News Roundup for November the 5th

Well, I think we can safely say that there’s only one story which people are interested in today: the shock revelation that Opera for the iPhone was never destined for the App Store. Opera’s boss claims it was only ever the pet project of a couple of their engineers, and never meant to be released. We all know how important it is to keep our pets indoors at this time of year, and I guess this is why.

The belt-tightening continues, with Apple shelving plans for another Apple Store in Manhattan. Meanwhile, beleaguered Dell is asking workers to take unpaid leave to help cut costs. Uh, oh. I hope Rob Enderle’s job is safe. ‘Beleaguered,’ eh? I remember a time when that was the pundits’ adjective of choice for Apple. But we all know how that ended. Current “Michael Dell should just close it down and give the money back to the shareholders” count: 21.

Want to grab yourself a piece of Apple history? Auctioneer Alexander Autographs — and with a name like that, what else was the guy going to do for a living? — are offering a couple of real gems. There’s the first sign Apple used at trade shows, plus Woz’s original tool kit, signed by the man himself. I thought at first that it might be his lunch box, but then I realised it was a little small.

In Æ news, page 8 of our Apple-themed comic strip iTeam is up. Go check it out.

Apple also yesterday released update 2.3 of their camera RAW compatibility software. Yeah, there really wasn’t a lot happening. News is fairly thin on the ground.

So I guess we can’t avoid it any longer. Who can fail to be caught up in the wave of hope and the promise of change and a better tomorrow which is sweeping out from the US to the rest of the world? Yes, that’s right: Mac Rumours are reporting that a fix for glass trackpad problems is on its way. God bless Apple.