Hey, does anyone else miss those crazy days of Apple trade dress lawsuits? Back when the iMac was a "surprise" smash hit, suddenly the Wintel market unleashed a flood of cheap knock-offs intended to capitalize on the success of the designer original. Apple's Big Scary Lawyers battled valiantly, citing the iMac's "distinctive look and feel" and the possibility of customer confusion. Given how obviously the clones ripped off the iMac's design, it didn't take long for various courts to issue preliminary injunctions against the copycats, and most of those manufacturers saw which way the wind was blowing. Eventually Apple secured settlements from all of them-- all of them, that is, but Future Power USA, who swore to defend to the death its inalienable God-given right to make cheap, ugly plagiarisms of other people's computer designs. (Talk about leaving the door wide open for a sequel...)

Well, hang onto your tracing paper, because Future Power is back and badder than ever. That's right; even though Apple's first lawsuit against the original iMac knockoff artist still hasn't been resolved (at least, if it has, no one bothered to tell us), faithful viewer Cru Jones hit us hard with a link to Future Power's latest creation: the AIO. AIO, you may have guessed, stands for "All-In-One," and for a company who is already entangled in litigation due to a product looking too much like an iMac, Future Power doesn't appear to have learned many lessons.

Need we go over the laundry list of similarities? There's the swoopy, curvy all-in-one design. There's the two-tone color scheme-- white and a deeper translucent blue, which, incidentally, looks quite a bit like Indigo to us. And then there's the specs list, which includes such familiar elements as 64 or 128 MB of RAM, a 10 or 20 GB hard drive, a 56k v.90 modem, 10/100 Ethernet, and two USB ports. The fact that Future Power is calling this thing a "unique system" only reveals just how mentally disturbed those guys are. Heck, even the name is the name of one of Apple's own products-- the Power Macintosh G3 All-in-one, released only two months before the iMac's formal introduction. (Although we have to admit-- the Future Power AIO is possibly a bit more engaging than Apple's AIO, which looked sort of a like a Performa 550 that sat in a hot car too long.) Sure, any one of these factors by itself might not be enough to attract the fiery wrath of Apple's divine Lawyers of Death, but taken as a whole, we have to assume that the legal team smells blood in the water.

There is one feature of the AIO that's new, however: the 17-inch display. That's right, kiddies; those of you who have been holding out for a 17-inch iMac just got your wish-- sort of. What's particularly galling about this development is that if Apple ever does plan to get off its duff and ship an iMac with a bigger screen, Future Power's just the sort of company that'll use that fact in court. "Oh, no, Your Honor-- clearly it's Apple who is copying us! Have you seen how they stole our idea to incorporate a 17-inch display? It's shameful, isn't it?" Get ready for the fireworks, people.