Not that I would know first hand, but there’s this wonderful sense of serendipity that occurs at the eureka moment of invention. Imagine the sensation Jonny Ive must have felt when he invented the Smart Cover for iPad 2: I imagine the moment of serendipity came when he stripped naked and lifted the lid to the Japanese style on-campus communal bath that he shared with Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller and suddenly paused and said to himself, “You know, this bath lid would make a great tablet stand.” And as absurd as that sounds, it’s true… a Japanese folding bath lid does make a wonderful tablet stand!

Somehow, I doubt copycat creators get that same sense of serendipity when they just rip something off. Take Aviiq’s Quick Stand, a laptop stand for your MacBook that “borrows” inspiration from Apple’s Smart Cover, except without any of the magnets or functionality that afford the “smart.”

Not that they’re charging any less for it: the Aviiq Quick Stand will run you $40. As Wired’s resident gadget blogger and secret gerontophile Charlie Sorrel notes, that’s an awful lot of money to spend on something to prop your computer up a couple inches when any old piece of junk would do.

Following a long 10-month delay, the wait for Apple’s white iPhone 4 could soon be over, according to three people with knowledge of the company’s plans. The device will be available through both AT&T and Verizon Wireless and will launch by the end of April.

A Bloomberg report on Wednesday cites three people who are familiar with Apple’s plans, while another report published on Thursday by Reuters cites two more who also claim the white iPhone 4 is currently in production.

A bout of manufacturing challenges have delayed the device – which is rumored to have included paint that becomes discolored and peels under heat, light leakage into the camera, and light leakage out of the case – the device that many thought would never see the light of day could finally be released from the Foxconn factory.

Despite a message on Twitter last month from Apple’s vice president Phil Schiller, confirming the white device would be available this spring, the recent removal of any image depicting the device from Apple’s website fuelled rumors that the handset would not be launching.

[via AppleInsider]

According to a source speaking to 9to5Mac, when the Apple Store went down this morning, there was only one major change in the database when it came back online… the total elimination of the white iPhone 4 from Apple’s database.

Not only is the SKU gone from Apple’s system, but images that were once for the white iPhone 4 have now been tweaked to feature the black iPhone 4 instead.

Mac OS X celebrates its tenth birthday today. The groundbreaking operating system was introduced to the public on March 24, 2001. Mac OS X helped reverse Apple’s fortunes in the desktop PC market, and has underpinned a lot of Apple’s subsequent success. Most importantly, it spawned iOS, which runs today’s iPads and iPhones.

Below is the story of how OS X’s game-changing interface came about. The story gives some insight into corporate creativity at Apple. OS X’s interface started as a side project. But as soon as Steve Jobs got wind of it, it was fast-tracked. Jobs became intimately involved in its development — a scary prospect for the programmers working on it.

But the struggle wasn’t just in its development. Apple had to nail the switch from the old Mac OS to the new, or it could have sunk the company. Guess which ally was crucial to the transition — Apple’s old enemy, Microsoft.

With the launch of OS X, Jobs finally took the title of Apple’s permanent CEO. Prior to that he’d been the interim CEO, or iCEO, and OS X was the last major part of the company he needed to fix.

Although not much more than a questionable confirmation of existing rumors, 9to5Mac is claiming that a source close to Foxconn has told them that the iPhone 5 will have a larger edge-to-edge screen and an aluminum back while otherwise sharing the form factor of the iPhone 4.We’re not sure what to make of these rumors.

Phil Schiller has promised us that the white iPhone 4 is going to be coming this spring after long delays, but previous reports have suggested that it might be a GSM-only affair, leaving Verizon customers with no options but to buy the black iPhone 4.

iTunes 10.2 begs to differ, though. Within the resource files of the latest version of iTunes, you can find icons for the white iPhone 4 in both CDMA and GSM flavors, as differentiated from one another by their different antenna banding.

That’s no guarantee of a CDMA white iPhone 4, of course, but it certainly implies that Verizon customers will be able to get their hands on one in the coming months… just a couple months ahead of the launch of the iPhone 5.

I hate to say it, but I have a bad feeling about Steve Jobs’ latest leave of absence. I’m not optimistic he will return to Apple. He’s been gravely ill and has cheated death, but there are some hard numbers about cancer and transplant survival rates that even someone as charmed as Jobs can’t escape.

I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but I get a feeling this is the start of Steve Jobs moving on from Apple. There will be a slow phasing out this year as he hands the reigns to Tim Cook. I expect it will be drawn out, a gradual transition of power. But I don’t think Jobs is returning to Apple.

The big question, of course, is how Apple will do without him.

So now we know that OS X 10.7 Lion will be released next summer, and that many of its features will be based on the loop of feedback Steve Jobs described: the Mac influenced the iPhone, which influenced the iPad, which is now influencing the Mac once more.

Or to put it another way: expect lots of iOS-style controls, widgets and designs in Lion.

If you looked closely at the demos in yesterday’s presentation, you might have noticed one or two little details that offer hints of what’s to come.

FaceTime’s been a huge success on the iPhone and iPod Touch. You knew it was coming to the Mac, and guess what? Now it has.

Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller demonstrated the new functionality, calling between an iPhone 4 and a Mac. When Steve rotates his iPhone, it rotates on Phil’s computer as well. It even does fullscreen.

Wonder how long you’ll have to wait? Barely any time at all: Apple will be releasing FaceTime for Mac in beta form today.

[image via Gizmodo]

Apple has refreshed its Mac Pro, giving the desktop workhorse up to 12 processing cores for a top speed of 3.33GHz, boosting performance by up to 50 percent. The refresh also provides users the option of four 512GB solid state drives.

“The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and configurable Mac we’ve ever made,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With up to 12 cores, the new Mac Pro outperforms our previous top-of-the-line system by up to 50 percent, and with over a billion possible configurations, our customers can create exactly the system they want.”