I was amused to see early shots of the latest Dell OptiPlex desktops. These are pretty much the mainline of Dell’s line-up, and are among the most popular desktop PCs in the country. Electronista talked about the new line-up’s “industrial, metal” look, which Dell credits for dramatic reductions in power consumption. And despite Dell’s much-remarked-upon commitment to industrial design, the new boxes are incredibly hideous.

Why? Because Dell is perfectly willing to sacrifice a design vision in order to save on manufacturing costs. Compare the box at left to a Mac Pro. Both have metal grill faces, but only one is metal all over and uses modified commodity components in order to maintain a consistent look. Dell, meanwhile, dropped in ugly black plastic components for the drives and sides, presumably because it was a lot easier than speccing a custom mold for all parts. AND they left in the floppy drive, a full 10 years after Apple ditched it.

This, in a nutshell, is the difference between Apple and nearly every other computer company on earth (Sony might be the one exception, and HP is improving): Apple just won’t compromise. If a computer is going to be an imposing metal tower that recalls a steel factory, it will be that all over, even if it’s nearly impossible to engineer. A company like Dell, on the other hand, will throw such interesting design ideas out as soon they get hard to pull off. Apple is committed to engineering designs exactly as crafted, down to the millimeter and the routing of interior cables. A company like Dell wants to provide just enough design and taste that people aren’t actively repulsed by its products.

It’s not even close.

Electronista via Engadget

Stickers on your Mac are a colorful, yet old-school way to personalize your gear. Kind of like what you used to see on the guitar cases and road gear of traveling musicians back in the day.

Thanks to commenter karina Grotz, we’ve learned about EtchStar, the creative technology company that will custom laser engrave your Mac, iPhone, or just about anything, with something from their hundreds of pre-made images or even with original art of your own.

It’s all the rage among the iCelebrity set down in LA and does offer a unique way to show your style, brand your gear and create something of a theft deterrent.

Check out the gallery of some cool designs below and visit the EtchStar website for more.
All images © EtchStar, LLC.

You’ll remember the $1000 iPhone app, I Am Rich, that made it to the AppStore in August just because it could. Well, for a savings of $100 you can get an app that actually does something useful, like monitor your multiple IP based surveillance cameras.

For only $900 Lextech Labs’ iRa serves the mobility needs of the high-end security industry, enabling users to view multiple video feeds and directly control pan-tilt-zoom cameras from their iPhone or iPod Touch.

iRa is not something you just download and off you go, however. Interested parties are strongly encouraged to locate a surveillance equipment integrator before purchasing the app. End users who download iRa from the iPhone App Store must have a working knowledge of network and digital camera system installation and configuration, with support for the app and for configuring hardware available exclusively through local integrators.

Once installed and properly configured, users can enjoy easy viewing of many video feeds in full screen video view or thumbnail view; pan, tilt and zoom control camera motion; use the touchscreen’s familiar finger drag and pinch controls; and get automatic discovery of properly configured network cameras.

Happy spying!

Custom made or off the rack, these cashmere cases from Italian company iKashmir, or IK for short, dress your Apple gear in style. We’re especially fond of the black kimono models, but more classic button-down men’s and women’s sweater styles are also in the mix.

Available for your iPod, iPhone and laptop in range of colors and in wool felt, right now you’ll have to visit the Milan showroom to get them.

Giant discount retailer Walmart has slashed its price for MP3 music to 74 cents, challenging both leader Apple and Amazon. The Bentonville, Ark. chain also announced Tuesday it’s MP3 store will offer a free download with each music CD purchased.

The new pricing is limited to what Walmart calls its “Top 25,” songs from such artists as Coldplay, Nickelback and Carrie Underwood.

Recycling in my building is vetted by an angry old man who knows exactly what to do with Tetra Pak, then loudly berates anyone who doesn’t get it right.

For those of you who don’t have such a helpful neighbor there’s Recycler. Siavash Ghamaty developed a free iPhone app that helps you keep track of what plastic recyclables are allowed in your local pickup.

San Diego-based Ghamaty says he developed it “to remind myself of what items I can throw into my recycling and which just don’t go.”

It looks pretty no-frills, but it could save some headaches.

What is it about MacBooks and stickers? What drives people to cover that pristine white (or black) plastic with other people’s brands and logos?

Some people even start putting stickers on the inside. Maybe they ran out of space on the outside.

