Voidness said:
I've seen the mentioned VAIO notebook at the local Sony Store, its LED-backlit LCD screen simply astonishing (wish my iBook's screen is even a fraction of that VAIO screen quality). I guess Apple would be incorporating these screens into their products sooner or later, because they're brighter, cheaper, provide constant backlighting, and they're thinner.
EDIT: The above article mentions that LED-backlight don't provide constant backlighting, and are brighter at the bottom. But I guess this is an error, since this applies to the current LCDs. While the VAIO screen I've seen, is completely consistent, something I've never seen on an LCD before.
If indeed Apple were about to push LED displays into all of its upcoming portables, then they'd need to line up a decent supplier. That's where the Everlight reference comes in. I'm not sure where Sony gets its displays (possibly in house), so a direct comparison might not be perfect. It does make for an interesting bit of speculation, however.
All the hype about Apple becomming just another Intel-box company, has (in my opinion) eventually gotten around to the correct conclusion that Apple is a specialty supplier. Pushing FW800 over FW400, introducing Blu-Ray drives, going to LED displays... all these possibilities play to Apple's strengths in innovation and first-to-market. Apple may not be the first with any of these features, but they do at least open the technologies up to a larger marketplace.
Moving even further out onto the limb, consider if Apple does use LED-backed displays in its iBook line, leaving them at their current resolutions and dimensions. The iBooks would then benefit by being thinner, making them all the more portable to the average student. The PowerBooks get thinner too, but primarily from the new Intel hardware. The Pro-line keeps the hi-res screens of the previous generation G4 line. To keep the lines separate, the 12" PBook vanishes. If Apple is keeping the 17" PBook and the 15" and 17" screens cannot both use LEDs, then I'd assume that only the smaller, more available iBooks get the upgrade (simply for supply reasons). Possibly the PowerBooks would get another wave of resolution upgrades to make up for the "horizontal line" issue in the current 15".
The possibilities of using OLED screens in the iPods seems all the more likely, but more for the marketing advantages than the real technology. I've yet to see a definitive analysis of the advantages of OLED versus LCD for small screens. There are some differences in scaling the technologies, but what's the advantage for a 1-3" screen? Possibly there's an article out there somewhere that explains, but I've not read it yet.
PS-----OLED keyboards are a long way out for desktops yet. Granted the illuminated keyboards on the 15" and 17" PowerBooks have yet to make it into the desktop models, but still... OLEDs for keyboards will have to wait several months if not years for general introduction. Maybe we'll see them for the introduction of the new PowerMacs w/ Intel down the road.
