Simple question for the reviewer:

- You're sure about 720p? It doesn't say that anywhere on the TiVo or NetFlix web pages. Could it just be DVD quality upsampled by your TiVo to 720p? You could possibly figure this out by dorking with your TiVo's output scaling settings. Set it to 480p then set it to "original resolution" or whatever, and see if there's a difference.

- Aside from video resolution, what about video quality? Apple's iTunes Store at standard resolution, for example, drops all the not-quite-black colors down to pure black. You can't tell on an iPhone, but on a big TV it's glaring. Apple's HD downloads solve this problem. Is the video quality actually HD?

- What about the audio quality? Is it Dolby Digital 5.1, or is it stereo, or something else?

ZFS on Mac is already available if you're willing to run pre-release beta code (http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/). ZFS is intended for big servers with lots of disks and wouldn't make much sense on a MacBook Air. Where ZFS would make sense, where Apple really should be pushing it, is on a MacPro tower with four disks, getting you software RAID-5 (but better) without needing to buy Apple's expensive RAID card. Also, if Apple wanted to expand Time Capsule to have four (or more) disks, they would almost certainly use ZFS on the inside.

For regular Mac users, ZFS could be used to completely re-engineer how Time Machine works, but that's a larger topic for another day.

If this forthcoming announcement is nothing more than a Santa Rosa + LED backlight bump to the existing 15" and 17" MacBook Pros, then that's still a perfectly reasonable thing for Apple to do and they'll sell plenty of them. If we get the other rumored subnotebook device, that would be much more interesting.

When Apple does modest spec bumps, such as the recent MacBook speed bump or when they bumped the Mac Minis, they tend to do the announcements *before* a trade show. When they introduce something actually new, it tends to happen *at* a big show. As such, it's again quite likely that this announcement could be a new 15" and 17" but without the rumored subnotebook.

And, of course, it's the rumored subnotebook that I actually want. Even the 13" Macbook is too big for my needs. What I really want is something akin to the two-pound Sony Vaio G1, but from Apple.

This camera is clearly targeted at the Best Buys, Circuit Cities, and so forth. Today, a basic Nikon D50 kit with the 18-55mm lens costs around $650. This D40 is pictured with the same 18-55mm lens. A $499.95 price for the body + lens sounds like something they might be shooting for. If Nikon wants to really impress, they could ship it with a decent memory card as part of the price.

Yeah, older AF and AF-D lenses won't autofocus (they will still manual focus), but this camera is clearly aimed at the first-time D-SLR consumer.

OTA + DirecTV into an HD-Tivo.

If you make a decision based on a particular camera body (Nikon D200 vs. Canon 5D vs. whatever else), the way you might decide between TV sets or something, then you're a fool. The real decision is more akin to deciding between PC vs. Mac. Over the years, you'll upgrade and replace different pieces and parts, so what matters is not how good any particular piece is, but rather which *system* best suits your needs.

The Canon *system* has a wider variety of extreme technology lenses (notably all the image stabilized lenses), although Nikon is catching up in this regard. The Nikon system has radically better flash exposure metering and has all kind of specialized lenses that you can't find for Canon, including occasional good deals on older manual-focus lenses, whereas Canon's old manual-focus lenses are incompatible with their newer autofocus bodies.

This business about sensor size or maximum print size is beyond stupid. I've made 12x18" prints from my tiny-sensored 4 megapixel Canon G2 and they look fantastic. Unless you're making poster-sized prints, then resolution is completely irrelevant.

Simply, if you're starting from scratch and have no idea what you want, then go play with the cameras in person. Hold them in your hand. Even better, rent one for a weekend and go do some serious shooting with it. Then rent the other. Then ask yourself long and hard what you're really going to use the thing for. Even if you can afford a Canon 5D, you may be much better off with a Rebel XT and better lenses.

Don't panic.

Name a large, successful corporation. Any one. You can bet that they're fighting a number of patent lawsuits. See the BusinessWeek article, below, for more details. In a nutshell, these lawsuits take years to resolve, and even in the worst case for Toyota, where they're found to infringe the patent, they'll just end up shelling out a royalty payment to the patent holder.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_02/b3966086.htm