By comparison, the total human population currently stands at roughly 6.6 billion, and is growing at a rate of 1.167 per cent. Using our VERY rough estimate, if the iTunes store keeps its current growth rate, by the end of next year there will be more iTunes downloads in the world than people. Even if downloads remain steady, and Apple simply continues to serve up 2 billion downloads each year, iTunes songs will overtake people by mid 2011.

I think we all know where this will ultimately lead....

Larry Drury and his client Jose Tujillo claim that Apple insidiously duped users into purchasing the iPhone by concealing the fact that the battery could not be changed by the user. As such, they say that users are being hit with $89.95 per year in hidden charges.  As a result, Trujillo deserves $75,000 from the company, they calim.

$89.95 per year? Yes, they claim, because the iPhone can only be charged 300 times before the battery must be replaced. Of course, unless Drury and Trujillo are privy to some secret data none of the rest of the world knows about, that 300 figure is utter nonsense.

According to Apple's web site, users can expect to keep full capacity for 300-400 charge CYCLES before the battery begins to lose capacity, and that after 400 cycles users can still expect the battery to retain at least 80% of its capacity.

To reach this in one year, as the suit claims, a user would have to drain the battery completely once every 30 hours or so. Basically, you would need to perform just about every computing and communication operation you do over the course of a day with your iPhone to even start to see a drop in capacity within one year.

It isn't the $54 million pair of pants, but it's not too far off. If there's any common sense left in the American justice system, this thing will be dismissed shortly and Apple will counter-sue for the bogus figures.

The verdict: It can withstand extreme cold (-20 Celsius), but the touchscreen will not work with gloves, so watch out for frostbite.

...or move to California.

Most of these seem to be redundant OS X services already installed on the iPhone, such as the phone book and world clock features. The possibility for streaming audio or an FM tuner could be interesting, but as several people have noted, Apple has never included an FM tuner in the iPod. It seems a bit unlikely that the company would suddenly have a change of heart regarding the iPhone.

If this rumor turns out to be true, then we've come full circle.

Less than ten years after the original iMac debuted with the "carpel tunnel special" cramped keyboard and hockey puck mouse, Apple has returned to crush what's left of your joints. Just when it seemed like they were starting to get it with Mighty Mouse, the boys in Cupertino go and staple chicklets to a sheet of aluminum.

Fortunately, users have a couple things in their favor should this ergonomic scourge in fact be unleashed: The peripheral companies have gotten so used to cleaning up after Apple's crummy keyboard designs that good-looking and comfortable alternatives should be out in no time. We can also take comfort in the knowledge Apple tends to re-write its hardware designs so often that should it indeed prove to be a wrist-ender, this keyboard will not make it to the next iMac revision.

While Saint Stevie moves on to plan Apple's next "one more thing," his co-founder will be hitting up three former UC Berkeley grad students with what Wozniak terms "ideas that come into my mind."

Woz's partner in the Hotswap funding is Red McCombs, founder of Clear Channel Communications, the media mega-chain that was accused of using its position to influence public opinion on the Iraq War.

A conservative media tycoon, three Berkeley grad students and a quirky Silicon Valley entrepreneur? Bring in Flavor Flav and a case of Bacardi and we'll have ourselves a reality show!

Let us flash back to 1991...the Soviet Union was undergoing its historic collapse, Nirvana was teaching the virtues of flannel shirts and prescription drugs, and a noted technology columnist released an extensive book on how to get the most out of your Macintosh system.

The title of that book: "Inside Track to the Mac." Written by, you guessed it, John Dvorak. Co-authors include Dvorak's wife Mimi and tech media heavyweight Leo Laporte. Now little more than an amusing relic, the book harkens back to a time when MacOS 7 was an exciting new technology, a 25mhz CPU was top-of-the-line, and Mr. Dvorak had yet to become scourge of Mac fanatics everywhere.

Perhaps we're all at fault for this one. What with the "Jesus Phone" and "Saint Stevie" monikers, combined with the unchecked fervor of the fanboy communities, it was almost inevitable that someone would flip out and go kamikaze.

Please, if you do get the urge to abandon all capacity for logical thought and dedicate your very being to the betterment of Apple, stick with the conventional, non-violent methods: Digg every pro-Apple blog post you find, flame any article that dares to suggest fallibility on the part of Apple, or just go and get a job at the Apple Store.

