Whether you’re hunting for presents for an Apple-adoring friend, or a treat for yourself, this gift guide will help you procure some of the most exclusive items available.

Browsing through this gift guide you’ll find a handpicked selection of some of the most luxurious Apple-related items from across the globe. There’s something for everyone, from a handmade iPod case and chic designer MacBook sleeve for her, to a solar powered iPod dock and OS X-themed photo frame for him.

So it’s time to forget that last minute flurry of festive purchases and set aside your gift hunting woes as you browse the alternative Apple gift guide.

Hard Graft’s 2UNFOLD Laptop Bag ($564)

One of the most luxurious items in the gift guide, each limited edition 2UNFOLD is assembled in Italy, individually handmade and numbered. The bag is immaculately constructed but also fervently utilitarian: with a few simple folds it can be re-configured from backpack to shoulderbag, briefcase to clutch. There’s room for a couple of Monocle back issues alongside, of course, ample space for your 13″, 15″ or even 17″ MacBook.

ReNu’s Solar Powered iPod Dock (from $199)

Unlike other iPod docks, this one makes use of ReNu’s solar module, charging your iPhone or iPod by harnessing the power of the sun. After charging up using this elegant device, you’re also left with that warm smugness that can only come from being environmentally friendly. If you’ve got this item in mind for the Christmas season, potential purchasers should note that the docks are set to ship in February 2010. However, order now and you can take advantage of ReNu’s early supporter price.

Byrd & Belle’s Felt and Leather iPhone Case ($19)

Handmade from soft wool felt, these cases are a classic look ideal for both guys and girls. The soft felt outer and cotton fabric inner will protect your precious iPhone from dust and scratches while the hand-dyed leather strap will make sure it’s always secure inside the case. Byrd & Belle’s iPhone cases are produced in limited runs. If there’s none left in stock it’s worth checking out the other beautiful items available in their store too, all worthy additions to any Apple connoisseur’s collection.

ThinkGeek’s Image.jpg Photo Frame ($24.99)

This clever photo frame mixes digital with analog. Styled after OS X’s Aqua aesthetic, the Image.jpg photo frame is a quirky item that’s sure to draw attention to whatever photo it happens to be housing. As ThinkGeek point out, it’s totally analog, which means no registering and no software updates — just slide a photo in to the wooden frame and you’re good to go.

Mulberry for Apple (from $180)

If there’s a lady in your life who’s looking for a true taste of British style then Mulberry’s new range of Apple bags, cases and clutches may be the perfect gift. Established in 1971, Mulberry has moved with the times ensuring that its items always stay fashion-forward while capturing the original essence of the brand. Highlights of the Mulberry for Apple range include the chic Drew sleeve for the 15″ MacBook and the Bayswater Mini Messenger clutch for iPhone.

iamhuman’s MacBook Covers (from $30)

With MacBook’s becoming a mainstream notebook, it’s becoming increasingly important that we’re able to give our digital companions a twist of individuality. This brand new range from iamhuman offsets the generic stylings of your MacBook with a natural finish. Alongside a range of textile covers, made from materials such as denim, there’s also a premium range created from the finest rosewood, ebony and cork.

Twelve South’s Bookarc ($49.99)

The BookArc is a neat solution for keeping your MacBook in pride of place on your desktop while giving you the clarity of thought that a clutter-free workspace brings. Your MacBook can be placed comfortably and securely in the BookArc. All the ports and plugs are still accessible too. For those looking to spread a little clarity throughout their workspace, the BookArc is available at a discounted rate as a 6-pack.

The Griffin + Threadless Collection ($34.99)

Threadless, purveyor of fine t-shirts, has collaborated with Griffin to create a pair of iPhone cases which simultaneously protect and ooze cool. The first design, entitled Birds of a Feather, comes in white while the second, Clouds within Thunder, is a dazzling hipster yellow. Both designs are available as t-shirts too, presenting the possibility of an excellent combination gift. The cases themselves are snap-on shells, protecting from scratches, dust and, according to Threadless, boringness too.

