Remember all the time we've spent sitting around waiting for Apple to get off its duff and ship a new PDA to replace the long-lamented Newton? Well, Apple never actually got around to producing one-- but that's not going to stop Mike Dell from releasing his own copycat PDA anyway. (Yes, the guy is that sick.) If you keep your ear to the ground about more general tech stuff instead of limiting your worldview entirely to All Things Apple, you've probably already heard that Dell plans to unveil its first handheld device next week, at a price point that may make other PDA manufacturers require a change of shorts. Expect a price war in that market, because the new Dell handhelds are reportedly going to undercut comparable competing PDAs by hundreds of dollars.

So if Apple doesn't have a PDA, how exactly is Dell's an Apple ripoff, you ask? Well, we won't really know until the device comes to market, but faithful viewer Andrew Borovsky happened upon this image of the upcoming Dell Axim X5-- and you can't tell us that the swoopy blue pattern on the screen doesn't look a whole lot like the default Desktop image in currently shipping Macs. Moreover, what's with the extremely Aquaesque Dell logo in the middle of the screen? Shiny round button, light cast from straight up... apparently Dell's decided to run the Axim with Mac OS X Lite. You know, just like Apple was rumored to be working on all that time.

We know what you're thinking: can we really trust that this image is legit? Okay, sure, you've got no particular reason to believe that InfoSync didn't publish a doctored image. But if you still doubt the Apple-Dell PDA connection, how do you explain this Associated Press article? At broadcast time it makes this extremely interesting statement: "A company spokesman said Dell decided against Macintosh's Palm OS5 technology because Microsoft's Pocket PC is a better fit for Dell's move toward standardization."

Wait, Macintosh's Palm OS5? Company name/product name confusion aside, we knew that Apple and Palm were working together a lot lately, and we know that Palm OS 5 incorporates BeOS technologies that at one point Apple was considering using as the basis of what is now known as Mac OS X-- but who knew that Palm's latest operating system is apparently a covert Apple project? Clearly something strange is going on here.

Of course, strange as it may be, that last bit sort of contradicts the whole "Dell is copying Apple" thingy, so we probably shouldn't have mentioned it if we actually wanted to convince you of anything... so, um, never mind. Say take a look at that picture again, willya? Boy howdy, that suuuure is some crazy Apple ripoff, ain't it?