I've often thought that the basic PowerBook/MacBook Pro design is essentially perfect. I know that looks like a massive fanboi statement, but it's true. The one cosmetic change I'd like to see is the end of the grey plastic rim, which every time I notice it seems totally at odds with the quality of the rest of the machine. Possible a black aluminium option?

Actually, it'd be nice if there was at least an option to one-up the old "no right click" jibe by having a supersized, no-button trackpad. Three-finger tap to middle click - do the current ones have that already?

Oh, and a blank key option. I can dream...

Other than that, yes, properly powered USB ports would be great; my Native Instruments AK1 audio interface needs unplugging and reconnecting after the machine's woken from sleep because of this. And for the love of God, Apple, my 15" MBP has fewer USB ports than an eeePC. That's just fucking ridiculous.

Good inspiration for Spore creature creation.

The stageshow cuts his payday in half? I hope he doesn't break more than a few dozen Airs a day, then, or he'll be left penniless.

Airport-style security...? Frankly, I'd submit to a chainmail-gauntleted cavity search if they'd bring in airline-style pricing as well. It used to cost a friend less to fly home from London to Nuremberg than I had to pay to crawl up towards Manchester by rail. My sister recently flew London-Milan and back, and that cost her less than the train to the airport.

Allegedly genuine Chinese Deng/Mao joke. A friend of mine claimed to have heard this while doing his PhD fieldwork in a tractor gearbox factory in rural Henan. I'm somewhat sceptical of its provenance, but just in case, here it is:

Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong are flying... somewhere when their plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors, they pull themselves from the wreckage, but are immediately captured by the native people. (This, supposedly, is an often-used formula.)

They are told that they have trespassed upon ancestral ground, for which the penalty is death, but that they can earn their lives and freedom by completing a task for the chief. "Go," he says, "into the jungle, and retrieve for me twelve pieces of fruit, each like the others." Assured by their captors of the futility of attempted escape, Deng and Mao are released into the jungle. They agree to split up. Deng wanders for a while, before finding a bunch of grapes hanging from a vine. He picks a dozen, and heads back to the village.

"Now, outsider, you must insert each of these pieces of fruit into your anus, without letting a sound issue forth from your mouth. When the twelfth piece is hidden from the light of day, you will be free to go."

Biting his lip, Deng sets about this. Just as the twelfth and final grape is about to disappear, however, he suddenly starts screaming and weeping with laughter. The tribesmen are livid, and immediately sentence him to a painful death.

"But why," asks the chief, "why did you laugh so when you were so close to success?"

"Look over there!" Deng replies, "Mao-tongzhi is coming down the beach carrying a dozen pineapples."

On the bright side, it hasn't been as overdone as the application of coloured oils to canvas, or the rhythmic agitation of strings or membranes.