The Other Apple Tablet...Dell Again Denies Existence of Decent Smartphone...When Best Buy Security Is Too Good...Scientist Proves That Time Can Only Move Forward (When You're Paying Attention)...
Analyst Richard Doherty (whom I have known for years, and whom I respect) told BusinessWeek that Apple built two tablets, not one. There's the larger one, presumably a 10-incher, which we're expecting, and a smaller one, an overgrown iPod Touch with a 6-inch screen—an iPod Tablet, or an iPod Plus, as Leander at Cult of Mac said. This isn't a post because it's not verifiable—it's all "may" and "might." Doherty is saying that they've prototyped them, and that Apple may launch "one or both." Possibly for as low as $679. Possibly in September. Great. Thanks for making my dreams even more feverish, Rick! [BusinessWeek via Cult of Mac]
Dell has a smartphone problem. Everyone expects it to come, but the ones that are seen floating around, live or in PowerPoint, are all written off as mere ideas. After all of the hullabaloo over the Dell Mini i3 at a China Mobile event, Dell is back to swearing that the phone is not a real product. The sad fact is, one day Dell really will come out with an Android handset—and everyone will be totally underwhelmed. [Reg Hardware UK]
Two "asset protection" guys at a Denver-area Best Buy were canned after one of them, Jared Bergstreser, pursued a shoplifter who had stolen some cellphones, tackling him outside the door. It was messy—one of the thief's accomplices whipped out a knife, and even slashed a third employee. Bergstreser doesn't protest the firing. He admitted he reacted on instinct, and that he broke company policy, saying "I put people in danger, and I put myself in danger." But nobody's sure why the other guy, Colin Trapp, got fired. He just went out to cover Bergstreser's back. [Denver Post - Fictitious Best Buy asset protection dude by Dan Meth, first seen here]
Time only moves forward. We all know that. But somebody finally put pen to paper to prove it. It seems, as with most physics, that it has to do with the act of observation. If things could move backwards in time, you'd really have a mess to clean up, because so many people would observe things that didn't happen yet or won't happen, or won't have happened or will have not happened. Alright, I'm going to stop there. You have two choices: Read the article, or read that passage in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy where Douglas Adams explains why time travel is so hard to explain. [Ars Technica - Image from this guy's Flickr stream of Donnie Darko stills]