In what is already being described as “a complete and utter waste of everybody’s time and bandwidth,” Æ are pleased — nay, proud! — to present what we believe are the first faked iPhone Nano pictures to hit the internet this time round. As you can see, the mythical new iPhone Nano is pictured here next to an Apple Remote for comparison. (The remote, however, could easily be one of the rumoured Jumbo Apple Remotes — which we have just invented — so you probably shouldn’t read too much into the picture.)

• Macsimum News
• 9 to 5 Mac
• Edible Apple

Not much is know about the iMac Mini, other than it boasts a 10″ screen and is due to be announced by Phil Schiller — possibly as his “one more thing” — at next month’s MacWorld. We’ll bring you more details as we get them.

A poster on the Insanely Mac forums, reported by World of Apple, has discovered some intriguing setting in the version of OS X installed on the latest MacBooks. The strings in question are:

    Desc-Key       Desc-Key
    CFG_MCP79      CFG_MCP79
    Description    Description
    Mini-FL-2008   iMac-FL-2008
    NoSLFM
    model          model
    Macmini3,1     iMac9,1

Posters to the forums have concluded that these point towards Apple using Nvidia’s MCP79 chipset in these new machines, totally missing the most important details. “Mini-FL-2008″ and “iMac-FL-2008″? ‘FL’ is, of course, the abbreviation of the US state of Florida. And of course we all know which Apple-wannabe Florida is home to.

From this information we can but conclude the obvious: that Apple has decided that, in return for dropping their lawsuit, they will sub-contract all future iMac and Mac Mini development to Psystar, who have already proved themselves more than capable of producing fast, inexpensive, and above all, desirable, desktop computers. (They already sell machines which totally kick the Mac Pro and Xserve’s bottoms, so Apple will simply quietly discontinue their pale imitations.) This will leave Apple to concentrate solely on the portable market, where they excel.

Right, now who wants to hear my theory about how the Knight Templar assassinated JFK?

• Insanely Mac
• via World of Apple

Slow news day? Then why not try to ignite imaginary conflict between two tech superstars. Now, while I’m willing to entertain the possibility that ElectricPig’s James Holland’s social skills are so much better than mine that he can pick up subtle nuances which I’ve missed, I honestly can’t see what he’s talking about when he says that Woz has a pop at Steve Jobs during this impromptu interview for the BBC’s Click show. But maybe that’s because most of my attention was focussed on being incensed by that BBC twonk gabbling all over Woz’s answers. Oi! BBC twonk! The Woz is trying to speak so put a sock in it, comprende?

• BBC Click
• via ElectricPig

Okay, just when I think I’ve finally got the hang of this Apple product launch speculation lark — it’s really very arcane and complex, but basically you check Mac Rumours for a list of machines which haven’t been updated in a while, post that they’ll be refreshed next Tuesday, then keep repeating week after week until you finally get it right — when suddenly the rest of the blogosphere gets all random and pulls the carpet out from under me. I swear it’s all a conspiracy.

Apparently, the new iMacs and Mac Minis — the ones fitted with the new NVIDIA chipset to make them super fast HD-playing monsters which’ll just fly off the shelves this holdiay buying season — are due to be launched on the 10th. Which my calendar tells me is a Monday (although it is set to GMT, which could be causing a problem). Which is just messed-up. 2008 was meant to be the Year of Apple Treat Tuesdays.

Ah, but Electric Pig has a possible explanation. They’ve noticed that this November the 10th marks a rather special anniversary. That’s right, you remember correctly. This time next week it will have been exactly 11 years since the introduction of the Power Macintosh G3. Has it really been that long? Wow. How time flies. (Apparently there’s also some kind of 25 years of Windows thing, too, but most people will want to forget that, right? Lots of sitting in darkened rooms, drinking vodka and listening to Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah on repeat. That kind of thing. It’s what I’d be doing if I didn’t have the G3 party to keep myself busy.)

Anyway, we’ll give the last word to John Moltz — the crazy Apple rumourmonger whose shoes we want to steal and then fill — via Twitter:

“I hope Apple doesn’t announce new Mac minis tomorrow. That kind of thing could really overshadow the election and depress voter turnout.”

Election?

• Electric Pig
• Fudzilla
• via Mac Daily News
• Follow Moltz on Twitter
• Power Macintosh G3

Ah, yes, another of the perennial classic Apple rumours. I was forgetting the exact sequence. After “the Mac Mini is dead” comes “The Beatles on iTunes soon.” But as I’ve written elsewhere, I would be very surprised if this ever happens.

For a start, whatever legal truce currently holds between Apple, Inc. and Apple Corp., it’s an uneasy one. The surviving Beatles, the families of the deceased, and the management of Apple Corp., are at least a match for Steve Jobs in terms of arrogance, and I’m sure they view gracing iTunes with their presence — exclusively or otherwise — as a humiliation too far. Which doesn’t matter, because the Beatles don’t need iTunes.