But now, you see, I’m wondering. Who has the most stickered MacBook of them all? Should that even be a contest that people would want to win? Are the MacBook-stickerers good or are they bad?

So who’s got the most-stickered Macbook around here? Links to your be-stickered masterpieces, please.

All pics used under Creative Commons license. Top: State of the Macbook by psd; middle: untitled by sunshinecity; bottom: Okay, I think I have enough now by Mat Honan. Thanks to all.

Google introduced Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch today with a free version of the fascinating desktop program that literally puts the whole world in your hands. I’ve spent a good portion of the morning playing around with it and am pleased to report the satellite imagery and 3D terrain effects are quite amazing.

Earth makes impressive use of touch screen technology and Apple’s accelerometer, letting you spin the globe with a swipe of your finger and literally tilt your view to the curvature of the earth to see the terrain of whatever place you’re visiting. The application has a ton of information and labeling built in, with links to over 8 million Panoramio photographs and Wikipedia articles you can read within Earth or jump to in Safari.

Google’s handy two minute video linked above explains the app pretty well, and there’s additional information at the Google Earth and Maps Team blog.

I’ve also posted below a gallery of screenshots from my journey this morning. Based on my initial experience, I’d say Google Earth is likely to become a popular time wasting app in a hurry.

“High School Musical” star Vanessa Hudgens is almost never without an iPhone. She hides behind it and prefers to consult it rather than notice that she’s with beau-star Zac Efron in Paris.

Still, even she has to put it down every once in awhile. Here Hudgens catches a limo toting a Mac laptop, dangerously sans case.

Via Bauer Griffin

You may wonder how people at rock concerts wave lighters in the air now that only pariahs smoke and carry Bics.

Enter “American Idol” winner David Cook, whose new single Light On can be downloaded from iTunes for $1.99. It comes with a “lighter” app that illuminates the screen of an iPhone or iPod Touch.

“There’s a little semblance of rock mythos to it,” says the 25-year-old carefully scruffy Cook. “You get a lighter during a rock ballad and nobody burns their thumbs.”

Eco-friendly, yeah. Non-inflammatory. Sure. Cool, not really. You could turn the screen of your iPod or iPhone on and wave it around without an app. But it does open the way for music-related apps. Disturbia anyone?

Via USA Today

The grown-up version of Juicy Couture’s jelly iPhone cases, this black or dusky pink leather case with a clear plastic cover brings the bling with a gold chain and charms.

$75 At Nordstrom

For some time, you could hardly read about Apple without “iPod-maker” following closely behind in press and analyst comments. However, that symbiotic description is dated, according to one of the rising stars among unpaid Apple watchers, Andy Zaky.
Zaky, who watches Apple sales figures from his post at Bullish Cross, wrote Monday iPod sales contributed just 14.2 percent to the fourth quarter revenue of the Cupertino, Calif. company.
By this time in 2009, the iPhone will replace the iPod as the second-greatest revenue generator for Apple, next to Mac sales, the blogger wrote. Last week, Apple reported selling 6 million iPhones for the quarter.
The blogger is among a new breed of Apple analysts not employed by financial houses to provide estimates and insight. Fortune recently gave bloggers the nod over pros in predictions on Apple’s recent Q4 report.

Image Credit: Engadget

Few things rankle a Mac user more than seeing new and interesting products and services rolled out that only work on PC. In my household, Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” is at the top of this maddening list. Basically, anyone with a Netflix account and sufficiently fast PC can watch any of 12,000 movies direct from Netflix servers at no extra charge. It hasn’t come to Macs because the service relies on PC-only DRM. And this drives my wife nuts. As she sees it, she’s already paying Netflix for service, and since that subscription now includes streaming she can’t use, she’s getting charged for a phantom service.

I can’t say I disagree.

At any rate, Netflix today proclaimed that this sad state of affairs won’t continue for long. Starting tomorrow, a limited number of Mac subscribers will be able to use Watch Instantly via a new version of the software rooted in Microsoft’s Silverlight technology (it’s a lot like Flash). Since Silverlight bakes in the PC DRM, it runs fine on a Mac and takes no additional tweaking to function.

Unfortunately, the new platform will be rolled out slowly, with Netflix only promising support for all Intel Mac users by the end of the year. So it might be awhile before Netflix stops getting the stinkeye from my apartment.

Anyone got access yet? How’s it run?