Our condolences to the woman who was injured in the incident, obviously this was a terrible occurrence and we don't wish to make fun of innocent people sustaining life-threatening injuries, but this one was just too good to pass up.

While the entire planet has been caught up in iPhone hype, the Macintosh has very quietly managed to post its best quarter ever. While the spotlight was placed firmly on the iPhone, and occasionally on the iPod, consumers went about and purchased iMacs, Macbooks, and Mac Pros in droves.

The product responsible for the "computer" that Apple so graciously dropped from its name earlier this year has lead the company to its best third quarter ever.

And how does Apple thank our beloved Macintosh? By delaying its new operating system in order to fine-tune the iPhone.

Like the brain-surgeon older brother in the Osmond family, the Mac gets shoved aside in favor of its camera-friendly younger siblings.

Well Mac, you'll always have top-billing here at the Inspector. Congratulations on your big quarter.

You can imagine what a headache this would have been for Apple had it been found that the iPhone has a tendnency to blow up university WiFi networks. Many businesses are still forbidding use of the iPhone, and having the device blocked from college campuses could put Apple at risk of losing its beloved "hipster" demographic.

Apple loves universities, for obvious reasons. Take a trip around your local campus and count how many iPods and MacBooks you find. Now imagine the PR nightmare that would ensue if those schools were to tell students to avoid certain Apple products.

It seems at this point that there have been enough vulnerabilities found in the iPhone that the question will shift from "is it vulnerable?" to "will it be exploited?"

This was the question that we asked Trend Micro's Paul Moriarty when the dialler flaw was disclosed. He pointed out that similar flaws have been found in smartphones, and have yielded little fruit for malware authors.

As Moriarty put it, ""If you want to get a headline, maybe, but you are not going to make a whole lot of money."

And money, these days, is what malware is all about.

So, at this point it seems that you're more vulnerable shopping for your iPhone than you are using it.

This summer, as everyone finally begins to come down from iPhone mania, I've gotten hooked to a pair of quality soaps. And believe it or not, they both center around Apple.

First, there's the saga of Fake Steve Jobs. The satirical blog told from the point of view of everyone's favorite highly volatile ex-hippie tech visionary has become a hit in Silicon Valley, so much so that even Saint Stevie himself (or Real Steve Jobs as he's known on the blog) has admitted to being a loyal reader.

As the blog has picked up notoriety, speculation has grown as to the identity of its anonymous author. Such names as Valleywag and Business 2.0 have sought to uncover the real identity of Fake Steve Jobs.

Recently, the search has gone from light speculation to a full-on investigative operation. Some have even gone so far as to send Fake Steve spyware-laced e-mail messages, a-la HP. The development has drawn the ire of both FSJ and his loyal readers.

It has also, however, given a few leads as to the secret identity of the blogger. Fakesteve's IP address was reportedly traced to Boston, leading some to peg freelance journalist Andy Inhatko as the man behind the blog.

Inhatko declined to confirm or deny the accusations, noting that a response either way would only further fuel speculation.

The second great soap of the summer centers around the mysterious "Mac worm" that was announced earlier this week. Shortly after boasting about the worm, author Infosec Sellout had apparently amended the blog entry to remove all but a brief overview. This then touched off a whirlwind of speculation and wild accusations as to who was really behind the alleged worm.

This is where it gets complicated. An anonymous informant attempted to convince security researcher Cutaway to leak a story to ZDNet's George Ou claiming that Infosec Sellout blog was a joint venture between and underground group known has the Phrack High Council (PHC) and LMH, one of the researchers behind the Month of Apple Bugs project.  Cutaway instead posted the entire conversation to a company blog.

It was also reported that the takedown of the InfoSec Sellout blog was the work of researcher David Maynor. The group later denied this and attributed the takedown to an error by one of the posters.

From there, things only got stranger. An e-mail was then sent to the Full Disclosure list in which LMH claimed that he was in reality David Maynor, and that the infosec sellout blog was the work of Maynor's former boss Jon Rammsey.

Maynor denied that the e-mail was sent by him, noting several factual inaccuracies in the post, including the fact that Jon Rammsey was never Maynor's boss. Rammsey also denied the claim that he was behind infosec sellout.

