And finally it comes to pass-- sort of. Rumors of the iPod getting tricked out with a color screen and a video-out port have been clinging to the grapevine for ages, now, and there's certainly been more than enough hints that one's coming sooner rather than later. When the fourth-generation iPods were unveiled in July, most people complained that Apple had dropped the low-end model and cheapened up the mid-range and high-end ones, but as we pointed out at the time, Apple had really boosted the specs of the Bobby and Peter Brady units while keeping their prices the same; it was the top-of-the-line Greg model that had really been cut from the line-up. Add to that Toshiba's blabbing to the press about Apple having ordered a slew of 60 GB iPod-size hard drives for delivery in Septemberish and the luxuriant wiggle room in Greg Joswiak's denial of 60 GB iPods in the works ("no plans in regard to announcing 60 GB models," said he, not "we're not working on one"-- oooh, tricky), and you've got plenty enough circumstantial evidence to believe that a 60 GB high-end 'Pod would return to fill the vacated $499 slot once Toshiba made the drives available.

How does the video-out port figure into all of this, you ask? Well, faithful viewer Brad informs us that Think Secret is citing "highly reliable sources" who claim that a $499 60 GB iPod is due to appear "within the next 30 to 60 days" (there were "delays from Toshiba in delivering its new 60 GB drive," see), and it'll be that model that first boasts the long-conjectured video-out port and iPhoto synchronization we were yakking about last December. We're assuming it'll come with a cable that'll connect to its video and audio ports and allow you to wire it up to the ubiquitous yellow-red-white RCA inputs on any suitably non-ancient TV; once you do that, "a slideshow feature will provide transitions with user-specified background music, similar to iPhoto." And with 60 GB of storage, only a very few people couldn't sync their entire iTunes and iPhoto libraries to take with them wherever they go.

Reportedly this new lil' powerhouse will be about two millimeters thicker than the other 4G iPods-- so, roughly the size of the original 5 GB models-- in part because it's also going to pack a high-res color screen that'll allow photo viewing right on the 'Pod itself and will also show album cover art when the iPod plays a song that includes it. (What, no Visualizer?) While early rumors made much of the fact that the next-generation iPod chip from PortalPlayer included "basic editing" capabilities for digital photos, reportedly the new iPod will include "only rudimentary built-in software for viewing photos, with no editing tools." Not that we'd expect to run Photoshop with a 2-inch screen and a Click Wheel, of course, but it'd be nice to have some sort of access to "rotating, cropping, and red-eye correction" on the iPod itself for the folks who plan to load images in the field via a Belkin iPod Media Reader and do TV slideshows without ever getting to iPhoto first. Nothing kills a slideshow like telling your audience to tilt their heads for the sideways snapshots.

So will it sell? Probably. But noticeably absent from Think Secret's report is any mention whatsoever of movie capabilities, which we'd personally consider to be a lot more useful than the whole photo-out thing, especially since even our over-three-years-old Canon digital camera has its own video-out port. (Okay, so it can't play music during a slideshow. At least it can rotate individual photos 90° for display.) Now, being able to sync this new iPod to a subfolder of Movies on the Mac (one populated with a new "Export for iPod" option in iMovie that would spit out appropriately compressed footage) would really give that 60 GB a run for the money. Watching TV shows on a 2-inch screen may be a less-than-compelling experience, and home movies in your pocket may be an "eh" selling point for those Portable Media Center thingies that Microsoft's pushing, but make it part of the seamless Mac-plus-iMovie-plus-iPod experience so that showing edited footage of the kids on Grandma's TV becomes a total no-brainer and we bet people would kill or maim for a better spot in line. But maybe that's just us.

While our Inner Geeks are looking forward to the whole color-screen-iPod-photos-out-to-TV thing (and it's nice that they have something to look forward to, because it's probably really dark and cramped in there), part of us can't help but wonder whether this morphing of the iPod into more of an all-purpose media bank might detract from its single greatest appeal: simplicity. After all, up 'til now, everything about the iPod has always been about the music: a monochrome display; a form factor that screams portability; an interface ideal for music selection and maybe a little cumbersome for anything else. Oh, sure, Apple added notes and calendars and goofy little games and all that, but that stuff has always clearly been "extra," and now that Apple's reportedly giving the iPod a video port and a color screen so it can play in the photo world, too, well, we harbor vague concerns that relaxing the focus on music might break the spell on the buying public.