Among the many accolades you can assign to the Beatles is that of really good business men. They played the record industry’s game for as long as they needed to, then took control of their own affairs. They haven’t entered the digital download game yet because they’ve been waiting until the time is right for them. And I’m sure they’ve watched the exploits of bands like Radiohead with interest. My prediction is that when they come to the web, they’ll do so independent of any existing on-line music store. The band that’s bigger than god is surely bigger than iTunes.

When Apple Corp. announces The Beatles’ on-line debut it will make headlines around the world, so publicity isn’t going to be a problem. Software for running the store and serving downloads is available off the shelf. Plus, there shouldn’t be any shortage of trained web monkeys for hire these days. It’s all a little more work on Apple Corp.’s part, but the extra profits they get to keep for themselves should make it more than worth their time. It will be interesting to see what stand they take on DRM. I wouldn’t like to guess one way or the other.

The Beatles rhythm game from the makers of Rock Band, announced yesterday, should be seen as a completely isolated event, and not Apple Corp. dipping its toe in the digital waters — although introducing their music to a whole new generation of listeners cannot hurt the prospects of any future venture. Whatever The Beatles’ record company has planned for their back catalogue, they have yet to reveal their hand. But when they do, it’s going to be big.

• Mac Daily News

We’ve already brought you a couple of ‘previews‘ of some of the new features which have been found in the beta iPhone OS 2.2, and while Google Street View is all very well and good, for me personally this latest is the most eagerly awaited of them all. The Unofficial Apple Weblog has got its hands on a screenshot — nicked reproduced here — which appears to show over-the-air downloading of podcasts. And it’s about time, too.

You’ll remember that at the time Podcaster was denied entry to the App Store, Apple cited as reason that it reproduced features found in iTunes. This prompted many people to speculate that at some point in the not too distant future you would be able to download podcasts without connecting to your desktop Mac. Well, if this image is genuine then it looks like that speculation was correct.

Now let’s just hope they’ve added the ability to delete podcasts, too.

• TUAW

Ready for another quick iPhone 2.2 sneak peak? Mac Rumours — quoting Greek site iPhone Hellas, who I won’t quote in turn because we all know how embarrassing Google translate usually is — are reporting that the latest iPhone betas now ask you to rate App Store applications as you delete them from the device. This is either a totally brilliant or incredible stupid idea.

My initial thoughts — which echo those of many of Mac Rumours’ commenters — were that this was a bad idea. If you’re deleting an application from your iPhone, the chances are that you’re doing so because you are not happy with it, and would therefore be likely to give it a lower mark than it deserves. Apple has only recently cleaned up the ratings in the App Store itself, altering the system so you had to have at least used application before leaving gems of wisdom like “this costs money and so is teh ebil.” On the surface, this new feature looks like it could mark a return to unhelpful, knee-jerk reviews.

Of course, the alternative view is that if you’re deleting an application from your iPhone, the chances are that you’re doing so because you are not happy with it, and in all likelihood neither would other users be. Under these conditions, the new rating feature would be a great way of marking those applications which aren’t worth bothering with. It all depends on the system being used responsibly by all concerned. We’ll have to wait and see whether it makes it into the final release. 

• iPhone Hellas
• via Mac Rumours

There is a school of thought among Apple detractors — and I’m using the word “thought” here in it’s loosest sense — that Mac OS X is all eye candy and no substance. Ironically (or do I mean “hypocritically”?), many of these same commentators are also the first to bemoan the lack of wizzy new features in each OS update as a failure to innovate on Apple’s part. I can’t help thinking that they’re going to have a field day with the release of Snow Leopard, OS X 10.6. And of course, the detractors will be wrong.

 Apple has already stated will concentrate on improved performance rather than adding new user features. They are trying to manage user expectations by understating this upgrade. While it certainly doesn’t look like there will be anything extra impressive for Steve Jobs to demo on stage — although you could argue that there hasn’t really been anything like that since exposure and dashboard in Tiger — the few hints which we are getting suggest that this will be far more than a pure maintenance release. Sure, things like a re-written Finder are welcome — and some would say long overdue — but the real benefits are going to be found lurking deep under the hood.

If there’s a general theme to the Snow Leopard rumours, it’s squeezing every ounce of performance out of the current hardware. All modern Macs have multi-core CPUs, but Apple’s plans extend beyond merely making full use of them, to also harnessing the nascent power of the GPUs. A patent uncovered by Mac Rumours hints at these plans. It describes a method of harnessing these extra processors as “Open Compute Units,” and apparently aims to make running code on them as simple as Apple has made running code across multiple machines with its XGrid technology.

Apple’s talent — and in particular, post-NeXT Apple’s talent — lies not only in providing new technologies to developers, but in making them simple to use. Core Animation, introduced in Leopard, is a very good example of this. If they can bring the same power coupled with ease-of-use to the notoriously difficult subject of true parallel programming it can only extend OS X’s lead over the competition further.

• Mac Rumours
• MacNN