There are only thought to be about 50 Apple 1s still in the wild, this is the second one up for auction on eBay in a month.

The last one sold for about $18,000, several thousand over its estimated value, to an anonymous computer collector who also tipped us off about the sale of this 1976 progenitor of the personal computer. The starting bid is $50,000.

So why is  this Apple 1 , which the seller states won’t boot up,  priced at 177% more than the other one?

It’s pretty much a capsule history of early Apple: the wise person who first bought it for Electric City Radio Supply in Montana kept everything — the invoice, the box (which shows the return address as Steve Jobs’ parents house), a cassette with BASIC,  the operation manual and a typed letter on ring binder paper from Steve Jobs answering questions about it, including how to hook up a keyboard. Even  if you don’t have the cash, the photos are worth checking out.

We wrote to the seller, more when we hear back.

Hit the jump for the letter signed “Steven Jobs” on notebook paper and more details…

Popular Science has published its Best of What’s New 2009 list, with Apple a winner in the Computing category.

Gizmodo toured Apple’s just-opened retail store on the Upper West Side, and calls it a “temple” to the company’s products.

I call it a temple because the architecture conveys a nearly religious aesthetic, a place to worship Apple, beyond any other Apple store you’ve ever been to. The top floor’s a vast open space, enclosed by spartan stone walls which support a massive glass ceiling. The rows of tables in the main room feel like pews.

I can’t tell you – and the pictures can’t show you – how utterly open and expansive the room feels. Apple says it has more demo units than any other store in the world. To give you an idea of the space, the walls are 45 feet tall, and could fit 11 Apple 5th Avenue Cubes inside. It’s the spareness that’s breathtaking. It’s cold. Not literally, but the stone walls, the glass, the sheer space rob it of any sense of warmth or feeling. The only sense of life in room is the products. It’s a temple to them, really.

More pictures after the jump.

Today’s bevy of bargains starts with a bundle of nano applications from MacHeist. Included in the offer is VirusBarrier X5 for free. The VirusBarrier barrier is part of MacHeist’s nanoBundle: twitterific, mariner write and four other applications. To partake, you’ll need to register and post a Facebook announcement. The deal ends today. Also on tap: an iPhone 3GS for $149 and a number of MacBook Pro laptops, including a 1.83 GHz version sporting a 15-inch screen for $750.

As always, for details on these deals and more, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Apple’s iPhone now accounts for 17 percent of global smartphone sales, propelled by a nearly 50 percent growth rate for the third quarter, new research released Thursday indicates. Cupertino’s rising star in worldwide smartphone demand is expected to only increase as the iPhone becomes available in China and more carriers begin offering the popular cell phone.

During the September quarter, Apple shipped an estimated 7.04 million iPhones – a 49.2 percent jump over last year, making the company the third-largest smartphone maker behind Nokia and Research in Motion. Apple had 12.9 percent of the market during the same period in 2008, according to Gartner.

Microsoft has blamed one of its own, calling “inaccurate and uninformed” comments Wednesday that its new Windows 7 operating system was inspired by the Mac. Wednesday, Microsoft partner group manager Simon Aldous told a magazine the software giant’s OS aimed to mimic the Mac’s graphics.

“Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7,” Brandon LeBlanc wrote at the Windows Blog Wednesday evening.

This latest comment appears to back-pedal on an interview Aldous gave to PCR, in which he stated: “What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.”

Consumers have commented on how some graphic elements – such as the Windows 7 taskbar and the Mac OS X doct – behave alike. Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg had also noted the similarities.

[Via Apple Insider]

Joe Hewitt, the developer behind the iPhone Facebook app, the most popular application on the App Store shelves, announced he’s had it with Apple’s review policy. Hewitt, also known for his work on the popular Firefox browser, told his Twitter audience he blamed the review policy required to approve apps.

“My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies,” Hewitt told TechCrunch. “I am philosophically opposed to the existence of the review process,” he said.

So it’s nearly the middle of November, which means that those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year should be almost half-way through your novel. Assuming you’ve kept up the daily word count.

Among NaNo writers there’s a thriving subculture of AlphaSmart users.

“AlphaSmart?” you say. “What on earth is that? Doesn’t sound like a Mac.”

BBC reporter Sharif Sakr took a top-of-the line Yamaha PDX50 dock (about $250 plus the iPod) and put it up against a secondhand stereo system (with CD player, amps and speakers) estimated cost, $80.

Then he wrangled about 10 passersby to get an earful of Pavarotti warbling. They told him which sounded better — though they couldn’t see which device was pumping out the opera.

Almost everyone — 8/10 — preferred the secondhand stereo, to the highly-rated Yamaha dock calling the sound warmer, fuller and more crisp.

