Lew, your guess as to how the Furutech might function is what I've always assumed. Building an electro-magnetic field generator that fades to zero over a short, timed cycle would be easy of course, especially for $1,800. ;-)
From the object's POV, there's no way to distinguish between the distancing of a fixed-strength field (by the handheld POS) and the attenuation of a fixed-distance field (by the pancake maker). As in astrophysics: is that apparently dimming light source (aka, a "star") actually weakening or is it just moving away from me? Unless we measure Doppler effects we cannot know. For the object, the question of distancing vs. diminution has no meaning except to demonstrate relativity.
From the object's POV, there's no way to distinguish between the distancing of a fixed-strength field (by the handheld POS) and the attenuation of a fixed-distance field (by the pancake maker). As in astrophysics: is that apparently dimming light source (aka, a "star") actually weakening or is it just moving away from me? Unless we measure Doppler effects we cannot know. For the object, the question of distancing vs. diminution has no meaning except to demonstrate relativity.