Before 2010 MacBook Air, there was 2004 Sony - CNET

Shades of the 2010 MacBook Air?

(Credit: Sony)

Though a moot point now for consumers, in 2004 Sony came out with an ultrathin wedge-shaped laptop that was a progenitor of the MacBook Air, particularly Apple's 2010 incarnation.

At the Apple event this week in San Francisco, Steve Jobs said the new MacBook Air "is the future of notebooks." That's debatable of course but it's clear that PC makers like Sony and Hewlett-Packard already saw that kind of future a long time ago. The problem was that either their timing was off or they didn't execute the designs as well as Apple--or simply that the laptop was too expensive.

Back in 1998, HP released the ultrathin, 3-pound Sojourn made from magnesium. (And more recently the wafer-thin Dell Adamo XPS eclipsed the older Apple Air by using a heavily wedged design.)

But Sony's offering may be one of the best examples of a laptop that pretty much matches Apple's design--except Sony did it six years ago. The nickel carbon body Vaio X505--no longer available--had some very impressive specs for its time. (See 2004 review.)

Similar to the MacBook Air, the pronounced wedge design was 0.38 inches at the thinnest point and 0.83 at the thickest. The nickel carbon body also squeezed in an Ethernet port, a PCMCIA slot, and a 1394 connector

(Credit: CNET Reviews)

Like Apple's new Air, the Vaio X505 used an ultralow voltage Intel chip: a Pentium M "ULV" 1.1GHz processor. And similar to the Air, it was 0.38 inches at it thinnest point and 0.83 inches at its thickest (and keep in mind this was remarkably thin for a design that was probably conceived in 2002). The Sony X505 was smaller than the 11.6-inch Air, packing a 10.4-inch display, but it was only 1.85 pounds.

2010 MacBook Air

(Credit: Apple)

And the price? When the Sony Vaio X505 came out, it was about $3,000. And that's probably where Apple's new Air breaks the most ground. The ultrasvelte, 2.3-pound Air--which I would argue is the most impressive Apple MacBook design--can be had for $999. Still a bit pricey but far below the boutique, Rodeo-Drive ultrathins of the past. (Note that Apple's original high-end MBA was about $3,000 but mainstream Air models eventually settled in at about half that price.)

So, what does Sony have today? It has the X series, but that's a single-core Intel Atom processor-based design and won't deliver the performance of the Air, which uses a Core 2 Duo processor and Nvidia graphics.

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Europeans wake up an hour late as Apple fails to fix iPhone alarm clock bug - Apple Insider

Europeans wake up an hour late as Apple fails to fix iPhone alarm clock bug

By Katie Marsal

Published: 07:40 AM EST

A still-unfixed bug with Apple's iPhone caused alarms in Europe to go off an hour late Monday as the continent switched from daylight saving time, but their phone's alarms did not.

A number of readers contacted AppleInsider Monday to note that their handset's alarms failed to go off Monday morning. Instead, alarms went off an hour late, not automatically adjusting for the change in clocks.

"Both iPhones (3GS and 4) in my house failed to go off this morning," one reader said. "Even after checking and switching the settings in time/date and in the alarm app, there is still no alarm going off. Apparently this happened before. I had to delete, all the alarms, restart my phone then re-set the alarms before they worked as expected."

Most countries in Europe conclude daylight saving time on the last Sunday in October. The same bug affected iPhone users in Australia and New Zealand in September, causing their alarms to go off an hour early in the southern hemisphere.

In North America, the switch from daylight saving time occurs later this week. Clocks will be rolled back on Sunday, Nov., 7, and if Apple doesn't issue an update for iOS, the glitch will likely affect users there as well.

In October, Apple said it was aware of the issue and had "already developed" a fix that would be available to users in an upcoming software update. That fix could be a part of iOS 4.2, which Apple said would be released for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch in November.

Though Apple indicated last month that the software fix had already been developed, it was not issued in time for the end of daylight saving time in Europe.

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Justices Revisit Use of Tax Credits for Religious Schools - New York Times

In 2002, in a 5-to-4 ruling, the court upheld a school voucher system in Cleveland that parents used almost exclusively to pay for religious schools.

Four new justices have joined the court since then, but there was nothing in Wednesday’s arguments to suggest that the issue has become any less polarizing.

The program at issue on Wednesday gives Arizona taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit of up to $500 for donations to private “student tuition organizations.” The contributors may not designate their dependents as beneficiaries. The organizations are permitted to limit the scholarships they offer to schools of a given religion, and many do.

The program was challenged by Arizona taxpayers who said it effectively used state money to finance religious education and so violated the First Amendment’s prohibition on the official establishment of religion.

The program was novel and complicated enough that the court’s decision on the merits might not be particularly consequential. But a threshold question, about whether the challengers have legal standing to sue, could give rise to an important ruling.

As a general matter, plaintiffs who merely object to how the government spends their taxes do not have standing. But the Supreme Court made an exception for religious spending in 1968 in Flast v. Cohen.

Arizona, supported by the Obama administration, said the exception should not apply where tax credits rather than direct government spending were at issue.

“If you placed an electronic tag to track and monitor each cent that the respondent plaintiffs pay in tax, not a cent, not a fraction of a cent, would go in any religious school’s coffers,” said Neal K. Katyal, the acting United States solicitor general.

“Flast recognized a special solicitude for taxpayers when money is taken out of their pocket and used to fund religion against their conscience,” Mr. Katyal said. But that is as far as the exception should go, he said.

That approach, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said, could amount to an end to many challenges to religious spending. “Flast is gone,” he said. “There is nothing more to Flast, because it just happened that nobody had thought of this system at the time of Flast.”

Justice Elena Kagan, who was until recently solicitor general, or S.G., asked whether Mr. Katyal’s position on the standing question meant that the court had been without authority to decide at least six other cases “but somehow nobody on the court recognized that fact, nor did the S.G. recognize that fact?”

Mr. Katyal said it was not unusual for the court to wait to decide a question until it was “teed up and presented to the court.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked him whether anyone, in light of his position, had standing to challenge the Arizona program.

“The way this scheme is set up,” Mr. Katyal said, “our answer is no.”

Paula S. Bickett, representing Arizona, said the state program did not violate the First Amendment “because it’s a neutral law that results in scholarship programs of private choice.”

But Paul Bender, representing the challengers in the case, Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, No. 09-987, said the dollar-for-dollar nature of the tax credit meant that the scholarship money effectively came from the state.

The difference between the Cleveland voucher system in the 2002 decision, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, and the Arizona program, Mr. Bender said, was that “religion was not involved in the distribution of the money to the parents.”

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