Instructables’ Sewable iPod Remote (DIY)

Getting your hands dirty with a DIY gift might not immediately sound like the most luxurious prospect but there’s nothing quite as classy as creating your own handmade item. This ten-minute tutorial, available from Instructables, walks you through creating a delightful Hello Kitty iPod remote. You’ll need a basic grasp of electronics and a dash of confidence too but making this yourself means that you can give someone special a genuine one-off piece with a personal twist.

Back in October,HardMac reported that Apple was busy testing Intels new Gulftown Xeon chip ahead of its inclusion in a refresh of the Mac Pro, which is slated for release early next year. The 32nm Gulftown chip is an evolution of the 45nm architecture found in the currently-shipping 2009 Mac Pro model.

Gulftown will be sold under the Core i9 brand name for consumer machines, while its server counterpart will be labeled the Xeon 5600 series. HardMacs sources suggested Apple would have short-term exclusive use of the chip, much as it did for each of the last two Xeon revisions of the Mac Pro line.

Now, according to AppleInsider, Polish website PCLab last week published performance test results on Gulftown, showing that the new chips operated at nearly twice the speed of the previous generation chips during parallel tasks. In addition, they consumed only 50 percent as much power doing so. Sadly, the performance results are no longer available. PCLab explains:

We have been contacted by the reps of Intel Corporation. We agreed to remove the article. We will bring it back once Gulftown hits the stores, somewhere in 2010

Earlier this year I bought a 2009 Mac Pro. And as sheer luck would have it my purchase was delayed by one week the very same week, as it happens, that Apple refreshed the Mac Pro line. I scoured the online store, meticulously comparing specs and searching the web for in-depth reviews of the new machine from the sort of geeks who spend their days doing nothing but benchmark testing. In short, I learned that while the Mac Pro prices went up, clock speeds came down but I was reassured by those in the know that it didnt matter the cores were (marginally) slower than before. I was still getting a more powerful machine than Id ever need. I don’t mind admitting, though, for what I paid, I wanted my Mac Pro to be light years ahead of everything else, and I wanted it to stay that way for a long time! Thats not too much to ask, is it?

Still, Gulftown will squeeze-in an extra four physical cores above the eight I currently enjoy, and provide an extra four megabytes of L3 cache over the eight offered by my suddenly lowly-by-comparison machine. And dont forget that 50 percent power-saving

Im only partially joking. Setting aside my shameful greed for ever-more-powerful hardware, the fact remains that my many-cored 2009 Mac Pro is woefully under-utilized. I do a fair bit of audio and video editing, but none of the software I use takes full advantage of multiple-processor cores. In addition, none of it is optimized for the 64-bit architecture of my machine or its Snow Leopard operating system. Final Cut doesnt even try to be 64-bit compatible. Adobe CS4 Master Collection (in itself almost the price of a Mac Pro!) stubbornly remains a 32-bit suite.

So the bottom line is that my gloriously powerful and impressive Mac Pro is still sporting its (virtual) training wheels because, frankly, developers are dragging their heels updating their software.

That doesnt stop me wanting the new Mac Pro, of course. Like I said, Im greedy. But Im also learning. And even if Apple releases this behemoth early in 2010, I dont think Ill be too frustrated. News of breathtakingly-more-powerful machines is tantalizing, to be sure, but until software developers really get behind this new hardware, whatever advantages these powerful new chips and architectures promise remains almost entirely academic.

Not one to be outdone by Twittelator Pro’s most recent update, atebits’ latest update for Tweetie 2 (iTunes link) brings implementations of the two newest official Twitter features: Lists and Retweet. As someone who isn’t particularly crazy about the official retweet implementation, I’m not so excited about that, but there’s still a “Quote Tweet” option as well, which lets you do things the old way.

There’s a lot of other new features and improvements, too, including tweet geotagging, spam reporting via the official Twitter API, What the Trend explanation of trending topics, and more. Once again, Tweetie has returned to the top of the heap, in terms of both functionality and UI.

Lists can be created, edited, managed and viewed, all from within Tweetie 2 now. That means if users post links in the “@user/list” format, you’ll be able to just click on it to view said list. Your own list management and creation features are accessible via the ellipsis (…) icon. I still have yet to create any of my own lists, but testing this out with the lists of others, it seemed to be well-implemented.

