Damp Squib?

So did you catch the big news from Macworld on Tuesday? If you managed to somehow tune out all that phone nonsense, you may just have noticed OWC announce the ModBook. If you can really call this an announcement. Seriously, a spikey-haired guy in a red T. "BANG!"? I think not...

So anyway, the CyBook (new official nomenclature from here on in). It's a MacBook which has been rebuilt with an aluminium top. I'm guessing that after about fifty attempts at cutting the right sized holes into a regular MacBook lid they just gave up and decided to start again with something less brittle.

I'll leave giving any kind of further opinion on how the thing works until a few people better placed than I have had a chance to play with the genuine thing and see how it performs. (I know, it's that kind of attitude that's going to get me drummed out of the blogoshpere...) (That and the ellipses...) Being based on a MacBook is a pretty good start. I don't think they'll be available in the kind of numbers which would make the whole "is this entirely legal" thing an issue, and anyway, Apple's lawyers are probably all going to be otherwise engaged for the time being, trying to wrest "iPhone" away from Cisco. (And that's before the other Apple gets wind of the disappearing "Computer" - I wouldn't have thought now would be a good time to piss off Paul McCartney.)

At $2199 for the base model - about £1135 in real money - it's quite a bit more than the standard MacBook, but comparable to PC Tablets and not over the top if you consider the price of a stand-alone 13" graphics tablet. I hope the participation of Germans in the design process means some form of European availability - I can't find anything on OWC's site which mentions shipping overseas - even if I don't see myself wanting to get one. (I also hope it's going to be more reliable than my old 320i, which admittedly cost me less than half what they're asking for the CyBook but still, even with 265k on the clock I wouldn't have expected it to break down that often.)

I wish these guys luck, and hope this leads to something bigger and better.