Yowza! For the past week, we've been holding off on mentioning Apple's stock price because we didn't want to jinx anything, but at this point there's no way we can sit idly by and pretend that nothing's happening. After a fairly long stretch at hovering in the mid-thirties, AAPL started to see a slow rise-- not because Apple reported their sixth consecutive Street-beating profit, which Wall Street responded to with a big fat yawn, but rather because IBM announced better-than-expected results. Strange how the world works, hmmm? Of course, the IBM-influenced bump is nothing compared to what's been happening over the past couple of days.

See, apparently the key to stock performance is how well that stock is rated by all these analysts running around. Strangely enough, Apple's ratings are consistently quite a bit lower than one would expect for a company that's doing as well as it is. Recently, though, some of the analysts are coming around and getting past the age-old "Apple is dying" prejudice. Most recently, according to a Reuters article, the firm of Golman Sachs upgraded Apple from "market perform" to their recommended list-- which is apparently their highest rating. And that's what Wall Street pays attention to, because by the end of the day, AAPL had leaped up over four points to settle at 45.75-- within spitting distance of the year-long high of 47.31 it hit last January. Things are looking up.

We have a feeling this isn't a one-time spike like we see at the big Apple events; something tells us that a higher stock price due to an analyst upgrade is probably more of a long-term gain. Of course, we could be wrong, and there's always the jinx factor. However, we feel that the only way we could really jinx Apple's stock price would be to actually buy some AAPL. As it stands, we fulfill our duty to Apple's continued financial success by utterly refraining from owning even one share of stock, since our bad luck with money matters is legendary. If we had bought AAPL at 16, it'd currently be hovering around 12. So if you're reaping the benefits from Apple's stock performance, just remember whom to thank.

You knew it was only a matter of time before the iMac knock-offs started appearing, right? After all, given that the iMac is one of the most successful computers of all time (yes, we're just making assumptions, so don't ask for proof), it was obvious from the beginning that some companies would try to figure out just what made the iMac so darn popular and then incorporate that "iMacness" into their own products. For a particularly blatant example, NoBeige pointed us towards A-Top Technology, whose new PC cases could not be a more obvious ripoff of the iMac color scheme. After all, there's no denying that the iMac's distinctive translucent coloring is at least partially responsible for its runaway popularity...

...But A-Top's "Color Series Translucent Plastic Cases" aren't just colored and translucent-- the clearly went beyond just borrowing a page from Apple's book and instead pretty much photocopied the whole chapter on "Color," crossed out Apple's name, and scrawled theirs in instead. One glance at the A-Top cases and you notice that they use a solid translucent color highlighted with a translucent white-- "Ice," anyone? More to the point, three of the available colors are named exactly like Apple's: Lime, Strawberry, and Grape. Then there's Orange-- how sneaky of them to rename Tangerine. A note states that Blueberry is "coming soon." And the final color available now is called "Blackish Green," which is basically a muddier Bondi Blue with a name that, instead of evoking the deep blue-green waters of Bondi Beach in Australia, evokes the mental image of a brackish swamp. (Elsewhere on the page, the color is referred to as "Dark Teal," which is a step in the right direction.) Not that A-Top doesn't have some innovation coming soon-- apparently black and white enclosures are on their way.

Sure, it's kind of goofy to see a company hawking iMac-themed PC cases that lack the overall curved and integrated simplicity of the iMac itself, but if you've got to use a PC, we suppose they beat having a beige box. Plus, A-Top claims that owning one of these cases "drastically increases the overall quality & value of the entire system," so how can you go wrong? You even get something that you won't find in an iMac or a blue-and-white G3-- a slot for a floppy drive. Where do we sign up?