Hasta La Gadget!

Man, computers become obsolete so quickly these days. You buy a computer and then, a month later, there’s something better on the market. So, why the heck would anyone shell out for a 30-year-old system? Why because it’s a collectors item, of course.

An anonymous buyer picked up an Apple-1 for $213,600. The exceedingly rare system from 1976 includes a 6502 microprocessor, an Apple-1 motherboard, a printed circuit board, three capacitors, a keyboard interface, 8kbs of RAM, and a letter signed by “Steven Jobs,” amongst other then start of the art features.

The Christie’s listing describes the product thusly,

Introduced in July 1976, the Apple-1 was sold without a casing,power supply, keyboard or monitor. However, because the motherboard was completely pre-assembled, it represented a major step forward in comparison with the competing self-assembly kits of the day.

The auction also includes papers from computer scientist Alan Turing.

Apple! Black Friday! Deals! Are you excited yet? Apple today started teasing its annual Black Friday sale by sending a note to customers bearing the tagline “Wrap it up this Friday.”

Apple isn’t giving away the details–odds are it will actually wait until Friday for that–but it has hinted that “You’ll find dozens of great iPad, iPod and Mac gifts for everyone on your list.”

As always, deals will be found both at Apple Stores and online at Apple.com. The sale starts this Friday November 26th, at 8:00 AM.

Nothing to see here, really. According to analysts–words that more or less seem to mean “it’s a crapshoot” these days–Apple’s second iPad is due out for an April 2011 release–right on track from last year’s schedule.

In fact, the news here, if there is any, is the fact (well, not fact, per se) that Apple won’t be breaking out of its seemingly set-in-stone schedule. As you remember, the first iPad was announced in January and began hitting store shelves in April.

According to early rumors, Apple was planning to mix thing up a bit, releasing the second device in time for the holidays–but, seeing as how we’re now in Thanksgiving week, the holidays are pretty much now.

Lots of rumors surrounding potential features for the thing, including the dual camera set up from the iPhone 4 for FaceTime chats, a gyroscope for motion gaming, a Cortex A9 CPU, and a mini-USB, which would mark a big change from the company’s long pin dock connector.

Everyone hates Apple products. That’s why there’s so much documentation of people going to great lengths to torture and destroy them.

While I don’t have any hard data, I imagine the vast majority of Apple products are purchased for the express purpose of destroying them as soon as they are unboxed.

Some might think this is a waste of time and a not-inconsequential amount of recession-era money. But those people would be wrong, I can think of very little that would be more important.

That’s why I would like to personally nominate giving a Congressional Medal of Honor to graphic artist Michael Tompert for his collaboration with photographer Paul Fairchild who wisely chose to purchase various forms of Apple gadgetry in order to (artistically) eviscerate them.

The end results are actually pretty striking and strangely beautiful. If the point of art is to create something that’s captivating while making choices no one else has thought to do before, then these guys are winners at the game of art.

The series was part of a display of large briefly shown at San Francisco’s Live Worms Gallery.

More images after the jump.

via Cult of Mac, Fubiz; images via both

There is a horrible disease endemic in the tech world, and its name is “iTouch.” For some reason, even people who are otherwise sticklers for accuracy like eWeek [see left] and super-analyst Mary Meeker seem incapable of understanding the product name “iPod touch.” I’m not talking about subtleties like the fact that the “t” in “touch” is lower case. I’m talking about the whole name.