Apple is often lauded for its design chops. And Apple's post-modern industrial design is lyrical next to Dell's neo-Soviet brutalism. But Apple makes some really stupid choices. Here are the top 5 - and the best workarounds.

In reverse order:

5) Keyboards
4) Not enough USB ports
3) Replaceable notebook drives
2) Synchronization
And the #1, all-time, biggest Mac design fiasco: the Mouse

Who knows what lurks within the dark heart of the Frankenmac?

Running a Mac operating system on hardware not designed at One Infinite Loop may seem exotic to some Mac users, but it's a stroll down memory lane for me. Back in the 1990s, I spent about a year-and-a-half as an employee of Umax's short-lived SuperMac clone division. That was, of course, before Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and put an end to the Mac clones.

There's been a clone revival of sorts in recent weeks, sparked by Psystar's announcement that it would offer a low-cost PC capable of running Mac OS X. (Yes, Macworld Lab has placed an order for Psystar's Open Computer to see if the shipping product lives up to its claims.) Closer to home, Macworld senior editor Rob Griffiths built his own do-it-yourself Mac from off-the-shelf PC parts. And after running some informal tests, Rob sent his so-called "Frankenmac" to Macworld Lab for the definitive word on how its performance compares to an Apple-approved Mac.

We've written a lot about Psystar's Open Computer Mac clone. I'd venture so far as to say we've written about it way too freakin' much.

But I figure it scores pretty high on the "potentially interesting" meter, so it's worth mentioning that the Open Computer may actually be a real, booting-and-computing machine that Pystar is actually selling and actually shipping.

Contrary to what some of my friends now think, I don't actually recommend that everyone run out and get a Mac. Even though I've personally been delighted by my Mac experience I know there are others that simply cannot move to a Mac from Windows. If people aren't willing to make changes to the way they do things chances are their switch will fail and you will likely hear no end of grief from the person that's getting the machine based on your recommendation....

Here are a couple of the key differences that I've found between Macs and Windows that trip users up and frustrate them:

Keyboard Shortcuts in Text
A Different Approach to Menus.....

These are just two quick areas; in the past I've touched on others as well. There are also differences in window resizing, drag and drop support, quitting applications, file management (don't assume that dragging folders in OS X has the same effect it has in Windows - it does not), installing and uninstalling applications, etc., etc. On top of this are different applications, peripheral support, etc.....

For this reason I've decided to stop pushing a Mac on my wife. It's going to be a lot easier for her to make the transition if she really wants one.....

In the meantime I'm going to enjoy using my Macs.

Some plug-ins are written only in PowerPC code, and hence require their host applications to also be run in PowerPC mode (Rosetta) on Intel-based Macs. However, Apple and other developers have disabled the default ability to choose whether some Universal Binaries run under Rosetta or in native Intel mode.....

However, some applications have the capability to toggle this option disabled by default.

You can enable the run-in-Rosetta capabilities for some applications via the following process.....

The recent columns on clamshell iBooks here on Low End Mac (Mother of the MacBook Air, Graphite Clamshell iMac Still a Real Eye Catcher and Useful Tool, Clamshell iBooks Reconsidered) hit a real soft spot for me....

I thought it would be neat to have a portable DVD player to amuse myself during the ride down and during the occasional long breaks when the network was being updated with patches or whatnot.

....My roommate saw me paging through screens of Sonys one evening and suggested that, since the "Ice Books" had just debuted, I wander over to Mac Of All Trades and see what they had in the way of clamshell iBooks. The last ones did have DVD players, after all....

Sure enough, they were running a deal on refurbished iBook SE FireWire machines in the "Key Lime" color scheme for right at a grand. Neat! Not only could I watch movies on the thing, but maybe I could use it to . . . surf the 'net or something. I mean, sure, it was obsolete....

Seven years down the road, that "obsolete" machine is sitting on my lap as I type this, relaxing on the front porch on a cool springtime evening. For seven years that obsolete iBook has been my trusty road warrior.... With its good keyboard, rugged build, and that nifty built-in carry handle, it's still a fantastic utility infielder of a laptop.....

The guys at Psyster ought to take a look at this video. Who wants a cheap and shoddy version of something Apple already sells when you could have the smallest Mac in the World?

OQO Talk forum member trf managed to get Apple's OS up and running on the tiny OQO handheld..... It even copes with Leopard's Cover Flow view, although you can hear the fans kick in to keep things cool.

If the MacBook Air just isn't portable enough for you, but you want something a little more than an iPhone, there haven't been a lot of options in the Mac arena to date. Windows users, meanwhile, have had the choice of using handheld computers like the OQO. Of course, the OQO is really just a very small PC, and as the Psytar clone wars have shown us, you can run OS X on pretty much anything you can run Windows on these days.

A user at the OQO Talk forums, going by the handle trf, claims to have gotten Leopard running on an OQO, dual-booting alongside Windows. The process is apparently not for the faint of heart, and there are still some lingering issues (getting the WWAN support working seems to be the biggest of them), but you can take a gander at this video to see the setup in action.

There's been much ado on the internet lately regarding an American company called Psystar producing, or at least claiming to produce, inexpensive computers that run Apple's OS X operating system. Recent developments include a video at Gizmodo purporting to show one of the so called "open computers" booting up and, after a very PC-like BIOS screen, loading OS X....

We will, of course, keep monitoring Psystar and keep you updated on any developments. In the meantime, what do you think: would you buy an OS X computer from a third party, would you prefer to build one yourself, or is OS X only a worthwhile purchase when it's running on original Apple hardware?

One of the things I recommend.... is to keep your Mac clean. Whether it's avoiding getting crumbs stuck under your keyboard's keys or making sure your air vents aren't clogged, keeping your Mac gunk-free is just as important for its long-term survival as keeping an eye on its hard-drive health.

I bring this up because... I realized that I hadn't followed my own advice. I'm usually pretty good about keeping my Macs clean, but for various reasons I'd neglected to thoroughly clean the inside of my Mac Pro for quite some time. I'd noticed it gradually getting louder over the previous months, generally an indication that the fans were having to work harder to keep it cool....

I started noticing something else: problematic video behavior. I'd occasionally see odd lines across the screen, as well as onscreen artifacts that looked as if someone had grabbed a corner of a window and peeled it back. And every once in a while I would do something that taxed the video card.... and the entire machine would lock up, forcing me to restart.

.....I discovered many similar reports, focusing on the Mac Pro's Radeon X1900XT video card....

That's when I realized I hadn't been thorough enough with my monthly cleaning....., the video card's air-intake vent was almost completely blocked.....

For those who don't know him, Paul Thurrott is a sycophant for Microsoft. He likes to find any excuse to sling mud at Apple for the delight of his fans (and of course for the pleasure of MS.) Recently on his website, he was displaying the market share numbers for computer sales. This, of course, shows that Macs are only a small part of overall PC sales, and that is supposed to put us in our place. Mac sales are growing, but the remain only a fraction of the market.

To the best of my knowledge, Paul is correct about Apple's market share. But if this is true, why has Apple stock price gone up 2000%?

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