iPod Shuffles come in colours.
£55 and available in original silver, pink, green, aqua blue, and orange.
Could be a sign that some colourful new iMacs and MacBooks are on the way.

Mitchell & Webb get a Mac.
Stars of Peep Show and the Mitchell & Webb Look, are staring in the UK version of the Get A Mac ads that started to run last year in the USof A.
I've always found it a bit strange that Apple feel the need to attack the Windoze OS. Especially as you can boot-up Intel Macs in either. See the rest of them here.

Beatles and Apple Love-in set for Valentine's Day.
The two Apples seem so have settled their differences as a few Apple rumour sites have reported that Beatles are ready to be exclusively sold on iTunes.

Here's a funny iPhone sketch that was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien (a funny show on American TV). Tee Hee.

iPods in Space.
Thanks to Hardmac.com for finding these NASA photos of the International Space Centre. You'd have though Apple would have made a big song and dance about this. Probably too busy stroking their iPhones.

The keynote from MacBore's perspective.

Before the keynote, I was keeping my fingers crossed for something groundbreaking that I could afford.

Apple TV won't break the bank, but today I noticed I could buy a Digital set-top box with a HD recorder for less than £150. If Apple TV had these features, I would be jumping for it.

Even thought the iPhone is a technological breakthough, I expected a "...one more thing" moment where Steve would pull out the tiny and beautiful mobile phone/mp3 player that we all expected. ie. something we could all afford.
Perhaps the ROKR experience put Apple off the normal mobile market? And going after Blackberry's crown won't be the easiest task, don't all Blackberry users get theirs through work? Once you've added up the cost of the phone and the monthly contract, you really do have to be at the high end of the mobile customer base to afford it. I just hope that the iPhone isn't this decade's Cube. Looks like I'll be upgrading my useless ROKR to a Sony Ericsson K800i at the end of my contract.

One thing's for sure, they're using those new patents on the next iPod as we speak.

So, the only thing left to buy is the new Airport, and if all the tales are true, my Express is due to burn out any day now. Bingo!

Two new iTunes ads. Same song.
This time it's Flathead by the Fratellis.
Watch them here.

You can watch the whole kaboodle here. Or watch just the juicy bit about the iPhone.

Airport goes more extreme.
They do like that Mac Mini slab look don't they?
The Airport Extreme base station has upto 2.5 time the speed and over twice the range of the old UFO-like kit. it even has three ethernet port to wire-up Macs and network drives.

The spec:
Size and weight
Length: 165 mm (6.5 inches)
Width: 165 mm (6.5 inches)
Thickness: 34 mm (1.3 inches)
Weight: 753 grams (1.66 pounds)
Wireless protocols
802.11a/b/g
Draft 802.11n1
Frequency bands
2.4GHz or 5GHz
Radio output power
20 dBm (nominal) at 5GHz
Compatibility
Interoperable with Wi-Fi Certified 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g Mac computers and Windows-based PCs
NAT, DHCP, PPPoE, VPN Passthrough (IPSec, PPTP and L2TP), DNS Proxy, SNMP
Included software and accessories

AirPort Utility
AirPort Disk Utility for Mac and Windows
802.11n Enabler for Mac
Bonjour for Windows
Power cord
Printed and electronic documentation
Security
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2)2
Wireless security (WEP) configurable for 40-bit and 128-bit encryption
MAC address filtering
NAT firewall
Support for RADIUS authentication
802.1X, PEAP, LEAP, TTLS, TLS, FAST
Time-based access control
Interfaces
One RJ-45 10/100BASE-T Ethernet WAN port for connecting a ADSL or cable modem
Three RJ-45 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN ports for connecting computers or network devices
USB port for connecting a USB printer or USB external hard drive
802.11 wireless
Electrical
12Vdc, 1.8A
Environmental requirements
Operating temperature: 0° to 35° C (32° to 95° F)
Storage temperature: -25° to 60° C (-13° to 140° F)
Relative humidity (operational): 20% to 80%
Relative humidity (storage): 10% to 90%
Maximum operating altitude: 3,000 m (10,000 feet)
Maximum storage altitude: 4,500 m (15,000 feet)
Agency approvals
FCC Part 15 Class B, Canada RSS-210, EN 300-328, EN 301-489, EN 301 893, ARIB STD-T66, RCR STD-T33, AS/NZS 4268: 2003, UL 60950, CSA-C22.2 No. 60950
Channels
Channels 1-11, 36-48 and 149-165 approved for use in the United States and Canada.
Channels 1-14, 36-64 approved for use in Japan
Channels 1-13, 36-140 approved for use in Europe
Channels 1-13, 36-64 approved for use in Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand

