Well, it could just be an elaborate marketing ploy for the LittleSnapper screen capture software and its companion website, but the above image — captured and Twittered about by Realmac Software’s Danny Greg — from the official Apple iPhone 3G product page suggests that the iPhone Nano may actually exist. Maybe. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

• The Tweet
• The Image
• LittleSnapper

As you’ve probably read by now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has released a letter concerning his health. It’s fairly short so I’ll quote the whole thing:

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

So what should we make of this? Well, for a start, from that “I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family” I’d imagine this was written a while ago — say, actually during the holiday season, if not before — and if it had been released sooner it would have had the desired effect of dampening the rampant speculation.

Reaction from the Apple Community has been as expected, with choruses of “We told you so” and “Good on Steve for telling everyone else to go f— themselves”. The one dissenting voice so far has come from Dizzle at I Drank the Kool-Aid — who even then only goes as far as calling-out Apple PR over their statement that Jobs’ absence from the Macworld keynote was “more about politics than his pancreas.” This was, as she observes, simply a lie. (Although we can safely assume that they didn’t actually know much more than us when they made the statement, the fact that it was so definite counts against them.)

But what does this statement actually tell us? As Steve notes, the news that Phil Schiller was going to deliver the Macworld keynote “set off another flurry of rumors about [Steve's] health.” Those rumours were basically that Steve was too ill to present the keynote himself, and as this open letter refuses to acknowledge, those rumours were correct.

• Apple PR

We’ve been following the efforts of the PureDarwin team for a while now, as they attempt to get Apple’s open source OS layer up and running, with the eventual aim of producing an easy-to-install live CD, equivalent to the popular Linux distributions. They’re coming along in leaps and bounds, and on Christmas Day team member probono announced on the Apple Darwin mailing list the availability of PureDarwin Xmas, the first developer preview of a fully working Darwin system.

PureDarwin Xmas is available as a VMWare virtual machine from the puredarwin.org site (link below). The 200Mb download decompresses to a 784Mb VMWare Fusion 2 bundle. Users of Fusion v2.0.1 will require a 64-bit Core 2 Duo to run it. Those of us with 32-big Core Duos — ie. first generation Intel Macs — will need to downgrade to Fusion v2.0.0, which is still available from VMWare’s Fusion download page.

Being a developer preview, functionality is limited. Most obvious is the lack of networking and user accounts, both of which appear to rely heavily on closed source portions of OS X. However, given the mess that the Darwin code was in as released by Apple — many individual projects would simply not compile, and many of those which did were beset by dependency problems to the point where they were unusable — it is hard to overstate what an amazing job the team has done getting to this stage. The Darwin kernel now boots and launches an X session — the choice of the NeXT-like WindowMaker window manager is a nice touch, although apparently won’t be the future default — from where the few bundled X applications can be run. It’s still early days yet, but there’s every reason to feel enthusiastic about the future of the PureDarwin project.

• PureDarwin Xmas

Apple’s Hot News isn’t what it used to be:

To celebrate her cover version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” breaking all digital download records, X Factor winner Alexandra Burke paid a visit to the Apple Store, Regent Street yesterday to do a spot of shopping and meet her fans. Her first single is the fastest-ever selling download in Europe, and is currently number one on the iTunes Store. Burke also bought accessories for her new MacBook Pro, and picked up hints and tips on how to get the most from her pink iPod nano.

That sound you just heard was Bob kicking a hole in his iMac.

Also, is it too late to Rick roll the Christmas no. 1?

• Apple UK’s Hot News
• iTunes Store Link

Apple is planning to give away free iTunes downloads over the 12 days of Christmas — that is, from Boxing Day to January the 6th. The downloads are said to include rare singles, live tracks, music videos and classic TV show episodes. They’re billed as ‘little stocking fillers for your new iPod’, but as yet we see no evidence that they’ll be restricting who can download them. So fingers crossed, eh?

Visit the placeholder site to sign up for daily e-mail updates, or sign up your friends for a chance to win 1000 songs.

• iTunes’ 12 Days of Christmas
• via Pocket Lint
• and Electric Pig

The French Competition Regulator today ruled that Apple must allow other mobile phone operators besides Orange — their current network partner — to sell the iPhone in France. The Regulator announced that the current exclusive deal — which has been in place since the phone’s November 2007 debut — poses a “serious and immediate threat”. However, the move is only the first stage in an action brought by Orange’s rival Bouygues Telecom, and was described by the Regulator as a “protective move” while it continues to investigate the complaint. If Orange is successful in convincing the Regulator of the deal’s legitimacy then the decision will likely be reversed. French competition laws have previously lead Orange to offer unlocked iPhones, albeit as a premium. In December of last year, a German court ruled in favour of an identical arrangement between Apple and their chosen partner T-Mobile, in a similar case brought by rival operator Vodafone.

