Although this was launched yesterday and briefly mentioned in our news, the news about Apple's Apple TV was largely overlooked due to the iPhone. The Apple TV itself is intended to be a wireless link between your PC (specifically iTunes) and your TV, and was originally referred to by many sites as iTV. Using the latest wireless technology, 802.11n, users can download their music and TV shows (presumably this doesn't have to be directly via iTunes) onto their computer, and then synchronise it with the Apple TV much like you would with an iPod, with the media being transferred to the built in 40GB hard drive. The unit will be plugged into your TV using either a HDMI or component video cable and you can watch whatever you want, with a remote control to allow you to select what you want to watch. The price will be $299 and it should be released in February.

Everyone has been waiting for this one - the Apple iPhone. It actually uses a wide screen display and touch screen with multi finger gestures. The device will run Mac OS X. 8GB memory serve as storage for your iTunes, contacts and all the usual data. You can also take pictures using the 2 megapixel camera and it is very thin: 11.6 mm. You can listen to your music through the speaker or use normal head phones. The display is incredibly dense: 160ppi. The device has sensors which detect if you put your ear to the phone, what kind of light sitation you are in and if you are holding the iPhone horizontal or landscape. The device uses quad-band GSM + EDGE. So no 3G/UMTS services, but it has WiFi and bluetooth.

Taiwanese MP3 manufacturer Luxpro has stated that they are planning on suing Apple for $100 million. Luxpro was originally sued by Apple on claims that it was copying the design of Apple's iPod Shuffle. Luxpro countered the claims by saying that the prominence of its logo and a series of "easy-to-operate features" were adequate differentiation. After winning an appeal against Apple, the company now plans to move onto the offensive. In a press release, the company stated that it would be suing Apple for 100 million USD. The figure is to receive compensation for Apple's earlier lawsuit in which Luxpro claims they lost valuable market opportunities and a large amount of product orders.

A serious exploit in Apple's QuickTime has been exposed by the "Month of Apple Bugs" project. The exploit affects both Windows and Mac based versions of QuickTime 7.1.3 and earlier. The exploit could potentially allow a hacker to remotely launch what QuickTime thinks is a movie which could then be used to hijack your PC by deleting or encrypting your files for a ransom. Apple doesn't have a patch for this serious exploit yet, so the safest measure to take would be to remove QuickTime from your computer if this proves to be genuine. The project should provide evidence to the public that Macs suffer numerous security flaws and it isn't only Windows based computers.

Apple is set to face yet another lawsuit, this time over the supposed monopoly that the company has in portable media player sales and online music downloads. The lawsuit against Apple claims that by linking its iTunes software to the iPod, other companies are unable to compete because of the difficulty created by the copy protection methods used in music downloads. Songs downloaded via Apple's music store can only be played using iTunes or on an iPod, with songs bought on other sites being difficult to play on iPods because Apple uses its own copy protection. Apple controls about 75% of music online music downloads.

For those of you who don't know about the Apple stock option scandal: Steve Jobs, in 2001, was granted 7.5 million stock options without the proper authorization of the Apple board of directors. However, it has recently come to light that the scandal is much more serious than initially thought. Someone had falsified the documents that make Steve Jobs look like he had authorization for those stock options. The Securities and Exchange Commission is weighing whether or not to take action against Apple and/or any of the individuals involved, and whether or not Steve Jobs himself could be in trouble is unclear. Steve Jobs returned all the stock options before exercising them.

Apple recently patented a wireless "hybrid" mouse that would lower power consumption. It would be a low powered mouse by only turning on the optical tracking feature when absolutely necessary, leaving a manual scroll wheel to do the rest to save power, making the mouse "hybrid". It would use bluetooth tech to be a wireless mouse. There is no mention on how Apple plans on deploying the mouse (replacing the current Macintosh mouse with this one or selling it as an extra), and there is no specified release date.

On Christmas day, there were a lot of gifts of iTunes store gift cards, and Apple iPods of various flavors. Unfortunately, there were too many new Apple products for the iTunes server to handle. The iTunes server crashed when faced with over four times the regular volume of traffic. And so, anyone trying to get into the iTunes store will have download slowdowns of up to 20 minutes, and quite possibly an error message preventing them from even entering the store. Apple was not available for comment on the situation.

The new gadget from Apple, the iPhone, should be available sometime in January. However, Apple may run into some serious patent/copyright issues. Several Canadian and American businesses have already trademarked iPhone, and Canadian service Comwave has offered it's iPhone service for a long time. How Apple will react to this, and what Comwave's reaction is, only time will tell.

Information on Apple's iPhone leaked

Some specs from about the upcoming Apple iPhone have found their way onto the internet. The Inquirer has a link to a video supposedly discussing the new iPhone and some of its features. The most important details you might be interested in are that it will have independent batteries for both the phone and MP3 player, a touch screen and 4GB and 8GB versions priced at $249 and $449 respectively.