Would You Buy Steve Wozniak's PowerBook on eBay?

Looks like Apple Employee #1's old 17", maxed-out PowerBook is for sale on eBay, remarkably devoid of Cheetos fingerprints. But who acquired it from Woz to begin with? The answer might surprise you.

It's those guys from that webcomic The Joy of Tech! But don't let that dissuade you, because the PowerBook looks like it did indeed belong to Woz and you can just pretend his maid stole it and posted it on eBay or whatever. Unfortunately, you guys just missed Woz's G4 Powermac. [eBay, thanks, Chris!]

Apple Quietly Discontinues 20" Cinema Display, Theories Abound

Retailers trying to replenish their stock of Apple's only normal-sized display are now being told something to the effect of "NO, JESUS CHRIST, NO MORE 20" DISPLAYS, OK?" This, of course, created rumors.

MacRumors points out the most obvious possibility: that Apple is letting current stock dry up to facilitate a transition to new, refreshed 20" displays, with LED backlighting and Mini DisplayPort compatability a la the 24" model. This sounds reasonable, but another possibility—less agreeable—is that Apple's range of displays will contract, leaving the low and high ends at 24" and 30", respectively. If the refresh theory is true, we should know soon enough—a cessation of deliveries, assuming it's to make way for new product, is generally a late indicator. And as far as speculating about a possible round of product updates goes, you really can't ignore yesterday's leaked pictures of the highly perforated probably-Mac-Mini. Interesting timing, at least. [MacRumors]

MacBook and MacBook Pro Take a Performance Dive While On AC Power Alone

Laptop batteries aren't the exactly the tortoises of the gadget world: they start out strong, then get weaker and weaker until eventually you can't even make it through an episode of 30 Rock on a full charge. So some users have taken up the practice of popping out their batteries while on AC power to try to eke out a few more months of juice. But the guys over at Gearlog tested performance on their new MacBook Pro with and without the battery, and here's the lesson: leave that battery in the computer where it belongs.

While benchmarking some memory, Gearlog found that processor performance is a whopping 37% lower on a MacBook Pro running on AC alone. Cinebench R10's multiprocessor test got a battery-less Pro a score of only 3,504, while with the battery it scored 5,549. They contacted Apple to find out what's going on, and Apple admitted that the performance difference is intentional, explaining that it "prevents the computer from shutting down if it demands more power than the A/C adapter alone can provide." Sounds a little fishy to me, but it doesn't really matter: Apple took a lot of care with that battery, and if you know what's good for you, you'll leave it be. [Gearlog]