• Yahoo! News
• via Pocket Lint

Kotaku — a site about video games — has announced that a company called Konami is bringing an application called Metal Gear Solid Touch — which is the imaginatively-titled next instalment of the Metal Gear Solid sequence of games, which I’m told is incredible popular with the type of people who play video games — to the iPhone early next year. This is apparently a good thing, although you’d be hard-pressed to tell from the comments accompanying the linked post. Video game fans seem to whine even more than BlackBerry fanboys. Anyone would think that the iPhone and iPod Touch weren’t held in high esteem by the serious button-mashers. The price has yet to be confirmed, but it’s bound to be high enough to make Chockenberry smile.

• Kotaku

I was as if the whole of Twitter cried out at once and then was silent. Apple has announced that next month’s Macworld Expo will be its last.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers.

It’s no secret that Apple only has to hint at one of their events and they get more press coverage than any other company could dream of. There’s certainly something magical about their keynotes, but then there’s absolutely no suggestion that those are going to go away. Apple has its won ‘Town Hall’ on campus at Cupertino, and if that’s too small for its big product launches, the Moscone Center isn’t going anywhere. And besides… Macworld? That’s so 25 years ago.

So expect business to continue more-or-less as usual. It won’t be long before people conclude that, in retrospect, having the biggest showcase for product launches right after the holiday buying season was a dumb idea anyway. Someone else will probably trawl the archives to tell us exactly how few big announcements have been made at Macworld in recent years. (Okay, I’ve got the iPhone and the MacBook Air. But at least in the case of the iPhone, that wasn’t available on the day.) Apple will doubtless soon slot another regular big product event into their schedule.

Now, Phil Schiller appearing instead of Steve Jobs this year… that’s a whole different matter.

• Apple’s Announcement

Those of you with long memories and copious quantities of trivia-retention capacity will recall the iYule Yule log video from last year. This was a 30 minute video loop of a crackling fireplace, accompanied by music from the Internet’s second favourite songist, Geoff Smith. Sponsored partly by the geekbrief.tv crew, proceeds from each sale went to a variety of charities. “Ah. What a nice idea,” I imagine you’re thinking right now. “I wonder if there’s any way we can cheapen it?” Well, yes, since you ask, I believe there is.

GearCrave bring to our attention the Yule Log iPhone app from record giant also-ran EMI. $1.99 gets you a near-identical burning log — although to be perfectly fair, there’s not an awful lot of ways in which you can make one burning log look different from other burning logs — accompanied by Christmas carols from the likes of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Nat King Cole. Profits go to corporate strip-miners Terra Firma Capital Partners.

If you’d rather give your Christmas Spirit a bit of a work-out, the original charity iYule is still available from the link below.

• The Original iYule.tv
• The Impostor at GearCrave

Here’s some breaking news from legal eagle Dizzle over at World of Apple: Psystar have petitioned the Court to allow them to amend their counterclaim to Apple’s suit. Out goes the whole monopoly shtick and in comes an all-new First Amendment defence. Hit the link below then come back to the end of this sentence when you’re done. That was quick.

Now, we here at Æ aren’t lawyers. We don’t even play lawyers on the Internet. (I did, however, once play the Judge in a school production of Wind in the Willows — and boy did I ever send that Toad slag’s slimy backside down good. Oh, yes. Broke my gavel and everything.) But the First Amendment? Really? Sure, I can recall the time when cryptographic software was classed as a munition, but those days are long gone. Psystar’s defence is ridiculous, and if passed could have all kinds of crazy implications, like the introduction of ‘concealed carry’ laws for iPhones and iPods. Not that it stands a chance. I mean, can you imagine the late Charlton Heston declaring “they can have my cheap knock-off Mac clone when they prise it from my cold, dead hands!”? We shall see on the 15th of January, if it doesn’t get laughed out before then.

UPDATE: Um. Okay. This is a little embarrassing. Turns out the Amendment I was thinking of was the Second. Whoops. In my defence, I’m not actually from around these parts.

UPDATE 2: So I’ve just had a look at the text of the First Amendment. Psystar’s claim related to the “establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” bit, right?

• World of Apple
• via I Drank the Kool-Aid