News Roundup for December the 19th

December 19th, 2008 by SJC | Filed under News Roundup.

Wow. All of a sudden the world seems to have gone Apple news crazy, in a mad, end-of-term kind of way. We’re told by The Grauniad that Phil’s going to be demoing Snow Leopard at MacWorld, which is frankly quite a safe bet given there appears sod-all else for him to do up on stage, unless he’s got about an hour’s worth of new stand up material he’s been working on. Mind you, given that Snow Leopard isn’t meant to contain any wizzy new features, the stand up might be preferable.

Apple’s been in an acquisitive mood again, snapping up British — hurrar! — 3D chip maker Imagination Technologies and their PowerVR GPU. The pieces of Apple’s future strategy — first PA Semi and now the PowerVR chaps — are slowly falling into place. So let the ‘the new AppleTV’s going to be a Dreamcast clone’ rumours start here.

And we’re also told that Apple is “deeply disappointed” in the decision by French competition regulators to halt their exclusive deal with Orange Mobile. Very Don Corleone. I’d be hiding under the tables by now if I were them.

Meanwhile, we learn that Woz has joined the Board advising MacTablet maker Axiotron. Which is nice, I guess. At least it gets him out of the house for a little while. Lets him stretch his wheels. Meet new people. Nope, I’ve no idea why they hired him. Maybe they’ve got plans to evolve the ModBook into a really cool TV remote.

It appears that all the reports are unfortunately true and, as the picture above shows, the iPhone is not only coming to Wal*Mart stores, but the retailing giant has jumped the gun and is already advertising them. And talking of cheapening the Apple brand, updated drivers have been released to allow multi-touching under Windows on the new MacBooks. I believe it now supports four-finger-swiping mapped to CRTL-ALT-DEL. Because Windows crashes all the time. And has viruses. And sucks. Right?

Now, to silence all those of you asking, “But, honestly, what the hell is Mobile Me actually good for?” It’s good for catching stupid criminals, that’s what it’s good for. Some guy swiped some other guy’s iPhone and started adding his own contacts to it, which then got synced to the stealee’s new phone thanks to the big MM in the clouds. I for one can’t wait until those things get front-facing video cameras.

So now I’m off the play Rolando to see what all the fuss is about.