Some people like the hi-tech aesthetic. I used to work for a small consulting company that crammed more Mac-related gear into our tiny two-room office than you could imagine. My "desk" was a wall-sized cage of wire-shelving that held two Power Mac towers, two monitors, a full-on Media 100 video editing system (this was ten years ago, pre-Firewire and MiniDV), and a host of other peripherals, external hard drives, and surge protectors. A colleague of mine used to comment how I must have felt like "The captain of a spaceship," sitting at the helm of all that gear.

Me, I prefer the clean, minimalist aesthetic. The iPod and its simple click wheel, the iMac G5 with no visible buttons or ports -- that's my idea of hi-tech meeting high design. As such, Qortico's line of wooden iPod stands appealed to me from the first time I saw them. Crafted from furniture grade woods including Oak, Hard Maple, and a limited edition Zebra Wood, Qortico's four models of iPod holders are meant to coordinate more with your Nelson Bench than your benchmarking software.

Qortico sent over their Oak Essential iPod Stand for review. The stand couldn't be any simpler: Two pieces of fine hand-finished wood are joined to form a wedge that looks like a 'Z' with the top lopped off. The bottom piece serves as the base of the stand, while the front piece holds your iPod by means of an included suction cup that fits through a small hole cut into the wood. Two rubber feet affixed to the front of the stand help hold your iPod steady at the desired height (It's actually much harder to describe in words than with a picture).

The stand worked well enough, though at first I had a bit of trouble getting the suction cup to both hold my iPod and stay fixed in the stand. Cleaning the chrome back of the iPod helped in that regard. The stand has no built-in docking capabilities, but rather holds the iPod high enough up to allow the use of a regular docking cable. Myself, I prefer stands with built-in docks and Qortico does offer another model, the $28.95 Droplet (pictured left), that's kind of like a wooden Apple iPod Dock. If you generally leave your iPod in one place, the suction cup system probably won't bother you. If you're like me, and are constantly moving your iPod from bedroom to living room to car to backpack, you might get a little tired of having to suction and unsuction the thing to its stand. But, hey, that's why companies make different products -- to serve different needs.

That being said, the Essential iPod Stand is unique and quite attractive. There's something kind of cool about the space-age white and chrome of an iPod displayed on a classic, satin-finished piece of highly figured wood. Qortico's products aren't for everybody, but there are enough iPods floating around the world these days that they're smart to tap into this niche market.

All of Qortico's iPod stands are available direct from Qortico.com.

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Noah Kravitz runs the Technology and Culture blog Threebase.com. He is an educator, musician, and writer who lives in Oakland, CA and is the author of Teaching and Learning with Technology.