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Hey y'all,

It was a busy weekend for technology news! Steve-O pulls another trademark fit, iPhone owners take Apple to court...is it just us or is this company constantly embroiled in legal battles? Maybe Jobs was a lawyer in a past life...

A Personal Note
If Steve Jobs is going to demand you change your software name because it has "iPod" in it you should be happy to get a personal note, right? Some random missive in legalese from an unknown lawyer making demands on his behalf just won't do. Unless the personal note Steve sends you reads like this:

"Change your apps [sic] name. Not that big of a deal."

The app in question is iRip (nee "iPodRip) and it's no small potatoes. Downloaded over five million times, this software has helped people transfer songs from their iPods back to crashed computers since 2003. Read the full exchange here...considering the length and formality CEO John Devor's email takes Steve's reply seems even more curt and callous. Not that he has to be anything other than that--Jobs has the man power to make name changes very expensive if people choose to remain non-compliant.

Source Code
iPhone users whose jailbroken phones were pratically destroyed when Version 1.1.1 came out are actually braving Apple's legal warriors and taking the company to court. The users, who are charging Apple and AT&T with violating anti-trust laws by making the iPhone unavailable to all mobile carriers, demanded that Apple hand over the source code for the iPhone so they can analyze it, The question is whether all jailbroken phones were attacked or if it was just a selected number of phones that had all their personal data wiped by the update. 1.1.1, if you remember, came on the heels of Apple's threats to take action against users who had hacked their phones...Steve made his oft-quoted "cat and mouse game" speech at this time. All these folks are trying to do is determine the scope of their class; they need to see the code to determine how many people were affected and see if they want to join in the partay.

The plantiffs have until January 8th to determine how many folks will participate--we'll keep you posted as the updates roll in.

Tablet Delayed?
It's no wonder as far as we're concerned--too many pots on the stove for Apple to remain concerned with actually adding to its product line. We jest, of course, but here's the skinny on this rumor: a paper based in Taiwan that covers every bump and whisper in the Chinese and Taiwanese electronics industry with a notoriously spotty track record reported "delays" in the tablet's release because they're switching out components. You can read the whole article here, but factoring in the reports of two tablets (one of which is priced at around $1,200 on the low end because of its OLED screen) and the assurance of a second half of 2010 release and we'd say these guys are pretty full of it.

And we hope we don't have to eat our words next year.

Two tablets? What do you think? Tweet us.

Till tomorrow, Newsies...