Axiotron's ModBook now shipping

That's *damper*, not "dampener". It will reduce it, not moisten it.

I'm assuming that Axiotron will be able to differentiate the Modbook in some way from a possible Mac Touch. Good chance the rumoured Mac Touch will be just that, a device you touch with your fingers, whether it be tablet or notebook, while the Modbook uses a stylus and all the fine detail such as pressure and pen angle sensitivity that comes from Wacom technology.

Therefore, the Mac Touch would be suitable for consumers who want to be able to slide their pictures around and flip through coverflow with their grubby fingers, while a Modbook might be suitable for an artist or graphic designer who needs to be mobile. Just like how a real video editor wouldn't dream of using iMovie (any version) or a real audio technician wouldn't look twice at Garageband. They'd buy the thousand dollar software to do it right. And a real artist isn't going to bother trying to fingerpaint in photoshop on their Mac Touch, they'd buy a proper Wacom tablet, or possibly a Modbook that has a Wacom built in.

Don't know if that's accurate, but if I wanted to sell Modbooks, that's how I would position it.

If you were going to buy a Wacom Cyntiq, it would cost you more than $1000, so the extra cost for a ModBook is certainly justifiable on that front.

To paraphrase from Wil Shipley's blog (http://wilshipley.com/blog/2007/05/pimp-my-code-part-14-be-inflexible.html):

"(b) You're [creating] something that you're hoping Apple will someday replace, which is a sucker's game"

Great effort, but likely to end up in the same boat as those hard-working folks who got XP loaded on intel Macs - a week before Apple released Boot Camp.

The Engadget post lead me to believe that Apple actually approved this device... did they?

It doesn't seem like they would, if they were planning on their own similar model. It'd be easy enough to cover up, just a standard "We do not support the modification of our products for resale" message would suffice.