New video upload and hosting options are also available. You can now select from Posterous, Mobypicture and Vid.ly, in addition to TwitVid and yFrog. Maybe best of all among the UI changes, you can now disable automatic browser rotation, which is a feature every landscape-capable app should have, speaking as someone who often browses lying down in bed or on the couch.

Lots of other smaller changes and a long list of bug fixes are also included as part of the 2.1 update. The update is free for all Tweetie 2 users, but if you haven’t yet made the leap to the newest version, the $2.99 price tag is seeming incredibly reasonable right about now.

Apple has posted details on a new full-time position at its Cupertino headquarters for an iPhone Software Engineer who will join its newly created Maps team. On the job description web page, Apple says it wants to take Maps to the next level, and rethink how users use Maps and change the way people find things.

The current Mapping technology in the iPhone relies heavily on Google Maps, but some tech-pundits think that’s a relationship Apple is keen to see come to an end. After all, Apple and Google arent exactly on great terms any more. In fact, Apples relationship with former best-buddy Google has been demonstrably deteriorating over the last 12 months. So, on the surface at least, it seems Apple is distancing itself further from the search giant both with the creation of its own in-house Mapping team and, back in October, the acquisition of PlaceBase, a rival mapping service to Google Maps.

A little more from the job description highlights how Apple wants to implement creative new functionality in Maps as well as its desire to include its partners in the process.

The iPhone has revolutionized the mobile industry and has changed people’s lives and we want to continue to do so. We want to take Maps to the next level, rethink how users use Maps and change the way people find things. We want to do this in a seamless, highly interactive and enjoyable way. We’ve only just started.

As an engineer on the Maps team, your responsibilities will range from implementing low-level client/server code to implementing high-level user interfaces. You’ll be responsible for implementing new and innovative features, fixing problems and enhancing the performance of Maps. You will work closely with the other engineers on the Maps team, other iPhone and iPod touch teams as well our partners in other companies.

So how might PlaceBase and a new in-house Maps team change how users use Maps on the iPhone?

PlaceBase offers far richer aggregation and visualization of geo-specific datasets than is currently available on Google Maps. For example, imagine youre planning on buying a house and have a property already in mind. Like Google Maps, PlaceBase can show you the usual aerial views youre accustomed to seeing but can also display other valuable data, too, such as local crime reports over the last five years, or the demographic distribution of the neighbourhood, or perhaps the latest performance scores of local schools. What’s more, the datasets can be customized.

Some have interpreted the PlaceBase acquisition — and this job posting — as evidence that Apple is taking definitive steps to distance itself from Google. It sounds plausible; Googles Android OS for mobile phones definitely treads on Apples toes, and that whole Voicegate fiasco isnt over yet. Googles forays into web browsers and operating systems doesnt exactly foster amity between the two companies, either.

I suspect Apple wants to bring PlaceBase data visualisation to its already-exemplary Maps application. Yes, it uses Google Maps, but it works. And as it says in the job posting, Apple thinks it’s “the best mapping program on any mobile platform.” If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

Let’s return to the example from above; imagine you’ve viewed the property but you’re not impressed. Back in the car your real estate agent tells you he has another place in mind he thinks you’ll like. So you reach for your iPhone and fire-up Maps. You do a quick search on the new address and, using a filter you customized earlier, you see the neighbourhood overlaid with color-coded blobs indicating crime rates in that area. You switch to another filter; now you’re looking at the average home-insurance costs for the area, and they’re all way too orange and red for your liking.

There’s no reason this sort of Map “filtering” can’t be monetized, either. The Maps application itself could ship with some basic “fun” filters but offer specialized plug-ins via the iTunes store. Third-party developers would jump at the chance to exploit rich data visualization by plugging-in to a native API, freeing them from the expense and difficulty of building similar functionality from scratch.

While this job posting is specifically for an iPhone developer, theres no reason to suspect the lessons learned here in the coming months wont influence other geo-aware software from Apple; iPhoto and iMovie spring to mind, but OS X itself also exploits some (basic) geo-awareness when selecting the appropriate time zone in the Date & Time preference panel.

As social networking services get more geo-savvy (Twitter, Brightkite and FourSquare are obvious examples, but Facebook cant be far behind) and as mobile devices and laptops start packing-in GPS chips as-standard, it makes sense for Apple to offer a world-class geo-aware range of products that exploit our desire to not only locate ourselves but also discover meaningful, customizable data about our surroundings. That, to me, is the most likely next level of Map usage Apple is talking about.

