“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
- Michael Dell talking about Apple in October, 1997

I was browsing around AllThingsD.com this morning and, in a rare bit of boredom, happened to notice this banner ad from Dell (see right) for the “Dell Latitude 10.”

Gosh, what does that remind you of?

I can just imagine the hyper-creative product designers at Dell sitting around and wondering what manner of CPU-powered horse shit* to produce next when one of them proclaims “Eureka! I’ve got it! Let’s just blatantly rip off the iPad!”

But wait, isn’t Apple suing the shit out of everyone for copying their products?

“Yes! So we’ll move the button and the front-facing camera a few inches!”

And the differences don’t end there, either. The Dell Latitude 10 iPad is Powered by Microsoft Windows 8 and features “Intel Platform Trust Technology” – whatever the fuck that is.

Expecting Dell to innovate at this point is probably a bit much to ask, but one can always hope, right?

I think it’s going to take a lot more than an iPad rip-off sporting a bunch of vague Intel security features to save them. It’s going to take The Return of the Dell Dude!

*Full disclosure: I briefly worked for Dell as a contractor several years ago. Few companies put out flawed hardware on razor-thin margins quite like Dell did. I doubt they’ve improved, and frankly I’m surprised that they’re still in business in 2013.

Robert Wagner / Technology / Apple, dell, inspiron 10, iPad / 1