Forbes's intrepid testers used the Toughbook to crush soda cans, used the screen as a dartboard, ran over it with a Volkswagen, gave it to a tiger as a chew toy, had an elephant stomp on it multiple times, and then the to top it all off, shot it with a .22 pistol. And the damage?

The only things that managed to do any lasting damage were the elephant and the gun; the elephant put two cracks in the case (purely cosmetic, however), and the gun did actually pierce the screen. But! The damn thing was still usable even after being shot! It never once ceased to boot and Forbes claims they were able to log into Windows even with a hole in the screen.

We ourselves have absolutely no use for the Toughbook-30, but we're tempted to get one in case we ever get that pet elephant we've always wanted. [Forbes]

Its Segway-esque legs dance to the beat of any MP3 player via 3.5mm jack, and its 49 LEDs stay shining like some kind of cybernetic Rhinestone Cowboy. The A.M.P. has touch-sensitive DJ scratching pads and 62 sound effects built in so you can spice up your songs with a little "wiki-wiki", and an IR sensor so he will follow you (and his remote) from room to room and keep the music playing in your direction.

Too bad the A.M.P. costs 500-f'ing-dollars, which won't even buy you a Li-ion battery, since you either plug the knee-high bot into the wall (huh?) or fill it full of D cells. What's this thing made of? SOLID GOLD? It sure dances like it. Bring the price down to $99, and I will buy it. Available in October. [A.M.P., Gearlog]

It's a much better store than it used to be, full of components, motherboards, and lots of actually _helpful_ people who know computers.

Thankfully, the police understood there was no real danger in this vehicle, unless you consider plastering someone in red paint an act of war.

Complete with tank treads and 3-cylinder diesel engine, this is a paintball version of the Panzerkampfwagen VI—which is the actual technical denomination, it was nicknamed Tiger by Ferdinand Porsche, who competed for the Nazi government contract before doing cars for James Dean. This Tiger has a scuba-tank-powered cannon instead of terrifying 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 cannon that could take out Shermans and Churchills IVs from up to a mile away (1,600 meters.)

The armor in this half-sized version, however, it much lighter than the original model, which was able to withstand a direct impact of the 76.2 mm gun of the mighty Soviet T-34 tank, at any range. The mini-Tiger would probably not be able to stand the impact of a beer can. Still, we would love to give it a spin. [Jalopnik]

But there were past times, darker times, in the history of OS X—we didn't always have widgets, Expose, or that rock-solid stability Apple pimps so hard as it blasts that card castle, Windows. Let's take a trip in the OS X Time Machine (not that one) and reminisce over former feline days of yore.

OS 10.0 "Cheetah" Released March 24, 2001, the first consumer version of OS X left the Classic Mac OS in the dust—though much like Rosetta eased the transition to Intel processors, the Classic environment allowed you to still run older Mac apps. Cheetah introduced the Aqua interface, the Dock, and Mail. But it was also unstable, sluggish (blasphemy in the current Apple canon), and hardware didn't "just work." Put another way: It was bad enough 10.1 was released as a free upgrade less than 8 months later.

OS 10.1 "Puma" Puma was essentially a glorified service pack designed to fix Cheetah's problems, so most of the improvements were under the hood—better performance and hardware compatibility, but not much in the way of actual new features.

OS 10.2 "Jaguar" Performance was boosted still further, but there remained some noticeable interface lag on occasion. Features-wise, the slickly designed iChat client made its entrance and Finder snuck into every window. The cat system of code names also became part of the official OS marketing.

OS 10.3 "Panther" Launched Oct. 24, 2003, the OS X Mac users know and love today really took shape with Panther—Expose exposed itself for the first time and Finder was juiced up with real time searching and the now-familiar brushed metal interface. Panther also marked the shift to Safari as the OS's default browser.

OS 10.4 "Tiger" The state of the union. Intel processor support, Rosetta for PowerPC apps, Dashboard, Spotlight, and a more unified UI among a plethora of other updates—both to apps and under the hood—make up the Tiger package. Let's not forget Boot Camp, either. While not part of the initial OS release, it's definitely worthy of a nod.

And that more or less brings us up to speed—will Apple rewrite the OS X history books? Evolution or revolution? Stay tuned. – Matt Buchanan

WWDC 07 [Gizmodo]

Apple to charge Mac OS X Tiger users for final Boot Camp release? [MacScoop via Mac Rumors]