News Roundup for December the 15th

I must have blinked for the entire few second on Friday between the entry and surprisingly abrupt exit of EFi-X US from the Mac clone market. It seems the US distributors of the EFI-enabling dongle — which is a snip at just $200 for what is basically a 21st century BIOS on a USB stick — got a little carried away and needed the European mothership to step in and slap them down. If only Psystar had such great parental supervision.

Our ‘University of the Week’ award goes to Cologne, which has decided to give each of its 45,000 students an iPhone. Good thing my alma mater didn’t think of this. They’d have given us all Zune phones. But what great academic applications are the good students of Koln going to run on their super phones? Well, the choice has increased a little with the miraculous entry into the App Store of the previously-denied Pull My Finger. Some Biblical scholars are interpreting this as one of the first signs of the impending apocalypse. Still, it’s not as if Microsoft is writing apps for the iPhone, is it? What? Bugger. Oh, well. At least we can still look forward to next year’s Stevenote. Pardon? Okay, now I’m retiring to the bunker until all this blows over.

I need some good news. Ah, this should do it: Amazon isn’t nearly as good at selling MP3s as Apple. I feel better already.

Okay, back to talking about apps which should be in the App Store but aren’t. We’ll mention Peeps the innovative diary and whore contact browsing prog which looks like it uses private APIs but doesn’t but still got kicked out by Apple because it looks like it does. Terrible, I know. I mean, who do these developers think they are? Google? Now everyone pop over to The Apple Blog and tell Tom Reestman he’s a jerk. And then check out the wonder-to-be which is the Slingbox iPhone app.

And finally, here are some Apple mudflaps. I’m not sure if this is an omen or not.