The iTV becomes Apple TV.
Now with a hard drive you can sync this baby with iTunes on your Mac. the drive holds up to 50 hours of video. It runs on the next-gen Wi-Fi 802.11 wireless and can stream to up to 5 computers and can run on a high-definition 720p TV. It's controlled using an Apple Remote and, even better, is available next month for £199!
Spec time:
Size and weight
Footprint: 197 by 197 mm (7.7 by 7.7 inches)
Height: 28 mm (1.1 inches)
Weight: 1.09 kg (2.4 pounds)1
Power
Built-in 48-watt universal power supply
Processor and storage

Intel processor
40GB 2 hard drive for storing content locally (approximately 33GB available for media storage)
Up to 50 hours of movies3
Up to 9,000 songs 4
Up to 25,000 pictures 5
System requirements
Mac or PC
iTunes 7.1
Mac: Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later
PC: Windows XP Home/Professional (SP2)
AirPort Extreme, Wi-Fi 802.11b, 802.11g or 802.11n wireless network 6 (wireless video streaming requires 802.11g or 802.11n) or 10/100 Base-T Ethernet network
Ports and interfaces
HDMI (video and audio)
Component video
Optical audio
Analogue RCA stereo audio
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
USB 2.0
802.11n wireless networking6
Built-in IR receiver (works with included Apple Remote)
TV compatibility
Enhanced-definition or high-definition widescreen TVs capable of 1080i 60/50Hz, 720p 60/50Hz, 576p 50Hz (PAL format) and 480p 60Hz
Video
Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store); up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov; up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps; MPEG-4 up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps
Audio
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps); protected AAC (from iTunes Store); MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps); MP3 VBR; Apple Lossless; AIFF; WAV
Photos
Photo formats supported: JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG

The revolution starts here.
The big story this evening was the iPhone..and it is called an iPhone, even though another company released a phone by the same name last week. Whereas most of us was expecting something to rival Sony Ericsson's Walkman and Nokia's 5300 music player phones, Apple goes after the smartphone/blackberry market. It's a shame really as this has put the iPhone out of reach of most mobile users. Perhaps this was to protect the iPod market share. Nevertheless, having only one button, the iPhone is a very desirable and ground-breaking product, being controlled purely through it's touch-screen interface, it's and widescreen iPod, a smartphone and a proper internet device in one beautiful form.
I wouldn't expect it to be sold over here until the summer and it'll be quite expensive (probably through O2 first - like the ROKR E1).
Considering the Nano sized flash drives, we can expect to see the same touch-screen appear on the future hard drive, widescreen iPods in the near future.

Here's the spec:
Screen size
3.5 inches
Screen resolution
320 by 480 at 160 ppi
Input method
Multi-touch
Operating system
OS X
Storage
4GB or 8GB
GSM
Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
Wireless data
Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
Camera
2.0 megapixels
Battery
Up to 5 hoursTalk / Video / Browsing
Up to 16 hoursAudio playback
Dimensions
4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
Weight
4.8 ounces / 135 grams

If you can ignore the Get a Mac ads playing in the background, you'll see that the .Mac user has over 30GB on his account. Looks like the .Mac subscription is due for an upgrade.

"...a very trusted (and extremely anonymous) source of mine in Silicon Valley told me recently that he has it on good faith that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has invited all of his best friends to his MacWorld SF Keynote on Tuesday. In Silicon Valley buzz code, that means he's got something really special to show."
No, that's not me speaking. They're the words of an anonymous poster on the Cult of Mac.
What'll it be then? iMobile? iTV? iSight? iLife 07? iWork 07? New iMacs? New Airports?
I do hope it's something I can afford.

Here the best artist's impression I could find of what I reckon the new iPhone will look like (if it's launched next week).

Why Apple won't be making a tablet PC...
This appeared in the Guardian Technology today. David Sobatta explains, from experience, the way Steve Jobs' brain works, and how he can sometimes be a little 'difficult'.
"Steve did show up wearing shorts, sandals and a few days' stubble. Everyone else was in east coast business casual - sports coats and khaki pants."
What a rebel.

This is on the Apple.com website.
...Could be 2007 be the year Apple hits the big time?
Or is it all a load of marketing poppycock?