Blah, blah blah Apple blah blah, Microsoft blah Apple blah blah blah. Blah 90's blah blah blah, blah, blah Apple blah Microsoft blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah 'bad dog Fido' blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah!

Blah?

Blah blah AppleTV blah XBox blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah OSX blah blah fart blah blah blah blah blah money blah blah blah.

... in my books, anyway.

Apple laptops appear even more over-priced once you discover where they are made. Three Chinese manufacturers -- Quanta, Hon Hai, and Conpal.

These three factories source almost all components and do full assembly not just for Apple, but for Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Compaq HP, Sony and Toshiba.

Apart from the case design and perhaps a custom ASIC or two, the only difference between an Apple and the other six brands is the badge.

Scientific heavyweight call Danish phone study "a fake" ...

"This is not science, this is science fiction!" -- Dr Iriz Atzmon, epidemiological researcher, Tel Aviv.

"[The Danish study] is bad science, and there is more than a hint of fabrication of results evident." -- official statement from Britain's Royal Society.

"It doesn't take much effort to find out this study was ultimately funded by the two biggest cellular companies in Denmark, Teledenmark and Sonophone. To quote Shapespeare, 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.' A more blatant example of corporate spin doctoring I have not seen." -- Dr Olle Johansson, associate professor, Karolinska Institute

"This report is simply ridiculous. Not only is the report itself questionable, the statistical data has holes in it a mile wide, and the closing remarks are specious. Everything about this report flies in the face of scientific and medical knowledge. What is most disturbing is that the AAP press release mis-quotes the study completely." -- Dr. Jan Walleczek, Ph.D, Radiation Oncology Laboratory, Stanford University Medical School

"Am I calling out some very prestigious groups and openly showing their conspicuous unethical behavior, questionable integrity and disregard for public health? You bet I am. The Danish Cancer Registry, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society, all have ties to the telecommunications industry that compromise their ability to provide meaningful information on this important public health issue. As sad as it is, this is a 'follow the money' exercise that is yet another example of public health being compromised by industry subterfuge." -- Dr. George L. Carlo, Science and Public Policy Institute chairman, former director of the Wireless Technology Research institute, and Nobel Prize nominee.

"Arguments that weak (low intensity) EMF cannot affect biological systems do not represent the current spectrum of scientific opinion." -- Benevento Resolution, International Commission for Electromagnetic Safety.

"The World Health Organisation wishes to advise that microwave-band communication devices can cause depression and ill health, including cancer and genetic damage, in an estimated three percent of the world's population." -- Dr Anders Nordström, Acting Director-General, World Health Organisation, November 2006 (closing statement given when announcing the WHO is to press charges of unethical conduct against Dr Brian Repacholi, ex-head of the WHO's EM Taskforce)

Tablet Macs, and hacks to make them, are not new. Apple have often dabbled in the design of such, and in 1996 worked with Assistive Technologies to repackage the PowerBook 3400 into a tablet design called the "FreeStyle", intended for use for the disabled. See http://www.moto.com/art/portfolio/004_assist_freestyle.jpg

I truly believe that tablet-style computers are the future, and cannot wait for Apple to release their own official one.

Firstly, do not think of this as a replacement for your current Windows or Mac laptops. The LG team chose the name 'ebook' well, because with today's current technology -- coupled with the fact that OLED is incredibly slow (the 3 updates per second is correct) -- it will not be possible to put anything resembling today's computing power into that design.

Think of it as a very clever electronic book. Both upper and lower panels are full-plate OLED displays, with one (or possibly both) sides being touch sensitive. The fuel cell puts out very little power, so there wouldn't be a modern CPU, or a hard drive, or much in the way of RAM either. MRAM or Flash memory for storage.

Sorry, but the fuel cell's meagre power output and the OLED display's lethargic refresh rate means you can forget games, forget movies, forget Windows/OSX. It would be fast enough for Word or textual imput, and that's about it.

Still, as a super-PDA that I could download a big library of full books to (complete with photos, colour illustrations and even simple animations), it would rock profoundly my boat. The idea of two facing 'pages' in that form factor, coupled with the touch interface, is the big win.

This is the closest we've come yet to Knowledge Navigator.

Possibly where this first broke on the net:
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2067675/

If you speak Swedish, the May 23 edition of Debatt is still online for viewing (valid til Jun 21):
http://svt.se/svt/road/Classic/shared/mediacenter/index.jsp?d=40890&a=595780

A good springboard for finding out more on this electrical sensitivity stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_sensitivity

Seriously cool. The more real-world interfaces likt this and the Lemur that make it to the music market, the better.

Emulate? I do it the hardware way: video-out from my Athlon into a Canopus DV input box on the Mac, and a KVM switch. Full-speed (with full audio & 3D support) in a Mac window. Lovely.

Came up short? Sure, more than likely, and very feasible. Why? The ratio of coders to 'users' is *much* lower in the MacOS camp than it is for any other platform. Why? People usually buy a Mac because they don't want to know a single thing about the why's and how's of what goes on behind the screen. They just want it to work properly -- turn it on, use it, turn it off. Apple's reliability and much-vaunted ease of use is a double edged sword. (That, and the fact that any decent Mac coder is already gainfully employed, and/or too busy to take on new projects ... coders who are multi-platform savvy even more so, and can usually name their own price and get it.)