly find itself dangerously unpopular. Heck, maybe the French government even suggested that the show be cancelled, fearing trouble following a U.S. company onto foreign soil. Who knows? This is all just speculation, and all we can say for certain is that if Apple didn't have safety concerns, it would need to lay of the Reality Distortion just a little.

Then there's the logistical interpretation. Face it: air travel is a big stinking mess right now, and it's not likely to be much better next week. Steve may have his own jet, but we're guessing it won't seat a full conference staff, and traveling by commercial airline next week will be sketchy at best. And besides moving people, what about moving freight? From last Tuesday until this morning, your best bet for getting things from Point A to Point B was a wormhole in the space-time continuum or by strapping them to your back and walking. Even now, getting them there by air is still a little iffy-- better than last week, and better still next week, but iffy nonetheless. It's entirely likely that Apple just wanted to avoid the higgledy-piggledy altogether.

Um -- but there is nothing holding them closed, which is largely the point...

Um -- have you, um, ever, uh, used a clam shell iBook, Dude?

the clam shell stays closed better then latched WallStreet (AND new PowerBook G4) withought any latch!

but dude! -- it doesn't have a latch! uh, how does it stay closed? you might ask

the thing is spring loaded! if you close it to about 75% closed it'll snap shut and stay shut unless you pry it open past 25% open!

for a good laugh about this feature of the clamshell iBook chekc out As The Apple Turns:

scene 2235: Good 'Books Gone Bad
scene 2236: Night Of The iBooks

Um -- but there is nothing holding them closed, which is largely the point...

Um -- have you, um, ever, uh, used a clam shell iBook, Dude?

the clam shell stays closed better then latched WallStreet (AND new PowerBook G4) withought any latch!

but dude! -- it doesn't have a latch! uh, how does it stay closed? you might ask

the thing is spring loaded! if you close it to about 75% closed it'll snap shut and stay shut unless you pry it open past 25% open!

for a good laugh about this feature of the clamshell iBook chekc out As The Apple Turns:

scene 2235: Good 'Books Gone Bad
scene 2236: Night Of The iBooks

Um -- but there is nothing holding them closed, which is largely the point...

Um -- have you, um, ever, uh, used a clam shell iBook, Dude?

the clam shell stays closed better then latched WallStreet (AND new PowerBook G4) withought any latch!

but dude! -- it doesn't have a latch! uh, how does it stay closed? you might ask

the thing is spring loaded! if you close it to about 75% closed it'll snap shut and stay shut unless you pry it open past 25% open!

for a good laugh about this feature of the clamshell iBook chekc out As The Apple Turns:

scene 2235: Good 'Books Gone Bad
scene 2236: Night Of The iBooks

Oh, now this sounds like a hoot and a half... Faithful viewer Nina Tovish pointed out an interesting announcement in today's San Jose Mercury News: apparently, SiliconValley.com (the paper's "online partner") is planning to host a little virtual get-together next week-- an "online round table discussion," as they call it. The topic of this little shindig? "The present and future of Apple Computer." Sounds pleasant, right?

But wait just an Apple-bashing minute, here-- check out the roster of participants they've managed to scrape together for the big event: "former Apple Chief Executive Gil Amelio, industry analyst Tim Bajarin, Mercury News reporter Jon Fortt, former Apple product division president Jean-Louis Gassée and former Macintosh product manager Jef Raskin." That doesn't sound like a particularly well-balanced panel to us. If anything, it sounds like the premise for a bad TV sitcom called "Rotten To The Core." "Join us next week for laughs aplenty when Gil pours sugar in the fuel tank of Steve Jobs's jet while Jean-Louis tries to teach Jef how to say 'Mac OS X sucks rocks' in French and hilarity ensues. Don't miss it!"

Yes, we can't wait to hear the new and creative ways in which this panel tears Apple a new orifice. Presumably Gil's going to be rattling off the same old "they'd be doing fine if they'd have stuck to the Master Plan I gave them" routine. Gassée, well, he's not exactly an impartial observer, either; sure, he used to work for Apple, but he left and started up Be, whose operating system Apple almost bought as the basis for what is now known as Mac OS X. Instead, Apple went with Steve's NeXT operating system, and Be is currently floundering badly. We expect thinly-veiled bitterness. Next up: Jon Fortt, who recently wrote an article called "Mac platform good to a point" that basically said Windows XP is going to kick Mac OS X's butt because it's got really great "built-in instant messaging capabilities." Oooooo. And Jef Raskin, widely regarded as the Father of the Macintosh? Well, he went on record last March saying that Mac OS X isn't worth the upgrade, because it's just "another face-lift" with "an awful lot of minuses." We'll see if the imminent 10.1 version has changed his mind at all.

