Saturday, November 11, 2006

I Doubt Apple Will Sue

This picture respectfully taken from the Tulip Ego site. I hope they appreciate the free advertising.

I was reading coolest-gadgets.com this evening when I saw a picture of the notebook pictured above. As an owner of a 266 mhz G3 tangerine iBook (pictured below with a blue one), the first thing I thought was that somehow Apple had revised this design and issued a new computer. Of course, they recently released MacBooks and I know they do not resemble the old models. It's not like Apple to recycle old designs so flagrantly anyway. It's even less likely for them to recycle a design which was often likened to a toilet seat in design and which was criticized for adding too much bulk and weight to the computer because of the added material.


The fact that the iBook design wasn't universally lauded makes it all the more curious that an expensive vanity computer like the Tulip Ego would ape it's design. The Tulip Ego was designed by Laurent de Beer but I can't imagine he lives in a sufficient vacuum to have missed Apple's iBooks. The computer comes in different possible external designs (using "shells") and can include 470 diamonds and cost over $300,000. It's essentially a vanity computer which could make it a kissing cousin of a Mac depending on your opinions of Mac users. ;-)

While Apple has been known to sue companies for attempting weak rip-offs of their popular models as they have done in the past with the original gumdrop, color iMacs and the Mac Mini, I don't think they're likely to sue over someone using a design similar to such an old model.

The funny thing about this computer's information page is that I was unable to find information anywhere that tells me what OS it runs. While I'm pretty sure it runs Windows, I find it particularly amusing that the company found this information sufficiently inconsequential as not to mention it on any of its main pages.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I use to worked for a maverick-type winery owner. Total Mac fan. He would love to open his lime green iBook in meetings were everyone would have a standard black or silver Windows laptop. I however, loved my black Dell and black PowerBook.

Shari said...

I think Macs look great and I've been known to actually look through pages and pages of posts where people show how they set up their desks to showcase their Macs. Yeah, I know, pathetic. ;-)

Actually, I just like to see how people live and what they value. The way they organize their computer desks actually does say something about their priorities just like the way your former boss perhaps did what he could to showcase his iBook said something about him.

Anonymous said...

I recently saw that laptop in some Dutch design magazine (as the computer is made and designed in the Netherlands), and the first thing we thought was that the designer indeed took one look to much at the G3 Macs. It does only run windows...

Shari, I have some photo's of my desk here on my blog ;)
The text is still dutch, but I'll be switching to english soon.

Shari said...

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who saw the similarity. ;-)

Thanks for the desk shots. Yes, I looked. :-)