Apple's success with the iPhone and the explosion of activity surrounding its App Store has driven other handset makers, including Nokia and RIM to reveal plans for their own stores - and has thrown a firework under mobile application developer's chairs, who find themselves busier than ever - and they're thankful.

Internet News reports Albert Chu, vice president of global marketing and alliances for mobile software developer, Access Systems, is over the moon at the new entente between mobile makers, carriers and developers. Apple has driven a liberalisation in the market that - realistically - has opened up opportunity across the whole sector.

From MarketWatch...

Apple on Thursday e-mailed invitations to media members for an event on Oct. 14 at the company's Cupertino, Calif. headquarters where Apple is set to rollout new models of its Macintosh laptop computers. The invitations, which read "The spotlight turns to notebooks," featured a partially obscured notebook PC coming out of shadows with a light upon the Apple logo. Apple has been expected to do some sort of revamp of its notebook line ahead of the end of the year holiday shopping season. Apple shares rose $2.67, or almost 3%, to $92.42 in afternoon trading.

Contrary to reports from other publications, the long anticipated MacBook event is on!  Did you ever doubt? (us neither)

Swiss Mac website, MacPrime, has uncovered evidence indicating that Apple will open its first retail store in Germany in the coming weeks.

Situated in Munich on Rosenstrasse (Berlin's equivalent is the subject of an award-winning German film), little is known about the store so far, but we can speculate it will offer Apple's 21st-Century design aesthetic, be staffed by enthusiastic  Mac users from across Germany, and will likely be run by a US-trained manager. Otherwise, it's all simple speculation.

MacPrime adds that the constuction plans for the site have been public since last month, though Apple hasn't yet published any information pertaining to its new shop on its retails site.

Mac Soda is predicting that MacBook invites are on their way today to the media (we aren't holding our breath for ours).  It's not a far flung bet, as October 14th is generally considered the upcoming release date for the new MacBooks since Daring Fireball's John Gruber said he'd heard from sources "in the know".

Apple generally gives the press about one week warning to make travel reservations and book hotels and say goodbye to their families....or so we hear.

(Update: Looks like they've had a slight change of heart)

Nick Ciarelli, the then 13-year old founder of Think Secret, who last year settled his lawsuit with Apple as a senior at Harvard for an undisclosed sum(and was subsequently forced to shut down ThinkSecret) today writes a blog post on The Daily Beast.  His contention is that Apple has called off the lawyers recently in light of the negative press the lawsuits had caused (and little effect they had on the spread of Apple rumors).

His view, like ours, is that rumors sites serve only to increase awareness of Apple's products and are a positive influence on the company's bottom line.   Most technology companies couldn't pay enough for the news coverage that Apple receives.  He acknowledges:

Last year, for instance, a site called 9to5Mac published photos of a new lineup of iPod nanos two weeks before Jobs unveiled them to a crowd of reporters. Before long, the photos were replaced with the glum message: "Sorry. Apple called. Said take 'em down. They are down."

My own site, Think Secret, which I started when I was 13 years old, didn't comply with Apple's demands. So the company sued me and sought to uncover the identities of my sources. (I mounted a First Amendment defense and, shortly before graduating, settled the suit, leaving Apple reporting behind to join The Daily Beast.)

Yesterday, Apple introduced a small feature update and bugfix release of AppleTV, 2.2.  The new features included :

• HD TV Show Playback and Purchase
• eMusic Video playlists
• Genius playlists
• On-the-Go playlists
• Standby Option

The security issues and bugfixes weren't so good, however.  Many users found their AppleTVs in an endless reboot loop (Infinite Loop?!) after the upgrade.  Why?  No one knows for sure.  They could restore to factory settings but had no luck trying an upgrade again....

 Look - I know everyone is hunting for a story, but really - this stupid piece of 'citizen journalism' has had its effect - and we suspect someone somewhere got rich on this. We're interested in seeing the appropriate SEC response. The heart attack rumour isn't true, but for its effect - well -  just look at the chart. We wish Apple would trust us more, and CNN less. 

Updated, quite like this opinion, and we'd like to stress that bloggers didn't do this, a reputable news org did, before the debate becomes one aimed at citizen journalism and misses the point of the lack of investment in news teams at major publishers - or the need to seek them out on the blog...

We have received more information. This will be huge.

iMacmatician has used his mathematics skills for good and not evil to create a helpful guide for what we feel will be new MacBook screen sizes.  The 16:9 ratio seems like a lock at this point so we will have some nice new sizes to choose from.  What sizes do you guys think we'll see?

Notice the height is about the same but the screens will become a bit wider at various sizes.  Most likely the bezel around the screen will have to change significantly for the new MacBooks.

 Apple has filed a 23-page motion to dismiss upstart clone maker Psystar’s counterclaim against Cupertino rather than filing a response to that claim. 

The story starts way back when, when Psystar, a Miami-based company, started advertising its $400 OpenComputer this week. A PC that shipped with Mac OS X installed, and "violated Apple's terms of use" for the OS.

Apple's End User License Agreement clearly says its OS can only be used on Apple-branded hardware - and soon (in July) slammed an injunction against Psystar for breaking that admonition, accusing the firm of copyright and trademark infringement for pre-installing Leopard on systems,