News Roundup for November the 6th

It’s only very occasionally that Apple lifts its veil of secrecy and allows the faithful a glimpse of the mysteries hidden within. Sometimes it comes in the form of a careless word from an (soon-to-be-ex) employee. Occasionally it will be an official reply from a manager’s PR staff. More often than not it will be a blurry spy photo. In this case it’s SEC form 10K. Go bureaucracy!

So what have we learnt? Apple have added almost 10,000 new employees in the last year, bringing total head count to around a still-petite 32,000. We also learnt that Steve Jobs spent less time jetting around the world this quarter. I guess those staffing increases mean he no longer has to work weekends at the Beijing Apple Store.

The 10K also includes a list of “risks that could affect the company.” Piracy and Mac OS clones are included, but notable omissions include extinction-level asteroid impacts and the zombie apocalypse — so we can only presume that Apple have contingency plans in place to deal with those. Yeah, those “Apple building a death ray” rumours don’t sound so stupid now.

Apple may have turned their back on a new Manhattan Apple Store, but plans for one in Miami’s Dadeland are almost complete. It will open this weekend. But don’t expect local Mac vendor Psystar to take this incursion onto their turf lying down. CEO Rudy Pedraza has already announced that they’ll be there on Saturday, in the parking lot, selling Open Computers from the trunk of his brother’s Camaro.

Unfortunately, not everything is going Apple’s way. Despite donating $100,000 to the cause — or, considering the way some people feel about Apple, maybe because — California’s Proposition 8 has passed. Not that I’ve got anything against its passing. Why, some of my best friends are redneck fascist c—s.

Reports of Tony Fadell’s departure, it turns out, were slightly off-target, since he remains on the payroll as a $300,000-a-year special advisor to Jobs. Which is good news for the Fadell family. Since Mrs Fadell also quit her job as a VP of HR at Apple, someone needs to be bringing home the bacon.

Mobile Me problems getting you down? What to know how the other half syncs? Microsoft has opened the beta of its Live Mesh cloud computing service to Mac owners. It gives you calendar and contact syncing, 5Gb of storage, and a kind of dirty feeling.

There’s some talk of iPhone production falling as demand for the device ’softens.’ But elsewhere, the iPhone continues to fly from the shelves… although occasionally in their excitement people forget to pay for them.

Those of you already in mourning for the Mac Mini may have jumped the gun a little. Mac Rumours are reporting that one lucky user got a call from Apple about the little Mac. What did they say? Absolutely nothing. Now that’s the Apple we all know and love. Order has been restored to the universe.