Like a lot of people, I’ve got an iPod dock, but it’s not replacing my stereo. It lives in the kitchen, where sound (as in listening to the Car Talk podcast while flipping French toast) more than sound quality is important.

How many of you just use an iPod dock instead of a stereo system?

Via BBC

The mystery object in Monday’s contest is an Apple IIC. This time, we weren’t even trying to make it especially hard, but kudos to everyone who noticed that it was a European version.

We picked it out of the line-up of fabulous Apple products from yesteryear from Paolo Tonon’s flickrstream. Paolo took the shot of it and others, including a Macintosh Portable and Newtons, from an Italian retrocomputing group.

Winner named after the jump.

November 11th is internationally recognised as a day of Remembrance; in the US it’s Veterans Day, and here in the UK is known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day.

iPhone ‘worms’ haven’t been much of a threat till now. However, things have changed with a new malware, discovered by Mac security firm Intego. Identified as iPhone/Privacy.A, it is a major threat for the privacy of many jailbroken iPhone users who have installed and activated SSH. Note: Non-jailbroken phones are not affected by it.

This malware acts through the SSH just like the others. It infects through client software installed on an attacking Mac, PC or even iPhone, which scans for jailbroken iPhones nearby. If they are vulnerable, they are then injected with the malware using the default filesystem password.

Previous exploits like iKee just changed the lockscreen background but after injection, this new malware copies private data, such as contacts, e-mail, contacts, SMSs, calendars, photos, music files, videos, which it then sends back to the source machine. It is even possible to send it as a malware to a Mac or PC which will then scan and copy the information from nearby jailbroken iPhones or iPod Touch and then send back to the source.

Even though it is not widespread yet, the amount of information it steals is a great deal. Intego currently recommends it’s own solution, Virus Barrier X5, which detects and removes this malware from a Mac but as far as other platforms are concerned, there’s currently no solution. This means that there is a high chance you can be affected as well. Therefore, we recommend you to take a simple precautionary step by changing the filesystem password on your jailbroken iPhones with SSH installed or turning SSH off when not in use with the help of SBSettings available in Cydia.

You can also have a look at our guide on how to change the filesystem password.

Are you tired of the giggles elicited by your upscale friends when you whip out your zebra-striped iPhone that burps each time a call is received? Maybe your handset needs a classier grill rather than yet another skin? If that’s the case, we might have your ticket to the technological upper-class: the Appstand.

Positioned as a great $20 Christmas gift for the iPhone 3G or 3GS owner, the Appstand from Thunk let’s you display your handset in the provided frame and start a series of calming slideshows (how about the sounds of wind or the lapping water from a koi pond?) It’s enough to make a subdued BlackBerry look downright scandalous.

The Appstand will be available December 1st.

[Via Gadget Lab, iLounge and Thunk]

We’ve reached Wednesday and celebrate by offering a top trio of hot bargains for Mac, iPod and iPhone fans. Let’s start with some Mac Pro Xeon workstations (2.66 – 2.93 GHz) beginning at $2,149. For iPod owners looking seeking a new look, there’s a deal on 3-packs of Kroo silicone skins for the nano. We wrap up our featured deals with a freebie from the iTunes music store: Serabee’s “Driving Me Stupid” album.

For details on these and other Mac bargains (such as the iLuv Hi-Fi alarm clock for iPod and iPhone owners), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

LocFinder is an augmented reality app that boasts it will always let you see which direction is home or find your car, even if you’re halfway across the world.

LocFinder costs $0.99 on iTunes and while isn’t the first augmented reality app to tackle parking lot amnesia — we recently wrote about Car Finder — it sounds like a compass on steroids.

It has a bevy of features that may end those ping-pong SMS messages to set up a meeting, make stopping to ask for directions a non-issue even when you’re lost in Paris — or let you know exactly how far away you are from Cupertino at all times.

More on what it does with video after the jump…

Apple has begun shipping the 27-inch iMacs with Intel’s Core i7 processor, according a Cult of Mac reader. The i7 is Intel’s beefier update to its Core 2 Duo, running 2.66 – 2.8 GHz.

The i7 27-inch iMac shipped today and is expected to arrive in the U.S. by Nov. 17, according to the email. The unit had been ordered nearly one month ago on Oct. 23.

Earlier this week, word leaked out that Apple had begun shipping orders for the 27-inch iMacs with Intel’s 2.66 GHz i5 processors.

The i7-based 27-inch iMacs retail for around $2100.

We all know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Now software giant Microsoft admits it had Apple’s OSX in mind when creating the Windows 7 operating system.

“What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics,” Microsoft partner group manager Simon Aldous said in a Wednesday interview.

