News Roundup for December the 10th

There always has to be one, doesn’t there? We were all having a great time, looking forward to the holidays, relaxing and kicking back because there wasn’t any actual Apple news to report, and seeing who could come up with the craziest rumour, when Wired’s Charlie Sorrel had to go and ruin it for everyone. “There’s not going to be a $99 iPhone or a Apple NetBook or a Mac Table. Wah wah wah.” Yeah, thanks a bunch, killjoy Chaz. Next you’ll be telling us there’s no Santa. And that he isn’t really the Woz.

Apple Retail’s Patonesque advance across Europe — only kind of in reverse, I guess — now has it site’s set on France. (And also Monaco? Damn Google Translate. Still, it’s about the one place on Earth where people are likely to think the Mac’s a bit on the cheap side. I hear the Monaco on-line store already offers gold plating as a build-to-order option.) Plans are being prepared for an Apple Store in Paris, only a stone’s throw from the Louvre. (Please note, you really shouldn’t throw stones near any Apple Stores, especially not ones near the Louvre. And people in Apple Stores definitely shouldn’t throw stones.) The photo below shows one possible design which both Steve Jobs and the architects have refused outright to consider.

Which reminds me. If you happen to find yourself in Egypt some time soon, and maybe you’re stood looking at those stone replicas of the Paris Apple Store they’ve got built there, and you see the same guy on a camel wander past a couple of times looking lost, there’s a perfectly good explanation for it. No GPS on Egyptian iPhone 3Gs. How will they cope without the ability to constantly tweet their current location?

In esoteric, ‘I only install it so that the other Geeks will think I’m one of them’ news, MacFuse — the userland plug-in file system dohickey — has been updated to version 2.0, with support for 64-bit and Snow Leopard. Meanwhile, for those of you tracking OpenCL news, Nvidia had announced its support.

It’s probably time that we reminded you of iTeam, our Apple-themed comic series. The latest page is up, so click across and take a quick look. Then when you’re done, take a look at this handy guide to what to get that Mac lover in your life, care of the Electric Piggies. You may want to print copies out, to leave lying casually around the house. But here’s a Top Tip if you’re the one doing the actual buying: instead of actually going out and getting a new Apple Remote for your Mac’d one, why not wrap up their existing one. Just think of the look on their face on Christmas morning. “Wow! That’s brilliant. How did you know I’d recently and mysteriously lost mine?”