Greenpeace continues to be at odds with Apple's message that they are as green as green can be. Today's report (page 22-23) puts Apple in the lower half of the technology rung with Japanese whale killers like Nintendo and Fujitsu. Do Samsung, Nokia and have batteries that last for 5 years?
Steve Jobs famously addressed the Greenpeace issue a few years ago at a Stockholder meeting:
Jobs' Challenges Greenpeace Incompetence.
Those comments didn't stop Greenpeace representatives from using the meeting as an opportunity to advertise the groups anti-Apple campaign. Among the activists sent by Greenpeace was Iza Kruszewska, one of the key architects of the corporation's Apple-oriented fundraising program.

Kruszewska was wearing a Greenpeace t-shirt styled after the former iPod ads, presenting Apple's products as dangerously toxic and encouraging user donations to Greenpeace to somehow solve that issue.

After attempting to take credit for Apple's announcements, Kruszewska questioned Jobs about Apple's potential do more to advance Greenpeace's political goals in announcing principles, but Jobs insisted that such “flowery” announcements were not really doing anything for the environment.

Jobs suggested that Greenpeace hire staff with engineering backgrounds who could understand the issues involved, and insisted that Apple does more to push innovative manufacturing techniques than other PC makers.

When Apple talks to its manufacturers, he said, they report that no other companies are pushing for similar, real changes. He questioned the real efforts HP and Dell were making to back up their announcements.

Jobs also blasted the criteria behind Greenpeace's highly publicized Greener Guide to Electronics, which ranks a random assortment of manufactures according to commitments listed on their websites.

Jobs said Greenpeace needed to develop rankings that reflected what companies actually do, not just what they promise to do at some point in the future.

The hate:

Macrumors has been digging through Apple patents and found some very tantalizing nuggets of perhaps possible future iPhone features.
Fingerprint identification using fingerprints to identify each finger and associate actions based on each finger. This would allow the iPhone to interperet each finger action seperately, allowing for easier and more acurate control over input by the user.
Haptic feedback. Not just "touch the screen and get feedback when you hit a key". That's too easy. Apple's plan is to have a "grid of piezoelectronic actuators that can be activated on command. By fluctuating the frequency of these actuators, the user will "feel" different surfaces as their finger moves across it. As an example, a display could include a virtual click wheel which vibrates at a different frequency as the center. Users could easily sense the difference and use the click wheel without having to look at it." Dayum, that would be cool.

RFID reader built into the screen? We're not quite sure why they'd need to do this (as opposed to putting the reader somewhere else in the device) but Apple has put a patent application on this.

Here's just a random thought. What if the Apple bailing on NVIDIA rumors mean that Apple is building their own GPUs? Yes, it is a stretch but let's have a look at a bunch of convienient truths:
Apple has been hiring AMD/ATI CTO-level execs over the past year. Bob Drebin and Raja Koduri are the most notable.
Bob Drebin was the chief technology officer of the Graphics Products Group within AMD. In this role, he oversaw the technical strategy and direction for AMD's graphics related businesses.
Mr. Drebin joined AMD with the ATI acquisition in 2006. At ATI, Mr. Drebin led the architecture and design of many of ATI award-winning graphics processors. Before ATI, Mr. Drebin managed the architecture and design unit of ArtX, where he was instrumental in development of the graphics component for the Nintendo Game Cube. Prior to joining ArtX, Mr. Drebin was a chief engineer in Silicon Graphics' Advanced Graphics Division, where he spent nine years developing high performance graphics systems.
Their new boss? Mark Papermaster, a guy with chip knowledge so important to IBM that they sued Apple to prevent him from joining.
PA Semi. The official word on this group is that they are building next gen iPhone processors...and they probably are. But their expertise could also be used in building graphics processors. There is always the PowerVR angle to think about as well. Apple owns about 10% of the mobile GPU designer (and Intel owns 15%) so it will be interesting to see where all of these puzzle pieces fit.
OpenCL. Apple is spearheading the move to this

Before, you'd just see that Safari or Firefox was nailing your CPU. Now there's a more specific breakdown, which shows the true culprit.

This has been around for a few weeks but comes in very handy.

Ouch. Those numbers below have to hurt if you are in the market for a new high end MacBook Air. Macworld tested the new machines and found the high end 2.13GHz MacBook Air didn't perform as well as the previous high end 1.86Ghz machine with the same 128GB SSD. In fact, to them, it was noticably slower.

A lot of things could account for the speed decrease including: battery mangement, cheaper laptop parts, testing methods, etc. As I said in my Computerworld column when the Air was released, Apple is making significant sacrifices to make this machine razor thin. If the specs above matter at all to you, you may want to look into a 13-inch MacBook Pro. That being said, would it be that hard to add a 4GB RAM premium option?

At the end of 2008, we found out through a company filing with the London Stock Exchange that Apple had owned 8.2 million shares of Imagination Technologies. That's roughly equivalent to a 3.6 percent stake in the company. According to Macworld.co.uk, Apple has been buying up shares over the past year and, with a recent 2.2 million share purchase, now has a 9.5% stake in the company.
Imagination develops intelectual property behind PowerVR portable graphics engines that go into high end mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod touch. Interestingly, Palm's Pre and some other higher-end smart phones use Imagination Technologies' chip designs as well.