The Saturday Apple Review

Things have never been brighter for the Cupertino company.

Unknown Error 1418

iPod owners are now complaining again. They claim they get word of an 'unknown error 1418' immediately prior to the iPod quitting completely. Worse still, they're blaming Apple's iPod firmware and iTunes updates.

Apple geniuses are recommending users witnessing unknown error 1418 purchase a new iPod. As unknown error 1418 only affects the Shuffle model and as the Shuffle model was made for people too cheap to buy a proper iPod, they have it coming to them.

Class Action?

Both AppleInsider and The Guardian are reporting a mounting class action suit against Apple for the random shutdown syndrome (RSS) currently being experienced in the MacBook laptop. As explained in the previous Saturday Apple Review, these shutdowns are not random at all: Apple computers shut down only when they know they have to - this out of consideration for the user of course.

Further investigation reveals the supposed class action suit is not a class action suit at all but merely an opportunist looking for a lawyer and a case both.

Obviously this is merely more FUD meant to besmirch the impeccable reputation of Apple Computer. Case dismissed.

The RSS Culprit?

An irresponsible Apple computer user hiding behind the highly suspect moniker 'thatsiebguy' has posted pictures of a supposed Apple MacBook meltdown at Flickr.

The pictures are clearly 'Photoshopped' and represent one of the most daring attempts to discredit Apple to date.

Zygote File Systems?

Rumours persist Apple will abandon their acclaimed HFS+ file system with their next generation 10.5 release of OS X code named Leopard. The Saturday Apple Review wish to dismiss these hysterical rumours.

The present file system non pareil is HFS+ which is an acronym standing for 'alternative lifestyle file system appropriate even for people of more common sexual persuasions'. It has been the file system of choice for the impeccable Macintosh computer for generations. It is not going away.

The file system Apple are rumoured to be considering is the Zygote File System or ZFS. A zygote is of course the cell produced by the union of two gametes before it undergoes cleavage. The term may even apply to fertilised ova.

The name is most inappropriate for a Macintosh file system.

Creator Barry Bostwick, asked about the system's ludicrously exaggerated capacity, had the following to say in his defence.

Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 10⁵¹ operations per second on at most 10³¹ bits of information. [See Seth Lloyd, 'Ultimate physical limits to computation', Nature 406, 1047-1054 (2000).] A fully populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2¹²⁸ blocks = 2¹³⁷ bytes = 2¹⁴⁰ bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2¹⁴⁰ bits) / (10³¹ bits/kg) = 136 billion kg.

That's a lot of gear.

To operate at the 10³¹ bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mc², the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2x10²⁸ J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4x10²¹ kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1°C and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporisation adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x10⁶ J/kg * 1.4x10²¹ kg = 3.4x10²⁷ J. Thus fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would literally require more energy than boiling the oceans.

MacRumors forum commenter 'mackeeper' sums it up well.

Who cares about this stuff? The average consumer sure doesn't! Just show us the merchandise!