MacRumors is reporting a chain of evidence showing what may be an as yet unreleased iPhone being used outside Apple’s industrial design lab, but in this case unreleased may not mean new.

Source: Ars Technica

Whoever has this device in their possession apparently rides BART, the light-rail system serving San Francisco and the Bay Area. That’s known because they also use iBART, a transit information app for the iPhone, and by using iBART an internal device identifier was recorded. The identifier “iPhone3,1″ was reported to Pinch Media, an analytics firm used by developers, and that’s how it ultimately became public. The thing is this isn’t the first time that’s happened.

In August, another developer revealed evidence of an “iProd0,1″ in the then iPhone OS 3.1 beta to Ars Technica. That product has been speculated to be the rumored tablet, but as the preference list above shows, there is an “iPhone3,1″ device listed, too. For reference, “iPhone1,1″ was the original iPhone, “iPhone1,2″ the iPhone 3G, and “iPhone2,1″ turned out to be the iPhone 3GS released in June. However, that internal device identifier was first reported in January by none other than Pinch Media.

While it’s true the numbering scheme for the first digit could represent generational changes in hardware, it does seem curious that a prototype for the next generation would be “in the wild” just five months after the release of the current model. Further, the “iPhone3,1″ identifier has been seen in the OS as far back as March, just three months after the iPhone 3GS identifier appeared, and three months before the iPhone 3GS was launched. It seems very unlikely that Apple was developing two generations of iPhone in tandem. More likely the “iPhone3,1″ identifier doesn’t represent the next generation of iPhone at all.

Mobile phone customers in the U.S., be they iPhone users or Verizon customers, have been impatiently waiting for the day the exclusivity agreement with AT&T mercifully ends. Rather than having the fourth generation iPhone finished today, it seems plausible that another iPhone 3GS, one that runs on Verizon’s network is nearing production. Just last month, the CEO of Verizon said the decision for such a device “is exclusively in Apple’s court.”

Perhaps it’s on the BART, too.

It can sometimes be easy to forget that Apple’s primary purpose as a company is to make money, not to continually wow the industry and the public with fresh designs and technical innovation, which is all actually just a means to the end of profitability. Occasionally, though, we are reminded of this fact by things like a new report in The Korea Times about Apple’s use of bully tactics with flash memory makers.

According to the newspaper, complaints are mounting among NAND flash producers that Apple is using its position as one of the biggest buyers on the block to artificially drive down prices with ethically questionable business practices. And suppliers can’t do anything about it, since that would mean risking a very lucrative arrangement.

Apple’s apparent plan is shrewd from a business perspective, but ethically questionable, though not, apparently, illegal or in violation of any industry regulations. A senior industry official, who wished to remain anonymous, described the process as follows:

Apple has asked Korean semiconductor makers to produce a certain amount of chips for its digital products, only to actually purchase a smaller volume eventually. The company doesn’t make immediate purchases, but waits until chip prices to fall to the level the company has internally targeted.

Samsung and Hynix are the major Korean players in the NAND flash game. Both refused to officially comment regarding the supposed bully tactics, as did Apple’s Korean office. An unidentified industry source claims that the practice is common knowledge among all involved, though.

No one believes the practices are tenable in the long term, since they erode good-faith relationships with key suppliers, who might conceivably refuse to play along if Apple continues to press too hard for too long. Rather, industry watchers believe the tactics to be a short term strategy aimed at temporarily reducing the costs of high capacity NAND flash chips. The lowered price would allow them to build iPhones with much higher capacities quickly and cheaply, which some see as a good strategy for staying ahead of competition by Android and others.

Apple could also be preparing for a time when it isn’t in a position to command the prices from suppliers it currently does. For a long time, it was one of the few companies that actually built significant storage into its cellphone handset, but many other companies are now following suit. Apple’s share will dwindle, percentage-wise, even if its user base continues to grow worldwide. This could be an anticipatory attempt to lay hands on as much hardware as possible, as cheaply as possible, before the industry becomes more competitive and demand far outpaces supply.