The world of PC case mods is a wierd and wonderful one, and something that is very rare to find Mac owners taking part in.

With a Mac, you are best off just decorating the existing shape, because the shape is beautiful. With most PCs, the shape of the box is dull as all hell, so doing something about that seems appropriate rather than just decoration.

One of my old flatmates when I lived in the States was a product designer at Ziba. He was involved in an initiative paid for by Intel, to radically reimagine what a desktop PC could be – they came up with specialised machines in the end, rather than the one-computer-does-it-all approach that we live with now. So an MP3 server with a shit-hot CD burner was designed to sit comfortably with your Hi-fi units, and so on. A web surfing machine was designed to look pretty, be lightweight, and have a built-in flat screen so that you could pass it around. Point being, they were all designed to be small and fit into dedicated cases which were not square boxes. There are three examples (not the best of the bunch, I must say) in the Ziba portfolio under Intel.

PCs are generally dull, unimaginative shapes because their nature is to be openly customisable, which logically leads to big empty square cases into which any old components can easily fit. If you know what you want your components to be in advance, you can customise the shape and size of your PC case accordingly, without worrying about leaving space for later modifications. This is how people fit their PCs into Sega Master System cases, for example.

Macs are generally more interesting shapes (see the flat-panel iMacs, for example), for precisely this reason. If the motherboard never needs to be accessed or changed, why not make it circular to fit into a domed case?

There are, however, occasional worthwhile Mac mods – especially nice when they are sympathetic to Apple’s original designs. Take a look at the gorgeous work of Hirokazu Kuwata, whose Japanese site is here. Now if only I could read Japanese, I would be able to buy a kit to recreate his amazing work…

Sometimes it seems that half the world’s population uses Hotmail, even though it has so many limitations. I can’t tell you why the URL ihatehotmail.com leads you to Google, but I can point out a far superior web-based email service.

Fastmail is the best I’ve ever found, and techy geek friends of mine swear by it too, so that proves it works. It’s free, it’s as easy to remember as a Hotmail address, it’s fast, reliable and secure… and it’s not got anything to do with Microsoft. If you want a new web-based email account, go there.