I have purposely steered away from all the rumouring around Apples forthcoming announcement mainly due to the sheer volume of posts everywhere else, but today the rumours have gone some way to being confirmed after Apple sent out invites to an event on Jan 27th ( just 9 days away from today ).

The tagline of “Come see our latest creation” doesn’t really confirm the nature of the event but it is clear that the industry is very much behind the view that this one will finally, after a number of false starts, be the event where Apple show us what they think a tablet computer should look like.

Oh yes and recent updates suggest there will be iPhone OS 4.0 launch and possible iLife 2010 !

Should be an interesting day… Hope Twitter have some extra servers ready in the wings !

A number of reports have been circulating today about reports of a significant flaw in Snow Leopard that can cause loss of ALL data in your home folder. According to articles at NeoWin.net and Engadget this bug is triggered when you login using the Guest account and leads to ALL data in the Home folder of the normal user being completely erased. Recovery from backup is required as the files are apparently not recoverable.

Clearly I am not about to test out the premise but from what I can determine this issue is rare. The Apple support forum has a thread where a small number of posters are reporting this issue but it does not appear to be wide spread. Oddly all affected users claim to have selected the Guest account “by accident” ! How do you do this ? The Guest account is disabled by default. How many Mac users actually enable the Guest account ? I have certainly never felt the need to do this, if someone wants to check something on my Mac I let them use the account that is logged in. Perhaps I am more trusting than most ?

I have to say at this point that the reports seem to be greatly exaggerating this issue and clearly the Mac Hater community is having a little bit of a party today, using this as a wonderful piece of propaganda to bash Mac users and Apple. It will be interesting to see how this one develops.

Granted if this problem affected you, you are most likely going to be very upset at Apple and if it turns out that this is in fact a real bug in Guest account handling and not some weird interaction with another application and

Apples annual September product event starts this evening at 6pm GMT and as usual the big Apple blogs will be posting the event live from within the hall.

9 to 5 Mac have their LivePanel up and ready to roll, Ars Technica will be posting here. There will of course be many other blogs re-playing the event either in real time or shortly after the fact.

Check back later for updates and comments on the outcome. Heres hoping for another “One More Thing” launch… Its been too long….

According to a number of reports including this one at Macrumors.com a customer in Japan received an unexpected surprise when he opened his newly purchased Mac Mini as the enclosed OS X Install DVD apparently was for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Whether this is a hoax or true is unclear but from the number of rumours spreading over the last week or so it is fairly clear that the launch date for Apples latest big cat is very close now.

Engadget.com have another report of possible relevance to Apple netbook rumours. They claim in this article that Apple have struck a deal with LG to supply 10″ OLED displays for the forthcoming netbook. To be fair Engadget do comment that the source of this report may well not be the most reliable and to read this for what it is, just another rumour….

MacRumors.com have posted this article which suggests that the anticipated delivery date for OS X 10.6 aka Snow Leopard has been brought forward to Quarter 1 of 2009. This is exciting as it potentially points to a January MacWorld announcement in Steve Jobs Keynote speech.

Apple have today sent invites to selected journalists inviting them to a special event next Tuesday 14th October. The invites read “the spotlight turns to notebooks” in an unusually direct manner for Apple, whose events are generally entitled with thinly veiled hints at the actual subject of the day.

Still, this event has long been expected to revolve around new notebook announcements and this is one Apple blog that is actually hoping for return to previous “And One More Thing” style launches, having been more than a little deflated after the last couple of Steve Notes.

Clearly a product to wow the Apple faithful is well overdue as is a refresh of the aging Macbook lineup ( Macbook Air excepted of course ).

Personally I would like to see Apple attacking the growing Netbook market with a really price competitive sub-notebook, but I think this is probably not going to happen. More likely I think is a consolidation of the Macbook range with uniform aluminium casing across the consumer and Pro models, and presumably a lift in performance and specs at the same time.

Less likely potentials include the oft discussed tablet laptop, though with the advances in touch screens that the iPhone has brought in this always remains a distant possibility, and my personal hope for MUCH improved sound output which on the Macbook is weedy to the point of being ridiculous.

Looking forward to next week…. Cheers

Mac fans are very well served by rumour sites, technical blogs, hints and tips information and links to new software. Most of these sites provide RSS feeds so if you are looking at keeping up to date with the latest posts a news reader such as NetNewsWire might be the best choice.

But what about when you are not at your own computer and you want a quick fix ? Mac.alltop.com might be just the ticket in this case. Alltop.com provide a range of pages covering all sorts of topics, each page consisting of a selection of the latest posts from the best blogs covering that topic. Mac.alltop.com as the name suggests provides links to news/updates from blogs covering Apple hardware and software.

The pages are presented in a very concise layout making finding the article you are interested in very easy, and you can even hide/exclude blogs that you are not particularly interested in to customise the view further.

Am I the only one to think that the design of the new Nano, purportedly being announced this coming Tuesday 9th September, is a bit of a step backwards ?

It looks to me like a slightly elongated Gen 2 Nano, which I think is really odd. Are they saying that the Gen 3 Nano design was a mistake ? Clearly the form factor of the Nano is constrained to a certain extent by the sceen dimensions, and I suppose if the associated announcement of HD video content from the iTunes Store also materialises then this would probably be a factor in the selection of a wide screen format display for the new Nanos.

Still it just seems odd to me, not that I doubt the authenticity of Kevin Roses’ sources which seem to have been fairly widely acknowledged as genuine.

AppleInsider is reporting that analysts are warning to prepare for an “underwhelming” event on the 9th with only minor product enhancements ( new iPod Nano and reduced prices for iPod Touch ) expected. They don’t rule out the potential for a big announcement, but don’t seem too hopeful.

Personally I hope they are wrong. Part of the buzz around all of Jobs keynote speeches is always that “One More Thing” moment right at the end and the events where this doesn’t happen are extremely disappointing.

What do you think ? Big shock or damp squib ?