Image credit: Barry Falls/BusinessWeek

Apple’s giant stash of cash is a constant source of speculation in the tech world. Now standing north of $25 Billion, Apple has the money to acquire all but a few hundred companies in the world, and it makes people nervous that the Cupertino Kings won’t snatch up someone big.

Our friend Brian over at Epicenter has an interesting piece of speculation, rating the most likely and least likely acquisition targets Apple could go after during the current downturn. It’s a thought-provoking read, and it’s accompanied by a really fun poll in which readers suggest who Apple should take on. The Dell entry is priceless.

For my part, I always think that the big questions about Apple’s cash and who the company will acquire tend to be misguided. Over its entire history, Apple has shown again and again that it will buy small organizations that possess a specific technology or capability that Apple lacks. That’s the story with NeXT, it’s the story with Logic, and it’s the store with PA Semi. Other than that, Apple invests in its own ideas and its own new efforts, because Steve Jobs believes the solutions Apple needs to triumph don’t exist yet. Apple spends way more time doing its own thing than it does snapping up outsiders.

And a portion of that $25 billion is going straight back into Apple’s future – the company still needs to build that brand new campus in Cupertino, right? Not to mention, new aluminum milling processes aren’t cheap to implement, either…

Hands up if you’re a fan of Fluid, the app that turns any web site (or web application) into a standalone application. Yeah, me too.

If you’ve been following the screencasts and Twitterings of Fluid developer Todd Ditchendorf, you might have noticed some news floating around; he has now launched his official browser spin-off, Cruz.

If you’re confused about the name, don’t worry, you have every right to be. This app was going to be called “Mecca”, but then Todd changed his mind. What was that all about?

The Cult decided to get in touch with Todd and ask him to explain the background. He was kind enough to give us some answers…

UPDATE: This piece has been edited for clarity on the timeline for the legality of same-sex marriage in California.

Citing the vote as an issue of “a person’s fundamental rights,” Apple today made a $100,000 contribution to the NO on 8 campaign, an effort to defeat a measure on next Tuesday’s ballot in California that would overturn the state’s laws permitting same-sex couples to marry.

Apple’s contribution and public stance supporting the No on 8 campaign is noteworthy not only because it is rare for the company to take a public position on political matters, but also because it helps combat the effects of millions of dollars that have been spent by out-of-state religious groups on TV advertisements threatening dire consequences if gays are allowed the right to marry.

California gays and lesbians were first able to marry in 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom arranged for ceremonies at City Hall. Conflicting rulings at the state level confused the issue until the California Supreme Court ruled this year to allow gay marriages throughout the state on equal protection grounds.

The Apple announcement came on the heels of similar public support for defeating the Proposition from Google. Sergey Brin, CEO of the Mountain View-based company wrote in the company blog, “we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument [but] we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.”

Apple’s Hot News release on the matter says, “Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.”

Continuing my personal obsession with software cameras (see recent ravings about CameraBag for the iPhone), today’s work time has been largely spent faffing about with Poladroid, a free desktop app that turns photos into Polaroids. It’s fantastic.

The most memorable product placement on US network TV in the last month was for the iPod, which appeared in the Sept. 18 episode of “Supernatural.”

Quick recap: in the show, brothers Sam and Dean Winchester travel the country investigating paranormal escapades in a 1967 black Chevy Impala.

In the product placement scene, Dean asks Sam about the Apple iPod hooked up to a jack in their car.

Dean is not impressed with the iPod (“you were supposed to take care of her (the car), not douche her up”) and chucks it into the back seat.

Nielson says it was the most recalled product placement in a broadcast network scripted series for the period between September 15 and October 12.

They gauge the number of views who can remember a product placement 24 hours after seeing the show.

The other top two memorable product placements were Tupperware (Cold Case) and Playboy (Two and a Half Men). There’s a joke in there somewhere, don’t disappoint me.

Via TV by Numbers

No frills for this Sportsuit convertible iPhone and iTouch case, but the three-in-oner goes from an armband case to a clip-on case or a slim-profile sleeve.

A belt clip lets you take the iPod or iPhone with you in the car, on a bike and to the gym; we do not know if the handiness of the case makes you work out harder resulting in these biceps.

In black or blue, $34.99. From Marware.

WorldView puts global webcams in your pocket, in a really lovely little free app.

What’s lovely about it isn’t the webcam shots themselves – frankly, once you’ve seen one blurry shot of the Eiffel Tower in the rain, you’ve seen ’em all – but it’s the little extras alongside the images.

