And they found ... not that much. There's something not-quite-right about these snapshots purportedly from inside Apple's Cupertino campus. They look like they come from almost anywhere -- despite the plentiful Apple products (and one notable Microsoft natural keyboard), there's no major signs of genius -- no "the crazy ones" posters, iTablet prototypes lying around, or "how to act around His Steveness" employee pamphlets. Could it be that the people who work at Apple are, strangely enough, just like us?

No, surely not. These pictures are also a bit out of date, we're told, as rumor has it that the front lobby always shows off the new products, not the old iMacs. So clearly these snaps are from the late '90s, when the rest of us were using beige boxes and OS 9 to compute, and only Apple employees had the luxury of using thin keyboards and horizontal LCDs gone vertical (madness!) in their super-futuristic office space. There: our worldview is back to normal. As normal as it gets, anyway.

Thanks, Steve!

No matter how you identify with the computing aspect of your life being able to take your contacts and calendar on the go can be pretty invaluable, especially if you have more than three friends and your iCal has more colored blocks than a Rubix Cube. But how can you figure out which device(s) on your wishlist will actually work with Mac OS X's built-in syncing app, iSync? Should you dig through the annals of individual manufacturer's support pages? Or perhaps post across multiple forums for someone - anyone - to answer the call of your syncing questions? No I say! Do not go gently into that convoluted mess of neglected support docs and clunky forum systems!

Bad literature jokes and drama aside, Apple maintains a pretty up-to-date list of iSync-friendly devices on their own. If you're definitely looking for a phone that syncs, this list should help make the decision pretty black and white. However, I say this with a word of caution: while this list is thorough and updated fairly often (typically listing new phone models before they hit the street), it isn't 100% complete in that Apple doesn't always list related model numbers. For example: Cingular had a Sony Ericsson w600 available for quite some time, and it was listed at Apple's iSync devices page. I picked up an unlocked w800i a while back (killer non-Smartphone with a great camera, by the way) - a similar phone with a near-identical version of the OS that synced perfectly fine with my Mac, but Apple didn't list the w800 line until that phone officially came to US Cingular stores. Why is anybody's guess, but the point is: if you have your eyes on a phone that is related by model number to a phone on Apple's list, chances are that it should work with iSync just fine. That said, if you aren't too familiar with a phone that isn't on this list, you should probably still hit up a couple forums to make sure before you thrown down hundreds of dollars on a device that might not actually shake hands with iSync (in other words: that's a disclaimer so you don't sue me).

Lastly, for most Smartphone devices which aren't on this list (outside of Symbian, of course), there are always products like PocketMac and the Missing Sync which can handle syncing BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices.

Here we go with the Apple patent game again, and this time around it looks like we have blasts from the past and the future. Engadget first tracked down a patent filed by Apple yesterday (pictured right) for "A cubical computer housing assembly comprises first and second ends and four sides, which define an interior compartment for housing the various computer component." Could this be the comeback of the cube? Apple obviously hasn't let the concept go gently into that good night with their cubed New York store, but since this patent is so fresh, don't expected anything to come of it anytime soon - if ever.

The next patent is a bit more interesting in part because AppleInsider has quite a few juicy details, but also because it was filed over a year ago and references a phone-like Apple device which has received almost constant speculation during that time.

Grant Robertson at The Digital Music Weblog (a sister blog) has dug up details on a move from the Canadian Automobile Association to pressure provincial governments in Canada to ban younger drivers from using electronic devices, such as mobile phones and MP3 players, in the car, eh. While some think they have their song switching skillz down pat while juggling a Big Gulp™ and steering with their knee, Grant also cites a study released in April 2006 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that states "the many forms of distractions are collectively responsible for as many as eight out of every ten crashes" (do y'all even have 711's and 'Big Gulps' in Canada? If not, consider yourselves lucky).

Check out Grant's post on the issue covering more on this sudden iPod-hating from Canada (we kid). But if the thought of not being able to cart your tunes with you is too much to bear, you might also need to start checking up on those fancy iPod-integration kits that let you control your iPod from your steering wheel.

While I've been a happy iPod owner since the very first 5 GB model, I realize that we live in a world with plenty of other devices that can play music. Fortunately, a company by the name of "utsire" realizes this as well and has created Thrupp, a handy utility for sending your iTunes music (sans iTMS purchases) to virtually any other MP3 player that can be mounted as a drive in the Finder, including music phones.

Thrupp is smart too, as it not only can convert AAC songs to MP3 for your device on the fly in the background while you work, it can also display all file sizes and free space, letting you keep an eye on exactly how much space each song is going to take up. Now I haven't grabbed a copy since I don't have any music playing devices besides an iPod, but Thrupp's screenshot looks like it can display your entire iTunes music library as well as your playlists, making it easy to track down just the songs and albums you want.

Overall this looks like a good app for all those non-iPod devices out there. A demo is available, and a full license is $14.95.