Future Technologies

NEW YORK (AP) — It's the kind of electronic junk that piles up in basements and garages — an old computer motherboard with wires sticking out. But because it was designed and sold by two college dropouts named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, it could be worth more than half a million dollars. An Apple 1 from 1976, one of the first Apple computers ever built and forerunner of today's MacBooks, IPads and IPhones, goes on the auction block at Christie's next week. The bidding starts at $300,000, with a pre-sale estimated value of up to $500,000. "This is a piece of history that made a difference in the world, it's where the computer revolution started," said Ted Perry, a retired school psychologist who owns the old Apple and has kept it stashed away in a cardboard box at his home outside Sacramento, Calif. The 11-by-14 green piece of plastic covered with a grid of memory chips above a labyrinth of wires was one of the first 25 such computer elements,...

Apple   has filed a patent application that describes a handheld device with a case made entirely out of glass. Such a case could be formed from a "hollow glass tube" or two pieces of glass bonded together. The material would be radio transparent, and the device could be hermetically sealed and thus water resistant. The  iPhone  4 and 4S aren't really that far from this idea, their case consisting of two pieces of glass and a steel frame. Some problems immediately come to mind. While the glass material used in modern smartphones is quite tough, a smartphone made entirely out of glass could easily be damaged in a fall. Furthermore, the iPhone is chock-full of sensors, some of which might have problems functioning in a (transparent) glass enclosure - though Apple's application addresses this problem by suggesting some parts of the glass case can be made opaque. And the upsides? Well, Apple names a few in its patent application: "Some of the reasons ...