The main thing I took away from it was that one should use a 3x - 4x higher voltage rating on tantalum caps, than the expected voltage in the circuit. Unless the 47uF/16V caps are on the 12V circuit, I think Apple was already doing that with its aluminum electrolytics. 3 X 5V < 16V.

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That's my feeling too, Trag. So long as we can spec the tantalum cap to have a higher voltage rating than any surges it might get, we should not see the life of that cap diminished at all in the short term. But then again, when we are talking about surges, we need to consider the "duration" of the surges too. For truly, if a 40v surge will kill a 16v rated tantalum cap, how long in duration would that surge have to be to kill the cap. And then the question becomes, will we ever see surges like that on the main logic board (e.g., an SE/30 board), or do such surges occur on "IIsi riser cards" alone because of some problem in how the card intermittently was connected to the main logic board?

So it's not such a cut-and-dried answer here.