So we've got four panelists with an axe to grind about Apple, or at least about Mac OS X (and this is about the "future of Apple," remember). As for Tim Bajarin, well, we've certainly got nothing against him-- he was the one who recently wrote that once the PC price war is over, the two main contenders left in the consumer market are likely to be Sony and Apple. But when you stick five people in a room and the most Apple-positive one turns out to be the "industry analyst," clearly you're looking at the "online round table discussion" equivalent of a mob hit. If you'd care to tune in for the carnage, reportedly "the discussion will begin Monday at 9 a.m. and end at noon Aug. 16." Whoa, seventy-five consecutive hours of probably Apple-bashing with only a lone industry analyst to defend (maybe) Apple's honor? What could possibly be more entertaining?

Oh, now this sounds like a hoot and a half... Faithful viewer Nina Tovish pointed out an interesting announcement in today's San Jose Mercury News: apparently, SiliconValley.com (the paper's "online partner") is planning to host a little virtual get-together next week-- an "online round table discussion," as they call it. The topic of this little shindig? "The present and future of Apple Computer." Sounds pleasant, right?

But wait just an Apple-bashing minute, here-- check out the roster of participants they've managed to scrape together for the big event: "former Apple Chief Executive Gil Amelio, industry analyst Tim Bajarin, Mercury News reporter Jon Fortt, former Apple product division president Jean-Louis Gassée and former Macintosh product manager Jef Raskin." That doesn't sound like a particularly well-balanced panel to us. If anything, it sounds like the premise for a bad TV sitcom called "Rotten To The Core." "Join us next week for laughs aplenty when Gil pours sugar in the fuel tank of Steve Jobs's jet while Jean-Louis tries to teach Jef how to say 'Mac OS X sucks rocks' in French and hilarity ensues. Don't miss it!"

Yes, we can't wait to hear the new and creative ways in which this panel tears Apple a new orifice. Presumably Gil's going to be rattling off the same old "they'd be doing fine if they'd have stuck to the Master Plan I gave them" routine. Gassée, well, he's not exactly an impartial observer, either; sure, he used to work for Apple, but he left and started up Be, whose operating system Apple almost bought as the basis for what is now known as Mac OS X. Instead, Apple went with Steve's NeXT operating system, and Be is currently floundering badly. We expect thinly-veiled bitterness. Next up: Jon Fortt, who recently wrote an article called "Mac platform good to a point" that basically said Windows XP is going to kick Mac OS X's butt because it's got really great "built-in instant messaging capabilities." Oooooo. And Jef Raskin, widely regarded as the Father of the Macintosh? Well, he went on record last March saying that Mac OS X isn't worth the upgrade, because it's just "another face-lift" with "an awful lot of minuses." We'll see if the imminent 10.1 version has changed his mind at all.

So we've got four panelists with an axe to grind about Apple, or at least about Mac OS X (and this is about the "future of Apple," remember). As for Tim Bajarin, well, we've certainly got nothing against him-- he was the one who recently wrote that once the PC price war is over, the two main contenders left in the consumer market are likely to be Sony and Apple. But when you stick five people in a room and the most Apple-positive one turns out to be the "industry analyst," clearly you're looking at the "online round table discussion" equivalent of a mob hit. If you'd care to tune in for the carnage, reportedly "the discussion will begin Monday at 9 a.m. and end at noon Aug. 16." Whoa, seventy-five consecutive hours of probably Apple-bashing with only a lone industry analyst to defend (maybe) Apple's honor? What could possibly be more entertaining?

..and Jobs can test the patience of tech support too.

If we are all lucky, maybe ATI will let out some tantalizing details before they are supposed to, Like they did to Apple this summer .

Its true, Apple has the highest-quality LCDs out there. Theyre bright, crisp, and a pleasure to look at. It sounded in your post that you were knocking them, or at least that you were reluctant, simply because they were Apple.

