Is this a line dance? Last week, Dell's recall of 4.1 billion Sony-manufactured laptop batteries must have sent every laptop manufacturer scurrying to their quality control department. I should have just gone ahead and bought the domain, "applebatteryrecall.com" right then, because here it is 10 days later and guess who's recalling Sony batteries now?

Yep, Apple. The cutest of all computer companies only has 1.8 million batteries as a part of its recall, from 12" iBook G4, 12" PowerBook G4 and 15" PowerBook G4 laptops sold between October 2003 and August 2006 in the U.S. Unfortunately for the headline writers, no Apple laptops actually caught fire, although two consumers did receive minor burns when their laptop overheated.

While no one likes a recall, it doesn't seem as if either Apple or Dell will feel it on the bottom line; and, in fact, Apple stock is up a tick on the news, 21 cents, to $67.52. Sony Corp (SNE), on the other hand, is down nearly 3% to $43.27.

[Photo courtesy Dat Nguyen]

Back in 2002 Apple came out with the eMac. Short for 'education mac,' it used a CRT screen to save money and bring the price of the eMac for students and education purchases into a magic $999 figure. A cheap mac.

When the $599 Mac Mini came out it seemed the venerable eMac would no longer be continued. Apple obviously had a budget computer, the Mini or the $1000 iBook meant a student could easily afford a good Apple with which to head back to school.

But Apple just quietly released an educationally configured iMac. It isn't labeled an eMac anymore, it's just a slightly more stripped-down iMac (smaller hard drive, 80 gig instead of 160, a combo drive instead of DVD burning superdrive, and a slightly slower video card) that can be snagged by back-to-schoolers for the price of $899, $100 cheaper than the original eMac launched almost exactly four years ago.

Will it help goose Apple's back-to-school purchases? Hard to tell, the eMac was certainly a hit, but that was because it was one of the first sub-$1000 Apples, a magic number to break. But if you look at the price of a 17-inch flat panel monitor, your own keyboard and mouse and add that onto a Mac Mini, it only works out cheaper if you're particular about those accessories. For $899 you get a 17-inch all-in-one flat panel computer, no mucking about.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]

The new MacBook. I still want to call it an iBook, but I guess change is inevitable. Like going from Motorola chips to Intel chips for Apple's computers. Apple started the 'i' everything frenzy, and now they're moving away from it. Nonetheless, the change has been good, and the ability of Apple's new products to run both Windows and Apple's OS-X means heads have turned. And that includes the folks at the Times, who nominated the MacBook 13 inch laptop last week as the 'gadget of the week.

Some of the things that impressed them enough to highlight the laptop were the price, coming in at just over $1,000 with all its various features and abilities, as well as the remote that allows you to control the media functions of the laptop from across a room.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]