Apple is now the most profitable player in the cell phone business, overtaking giant Nokia for the crown, reports said Wednesday. Apple earned $1.6 billion in profits during the last financial quarter, besting Nokia’s $1.1 billion for the same period, according to estimates.

Apple also overtook Samsung, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

When I saw this snap in the Cult of Mac Flickr pool, I wanted to find out more. Who is the owner of the little family of Macs old and new, and how did they end up on this desk?

Since its introduction in September, Apple’s multimedia iTunes LP format has been the subject of constant speculation and teeth-gnashing. I took quite a lot of criticism a month ago, much of it well-deserved, for repeating a Gizmodo-reported rumor that Apple was restricting the format to a handful of titles from major labels only and charging high production fees that further marginalized Indies.

Apple denied all of this strenuously, and exactly four weeks ago pledged to release Open Specs for iTunes LP “soon,” as well as many more iTunes LP titles arriving in the store imminently, including Indies.

All I can say is, it ain’t true yet. Apple has not released the promised Open Specs, and only four additional iTunes LP titles have shown up in the iTunes Store, plus two that you can pre-order. They’re all from major labels, needless to say. For those keeping count, Apple has 19 iTunes LP titles, of which 17 are on sale today.

I’m not saying Apple won’t fulfill its promises here — I can’t wait until they do, in fact — but rather that they haven’t. The sooner Apple allows all of its record label partners to create iTunes LPs and offer a huge diversity of titles, the sooner it will have a chance of catching on. Until then, it’s just a cool tech demo for fans of Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson.

Do you think Apple will crack 20 titles in the iTunes by the end of the month?

There’s a lot to like about the iPhone’s App Store. The more than 100,000 programs within its occasionally strict boundaries offer a bevy of experience riches unmatched in the mobile computing space. But it’s also frustrating. Great apps get postponed or blocked altogether, while great ones like Skype have key features removed.

All of this is nothing new. Mac bloggers talk about this all the time. But I think I’ve also pinpointed exactly why such minor complaints are so painful. It’s called the Entertainment Category of the App Store.

For those unfamiliar with its seedy contents, the Entertainment Category is sort of a catch-all for all kinds of applications that don’t have a good home elsewhere in the App Store. Here’s a chart I made to illustrate the problem:

Yes, despite the fact that the entertainment category does include some legit apps, some of which are great (Pocket God, Emoji, and Movies spring to mind), it is, for the most part, a giant blue Pac-Man of lame softcore porn devouring all in its path. And it’s impossible to find anything actually entertaining there. Which is a disaster. It’s a disincentive to develop something good (who can compete against Naughty Hotties?), and that means that it inevitably gets worse over time.

Psystar, the unofficial Mac cloner, may actually have a shot at beating Apple, the Miami New Times reports in an interesting backgrounder on the two brothers behind the company, Robert and Rudy Pedraza.

The six-page profile includes several interesting factoids, including the revelation that their father is a convicted coke dealer.

The brothers started their knockoff business after one of them survived a near fatal car crash. The company is shipping boatloads of computers and is likely making money (quickly eaten by legal costs). Several copycats have cropped up, including the Moscow-based RussianMac.

To recap, Psystar sells cheap Hackintoshes that run Apple’s OS X. A Psystar machine costs about a third of a comparable offering from Apple, but runs OS X in violation of Apple’s shrinkwrap EULA license.

Apple is hell-bent on shutting the company down, but some IP experts think Psystar has a shot. The case hinges on the legality of EULAs — shrinkwrap licenses — that say you don’t own the software you buy, you license it. The legality of EULAs has never been tested in the courts, which makes the Psystar case so important. If Psystar wins, it may not only throw a wrench into Apple’s business model, it may alter the entire software industry.

The paper quotes a couple of intellectual property lawyers who say the tiny Florida company may actually win.

“They’ve already put some really good arguments forward,” says Randy Friedberg, an intellectual property lawyer following the case in New York. “There’s essentially one really interesting question here, and it’s whether that licensing agreement holds up.”

Bare Bones released a Yojimbo update this afternoon, which adds a handful of nice new bits and pieces.

If rumors that Apple is adding an RFID reader to the iPhone are true, it’s huge!

An RFID reader would turn the iPhone into an e-wallet — allowing you to pay for everything, from a cup of coffee to a subway ride. It could also turn the iPhone into an ID card, a security access system and an electronic ticketing device.

It’s could also function as an easy and secure online shopping system that doesn’t require you to enter your credit card number.

Your iPhone could unlock your car, pick up e-coupons at the local mall, and pay for all your supermarket groceries just by laying it on top of the checkout.

Imagine if such a system was enabled on your iPhone. It would supplant your wallet — if enough retailers adopted the system, of course.