Alien user-interface designs, insane business practices and an extra helping of hubris aside, Apple has always made superior hardware, bar none. (Okay, so there was that exploding Powerbook back in 1997 but hey, we ALL make a mistake from time to time).

Truth is, Apple is the first place I'd look for a display because I know it will last, and if it does't, that they will back it up. (And if it DOES break, maybe you'll get a phone call from Steve-O himself!)

You can use the new 15" and 22" displays on any graphics card with a DVI-out connector with a DVI-ADC adapter, availible now for about $15.

The last generation, which you should still have no trouble getting your hands on refurbished or even new, use DVI.

And if you wait another month or two, it is HIGHLY rumored Apple finally has a 17" or 18" display in the pipeline to fill the gaping chasm in their product line between 15-22". It will have a new case design and should be a beauty. Best of all it should be priced compeditively, about $1500.

--Xel
========

Its true, Apple has the highest-quality LCDs out there. Theyre bright, crisp, and a pleasure to look at. It sounded in your post that you were knocking them, or at least that you were reluctant, simply because they were Apple.

Alien user-interface designs, insane business practices and an extra helping of hubris aside, Apple has always made superior hardware, bar none. (Okay, so there was that exploding Powerbook back in 1997 but hey, we ALL make a mistake from time to time).

Truth is, Apple is the first place I'd look for a display because I know it will last, and if it does't, that they will back it up. (And if it DOES break, maybe you'll get a phone call from Steve-O himself!)

You can use the new 15" and 22" displays on any graphics card with a DVI-out connector with a DVI-ADC adapter, availible now for about $15.

The last generation, which you should still have no trouble getting your hands on refurbished or even new, use DVI.

And if you wait another month or two, it is HIGHLY rumored Apple finally has a 17" or 18" display in the pipeline to fill the gaping chasm in their product line between 15-22". It will have a new case design and should be a beauty. Best of all it should be priced compeditively, about $1500.

--Xel
========

Apple fans will remember when the rumor sites were claiming that the forthcoming portable (which turned out to be the iBook) was going to be powered by a hand crank. See this old As The Apple Turns article.

It's not that ludicrous -- the wind-up generator technology is better than you might think, PowerPC's are very efficient, particularly G3s, and Apple did used to make the eMate, which might have been able to get away with hand-power with its flash memory and terrific battery life. Still, it was pretty ludicrous.

---------

"Maybe it's just us, but that sounds like a deliriously naïve oversimplification to us-- and we love oversimplifications. The fact that Linux appeared in a market vacuum of hardcore geeks just waiting for a product that satisfied their noblest nerdy instincts hardly signals a death knell for a platform that holds elegance, attention to detail, and ease of use above all other concerns. Whether or not you consider it a good thing, we strongly suspect that non-geeks will outnumber the geeks for many more years to come-- and meanwhile, Mac OS X is barreling down on the future like a freight train. Or at least like a freight train moving really slowly. It's still going to arrive before the geek shall inherit the earth, though.

Hey, we have nothing against Linux. We like Linux. Some of our best friends use Linux. But we've used Linux, too, not all that long ago, and frankly, it's still got a ways to go before our parents are going to feel comfortable running out and buying a consumer computer running Red Hat. We don't relish the idea of explaining the syntax of chmod and major and minor device numbers in device files to an audience that, on the whole, can't even figure out how to get their VCRs to stop blinking '12:00' without covering the display readout with electrical tape. The average shmoe is still going to reach for Windows; the average shmoe who does his homework is going to reach for a Mac. As for Linux, call us when our moms can use it."

I personally hadn't heard of The Mac Junkie until the MOSR cube fiasco. I'm a bit of a huge Apple fan (not to the point of a zealot, I think, but definitely a fanatic). I check out Apple Insider and MacOS Rumors daily, and, since they don't cover everything, As the Apple Turns for a bit of variety.

The Mac Junkie just might be trolling. First, the email to Ryan Meader. Okay, Meader runs a rumor site. Maybe he'll post the rumors he hears? So he does. And then TMJ calls Meader a fraud. The hits go up. The readership increases. CHING CHING!

Now, several other rumor sites jump into the cube fray, and all recieve Apple attention. Apple Insider (who has posted pictures/drawings of new Apple products several days in advance before) posts some pictures, which will no doubt get a lot of hits. Mac Junkie calls Apple Insider frauds. The hits go up. The readership increases. CHING CHING!

That's just my theory, nothing else.

-tsunake