...so there you have. Two tech sagas that would rival anything on daytime TV.

Pass the popcorn.

The idea of a conventional mobile makes much more sense than simply releasing a smaller size/capacity iPhone. It would pick up the non-smartphone crowd that would like an iPhone but can't see it worth paying $500. Furthermore, because it would it cater to a new niche, it  wouldn't cannibalize sales of either the iPhone or iPod to any great extent.

Building a mobile phone with iTunes capabilities built in.  How could this possibly go wrong?

...oh.

We all know what's going to happen here. Researcher gets his fifteen minutes of fame. A few weeks later, Apple patches the vulnerability. Meanwhile, no malware writer bothers to pick up the exploit code and the worm becomes little more than a reference used by by reporters the next time an attention-starved security researcher decides to "show the maccies."

So can we please stop with all this "see, Macs are vulnerable too" junk?

Operating systems have vulnerabilities, and vulnerabilities can be exploited. We get it. What we haven't seen yet is a malware author who has decided that it's worthwhile to develop malicious code for what would be an extremely visible attack that would only have the potential to affect 4% of personal computers worldwide when there are hundreds of millions of poorly-maintained PCs ripe for the picking. A looter doesn't walk across town to break into the TV repair shop when the windows have already been smashed at the Wal-Mart just down the street.

I know it's fun to get the fanboys all wound up, but the rest of us rational Mac users understand that OS X is not without its holes and we're no longer impressed by working PoC code. Most researchers savvy enough to find a critical vulnerability are also capable of writing an exploit. Heck, Dino Dai Zovi crafted his infamous $10,000 exploit in less time than it took to watch The Godfather.

So congratulations on finding the vulnerability, patching holes can only make OS X safer, but don't expect to cause some great  Mac security awakening just because you went to extra mile to develop attack code as well.

Last week, Digitimes made a similar report, suggesting that Apple's big appetite for flash was leading Hynix and Samsung to be unable to fill some orders. This is only being made worse by the fact that NAND manufacturers are still trying to ratchet up production after taking big hits earlier this year when lower demand dropped prices.

Last week we spoke with iSuppli's Nam Hyung-Kim. He said that if suppliers are in fact unable to meet demand, don't expect any of the big names to get shorted on their orders. As usual, the little companies further down in the pecking order will see the brunt of this. Kim also said that a shortage would most likely last only a few weeks and that the market should stabilize in August.

Hopefully in the meantime, Apple will have assembled enough memory to roll out new iPods, take the iPhone global, and pull several million new members to the cult of Saint Stevie this holiday season.

Now, your chances of ever being struck by lightning are about one in three million, and there are far more likely ways your iPod could injure you. For instance, earbud-equipped players have been linked with hearing loss, and there's also the matter of getting jumped by a pack of thugs keyed off by the white headphones.

Then again, iPods have also been known to stop bullets, so maybe you shouldn't trade that nano in for a helmet just yet...

No, there's stil no malware for MacOS X. No, if you don't patch it you most likely won't get infected tomorrow. But eventually someone will look to make a quick buck off of vulnerable Macs, and do you really want to be the person who has to go the the Genius Bar with a MacBook full of keyloggers and adware?

Take the three minutes to patch up.

So, does that mean that we should expect a new line of song-swappping WiFi iPods?  There are some signs that would point that way, such as last year's patent filings for a ceramic tube that would allow wireless transmissions to pass through and would look an awful lot like an iPod nano.

But then there's the iPhone. If Apple has, in fact, been prepping this technology since last year, why not put it in the device being touted as "the best iPhone ever"? There's also the logistical issue. Given that Apple was so focused on the iPhone that it pulled developers off of OS X Leopard, it would seem that any new iPod technology, particularly one involving wireless networking would have either been added to the iPhone or would have been placed on the back burner long ago.

Oh, and then there's the whole DRM thing. Apple is still fighting the record labels tooth and nail to be able to sell tracks without DRM software. Now that iTunes is offering DRM-free music, how does Apple plan to allow sharing without further angering either the RIAA or the users who paid a premium for unlocked music?

Finally, there's the consumer end. Who really wants this? Song-sharing hasn't exactly been a killer app for the Zune, to say the least. Besides, as Steve Jobs pointed out, wireless sharing is a total game-killer.