What I would be interested to know ( if anyone out there has a pointer ) is how much income Apple actually makes from MobileMe each year. I am sure it is a healthy amount, but feel equally as sure that whatever amount this is it could generate more from increased hardware sales as a result of a comprehensive FREE MobileMe style service, perhaps extended to cover things such as proper Domain hosting, iTunes music syncing, a Flickr like social front end to Photo libraries etc.

In reality this rumour will run and run until either it becomes a fact or some other previously unforeseen use for Apples new Carolina data centre is revealed. Whichever way it goes I can’t imagine for a minute that the investment they have made in the new centre isn’t going to be very significant for the future of Apple.

The code snippets include error messages such as “The maximum number of free accounts have been activated on this iPhone”, but further errors state “This Apple ID cannot be used for MobileMe Mail, but you can use it for other MobileMe services” which suggests that Mail may not be included in the free part of the service.

Apple originally stated that iOS 4.2 would be launched in November although rumoured launch dates earlier this month have already come and gone as Apple issued further Gold Masters to Developers for testing.

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 !

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

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.

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

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.