Spell? Of course there's a spell. For instance, faithful viewer Small Paul pointed out some very interesting data over at MacMinute about the iPod's appeal to the teen market. Apparently analyst firm Piper Jaffray (man, they've sure been showing Apple the love lately, hmmm?) surveyed 600 high school students on a variety of topics, and concluded in a research note that "Apple's iPod is dominating mind share and market share" among that demographic. According to the Piper, 16 percent of the teens already have iPods and a fairly stunning 24 percent plan to buy one within the next twelve months. Considering that only 8 percent plan to buy any other brand of digital music player, Apple's market share among this particular group of teens is going to be a solid 75 percent for another year at least.

So a staggering 40 percent of these teens have an iPod now or expect to have one within a year; that doesn't mean that the other 60 percent don't want one. When asked to list what they hoped to get as loot for the holidays this year, the teens ranked the iPod fourth on their wish lists, right under "clothes, money, and a car"-- which means the iPod ranks just slightly below the teen wish list equivalents of food, water, and oxygen. And get this: the iPod wasn't even a given choice on the survey. It placed fourth under the Holy Teen Trinity of threads, cash, and wheels as a write-in.

That's astonishing in part because while the iPod has been revised a number of times, it's still fundamentally a three-year-old product. Things may have changed drastically since our adolescence in the late Cretaceous Period, but back when we were teens, any product-- particularly a tech one, like, say, fire or the wheel-- that had been around for three whole years might as well have been something your (shudder) parents used. Worse yet, parents are using iPods. So are teens less fickle these days, or is the iPod just such an amazing piece of work that its sheer brilliance is enough to transcend age demographics and obliterate the mental image of their white-earbudded dad air-guitaring to dinosaur rock in his underwear and socks? (For, um, example.)

You know what? Never mind about those "vague concerns" about the photo support diluting the iPod's focus, because with numbers like this, Apple might well be able to turn the iPod into a music-and-food-processing product without losing its stranglehold on the hearts and minds of the buying public. We can't wait to see the holiday sales numbers.

Why, our cup runneth over! Just yesterday we dished up a dollop of sweet legal drama when we noted reports that Apple had fired its British lawyers in its trade mark tussle with the Beatles; that implied that a settlement was unlikely and we can look forward to actual courtroom histrionics coming our way. Well, okay, maybe not histrionics, exactly, seeing as British courts are probably a little more staid and reserved than your average episode of Judge Judy, but still, there's some darn fine drama headed thisaway. But guess what? This week we've got a two-fer!

Check it out: according to MacCentral, Apple's just been sued again-- this time by Honeywell, who claims that Apple has infringed on its 1994 patent for technology that "increases the brightness of images and that reduces the appearance of certain interference effects on a liquid crystal display." According to the suit, "Apple has been and is engaged in the manufacture, importation, offer for sale, and/or sale of products that include a liquid crystal display... such products include at least one of the following: laptop computers, cellular phones, PDAs, digital still cameras, video cameras, portable DVD players and portable televisions, and/or portable game systems." Wondering why Honeywell doesn't seem to know exactly what Apple products it's suing over? It's because Apple is only one of over thirty companies to get smacked with an identical suit. That's right, kids, it's a form lawsuit. How sick is that?

Meanwhile, we admit that we aren't exactly legal beagles over here, and we certainly didn't get up off our kiesters and actually look at the patent in question, but we still feel perfectly entitled to emit a Feissian "Nnng?" over why Apple is one of the targeted companies. After all, Apple doesn't make the panels, it just buys them and slaps 'em into PowerBooks and whatnot; surely if there's some technology in those panels that steps on the toes of Honeywell's patent, they should be suing LG and Samsung and anyone else making the LCDs that Apple uses-- and they probably would, if it weren't for the fact that both LG and Samsung have already paid to license the very same technology from Honeywell.

So let's get this straight: Honeywell has a patent on technology that makes LCDs brighter. LG and Samsung license the technology from Honeywell and incorporate it into their panels. Apple buys those panels and sticks them in PowerBooks-- and gets sued by Honeywell? What gives? Especially since, in Samsung's case at least, "the license agreement extends to LCD products that employ Samsung SEC's LCD modules."

Oh, what the heck-- in for a penny, in for a pound, and we were getting up anyway: here's the patent in question, and apparently it covers "a display apparatus including a light source, a liquid crystal panel, and one or more directional diffuser lens arrays disposed therebetween." So presumably Honeywell figures that Apple is buying just panels (not full modules) from LG and Samsung and then sticking them into PowerBooks with its own lamps and diffusers, which we imagine is entirely possible, and in which case the suit probably has merit. Which would be a shame, not just because Apple might have to shell out still more cash to settle another lawsuit, but also because we would really have liked to hear the courtroom arguments in which Honeywell accused Apple of "buying properly-licensed technology" and Apple accused Honeywell of "smoking low-grade crack." Maybe next time.