Back in January during his MacWorld Keynote Address, Steve Jobs hinted that Apple was going to be really busy launching new products and innovations this year. True to his word, there's a lot coming out of Cupertino these days.

Here's a rundown of announcements and rumours for February:

• New iPod Touch and iPhones were released earlier this month with twice as much memory as previous models
• New MacBooks and MacBook Pros just shipped, with another refresh due in June
• O2 annouced the iPhone launch for Ireland, with Austria rumored to be close behind
• A media event scheduled for March 6 will discuss "Enterprise" and launch the official SDK for the iPhone (and iPod touch).
• More rumours are circulating about a 3G iPhone coming sometime mid-year

Since the beginning of the year, Apple's stock has dropped by 40%, from a high of $198 per share at the end of December '07 to a low of $119 earlier this week. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that now would be a good time to order a slice of AAPL pie "a la mode". :)

Will it really take 5 years for Canada's mobile web market to catch up with the rest of the world? That's what Brian Fling, author of dotmobi Mobile Web Developers Guide, said recently when he spoke at Web Directions North. Hmm... I'm not so sure about that.

In my mind, it may not matter before long. Mobile carriers selling high-priced EDGE/EVDO service might end up losing out to WiFi. When devices like the iPod Touch become cheaper and more common, and public hot-spots become more pervasive, using a cell-phone to access the web will be like using a land-line to make a long-distance call (instead of Skype or iChat). And this could take way less than 5 years to happen. I for one have already gone that route. I hate using my cell-phone to browse. I carry my iPod Touch around wherever I go, and login to WiFi networks, giving me a real browser and a nice big touch-screen that makes browsing a pleasure. And with an SDK around the corner, there will be a flood of mobile widgets coming soon to do just about everything I could ever want. For someone who doesn't like talking on the phone, a device like this is perfect.

Turns out I'm not the only one who has some difficulty typing accurately on my iPod touch. A test was recently performed to assess the typing accuracy for novice and experienced users of Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, as compared to hard-key QWERTY and numeric-based keyboards. Error rates were higher across the board using Apple's innovative touch-sensitive keyboard. Remarkably, experienced users fared no better than complete novices. 

This is my first posting using an iPod touch so I'll keep it short. I had to disable rich-text editing in order to enter text in the body field when creating this post. Some features of the CMS are not supported (yet..?) by the ipod's browser, which is sort of a Safari-lite experience. The touch-based QWERTY keyboard and interface take a while to get used to but are actually quite clever and usable (unless you're blind, in which case the touch is totally innaccessible). Might post more on this later.

I have to confess, I am profoundly excited about something being sold by a company called Apple. This is deeply worrisome on many levels, but alas, I am powerless to stop the chain of events that are unfolding at this time in history. Therefore, I feel that I ought to at least ride the wave for what it's worth, since I can always hop off, or back on, later*. It's called the "touch".   read more »

Yesterday was a pretty big day for Apple, as they announced a complete overhaul of their popular iPod lineup to coincide with the back-to-school season (and well ahead of the upcoming holiday spend-a-thon). And yes, they did unveil a phoneless-iPhone.

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