News Roundup for November the 25th

Apple has released Safari version 3.2.1 — aka Dusty Bin — and… well, that is all. Seriously, the ol’ news spigot has been firmly tweaked to the ‘closed’ position. The boys from Cupertino have packed their bags and headed for sunnier climes, leaving only a ’see you at MacWorld 2009‘ sign (yes, complete with hyperlink) in the shop window. The next six weeks will be entirely Apple-interest-free. So I guess we could talk about the UK’s VAT cut, if you like, or — No. Hold on! I was forgetting all those people playing silly buggers through the courts.

Yes, that age-old game of treating Apple as a legal pinyata continues apace. The latest suit, bought by household name EMG Technology LLC, relates to the “Apparatus and method of manipulating a region on a wireless device screen for viewing, zooming and scrolling internet content.” Yeah, sounds like they’ve got Apple bang to rights on that one. And with stamp god Stanley Gibson helming their legal team, how can they loose? You can kinda tell that no-one’s in charge of the iPod division at the moment, can’t you. But don’t panic, as long as a major competitor with years of smartphone experience doesn’t decide that now’s the right time to announce their entry into the market, everything will be just fine. Sorry, what was that? Microsoft just did? Whew. We’re still safe then.

Ooh! New advert time. No Hodgman and/or Long this time, just aluminium MacBooks. (And disturbingly HP-like floating crayon-style doodles.) Does anyone else think they should have got Sir Jonny to do the voice over? At least then we would have got ‘aluminium’ pronounced correctly.

Watch it over and over on repeat — it’ll help pass the time while we wait for The Beatles to appear in iTunes. (Of course, you could always use our handy The Beatles in iTunes widget to keep you up to date on that score.) That isn’t interactive enough for you? Then why not join in the pointless speculation about whether touchscreen iMacs are on their way. Sure, I’m as eager as the next man to get my Tom Cruise on, but I really can’t see it happening anytime soon. Hell, it’s all I can do to haul my flabby blogger’s arms up to the keyboard.