The T-Mobile G1 has only been out for a couple of days, but new problems with the first generation of Google’s entry into the phone business continue to materialize just about every hour on the hour. Still the most shocking is the lack of corporate e-mail and calendaring support, with Google assuming that a third-party developer will just magically figure out how to do Exchange ActiveSync and Lotus integration.

Today, the big news is that Google plans to send out a software update at some point with a touchscreen keyboard so that it becomes possible to enter text while using the phone in vertical portrait orientation. Yes, in case you missed it earlier, it’s impossible to even type in a URL while browsing the web in the preferred one-handed iPhone style orientation. Granted, the G1 has a physical QWERTY and a pretty decent one at that, but it’s incredible that any company could ship a phone this intricate without realizing this could be a deal-breaker in actual human use. It’s like they didn’t even test their ideas out before sending them to final production.

I bring all of this up, because it’s another piece of evidence that even though an open-source model works incredibly well when working on technical feasibility and optimization, it’s pretty poor at making a consumer-facing complex system work well together. It’s the same reason that Linux has incredibly low-level networking and multithreading code, and it’s still impossible to expect a decent graphical user interface.

Apple’s focus on freakishly detailed design and engineering can have its own failings, of course (most specifically in leaving out any features that Steve Jobs can’t understand the value of), but it also tends to lead to solutions that were considered as full experiences instead of a collection of features. It all works together well, instead of working well in spite of contradictory features. The holistic approach Apple takes to product design is the reason we love it. Android’s haphazard approach of fixing things as they become crises. Google will mostly catch up eventually, but I have to pity T-Mobile for being forced to fight back with such an unfinished product. The G1 is so far behind that it’s hard to imagine anyone who isn’t a hobbyist being pleased with the first kludgy Android phone.

Android Roadmap via HTC Source via Gizmodo

Eleven years ago, Michael Dell, CEO of Austin, TX-based Dell Computers was asked what he would do if he were CEO of Apple Computers. His answer: “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

It’s hard to know what Steve Jobs would say if he were asked the same question today, because he rarely speaks to the press. But if he wanted to, he could do the very same thing for Dell, Inc. shareholders tomorrow and still have about $10 billion left in the bank.

Apple reported nearly $25 billion cash-on-hand at the end of FY2008 Tuesday and Dell had a market cap of about $24 billion with $9 billion cash of its own at the close of trading on Thursday, graphic indications of the changed fortunes of the two companies over the past decade or so.

Mr. Dell retains a considerable advantage over Mr. Jobs in personal wealth, however, with a Texas-sized net worth of $17.3 billion compared to Jobs’ mere $5.7 billion.

Looking at the chart above comparing the price movements in the stock of the two companies in the past ten years, you have to wonder what they’ve been up to down there in Austin, don’t you?

Via Fortune

Developers Phil Ryu and Andrew Kaz are about to release an iPhone eBook reader with a very cool interface. Flip the iPhone’s screen to turn the page, and the page turns as though it’s a real book! It’s very slick.

Ryu’s $2.99 “Classics” app will feature 10 to 12 books including Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

“We’ll be adding books with free updates,” says Ryu, 20, who lives in Boston.

Ryu is probably best known for his work at MacHeist, and Kaz, 18, was just 14 when he worked on delicious library. Kaz is based in New Jersey.

The pair are planning to submit the app to the app store in a few days.

Meanwhile, they have a preview available, and more details about the app here.

Partially hidden by the fantastic iPhone sales numbers Tuesday was the fact that Apple outsold RIM’s BlackBerry during the third quarter. Analysts say the information may serve as a roadmap for Apple.

Tuesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said 6.9 million iPhones during the quarter. RIM sold 6.1 million BlackBerries during the same period, according to reports.

Global Markets

“Apple sells to a much wider audience than RIM,” Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told Cult of Mac. Apple’s iPhone 3G is sold in 51 nations.

Cool your jets. That’s the advice from analysts on a flurry of conjecture about whether Apple is stealthily testing online some mix of iPhone and MacBook.

What sparked the talk was a brief mention in the New York Times that an unnamed search engine found in its logs an unannounced Apple device with a display size between an iPhone and a MacBook.

Lending further weight to the suggestion were comments by CEO Steve Jobs that the Cupertino, Calif. company “had some pretty interesting” ideas for the netbook or mini-notebook market.