Despite Apple’s (AAPL) investments in developing its own custom ARM microchips in place of using Intel’s (INTC) Atom mobile processors, the company has reached out to Intel as a partner to drive the adoption of the new Light Peak specification for optical cabling. A look at Apple’s historical use of ports explains why it is doing this.

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The biggest news to come out of iPhone 3.0 is its new support for external peripherals, a move that will expand the iPhone and its iPod touch sibling into new territory as a central hub for controlling all sorts of embedded devices. It will also bring Apple’s (AAPL) new mobile platform even closer to the open-ended premise of the old Newton Message Pad. Here’s why Apple’s modern mobile platform will work out better than its first attempt in the early 90s, and why competitors will be hard pressed to duplicate its success.

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Steve Jobs’s Apple TV hobby, the box that brings iTunes content into the living room, is getting ready for its third revision. What will the company do to leverage the recent spurt of interest in the device and boost sales even further? Here’s what the company will and won’t do to push Apple TV.

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There’s nothing new about mobile computing. In the early ’90s, the industry promised a range of devices, from tablets to mini-laptops to smaller handheld PDAs. Apple’s (AAPL) pioneering offering, the 1993 Newton Message Pad, sought to deliver a sophisticated new operating system and development environment running a unique new platform based upon low-power, ARM RISC processors the company co-developed with Acorn.

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