All of this miniPod speculation is too late now, anyway-- the product is already here! And let us tell you, you could have knocked us over with something as light as a feather (but not actually a feather, see, because that would be a cliché) when we found out that Apple had decided to bail on the whole "let's announce it at the Stevenote" plan and just tell the press today. And only the UK press. Funny how these things happen, isn't it? But hey, if we understood any of it, we'd be running Apple ourselves instead of trying to come up with more Ballmer jokes involving sweat glands and monkey genetics. In any event, the miniPod is here.

What's that you say? You hadn't heard? Well, you're clearly not getting your fill of news from the London Evening Standard, then, because there it is, plain as day: "Apple launches mini iPod." And if you need to delve deeper than the headline (whatever you say, College Boy), the Standard makes things plain by reporting that "days after more than a million people paid up to £400 for the most popular hi-tech toy of Christmas, the iPod, manufacturer Apple has announced a cut-price mini version." See? It's been announced. By Apple. After all, if it's in the newspaper it must be true.

Still don't believe us? Then for corroboration, look no further than the Edinburgh Evening News, which declares that the "new smaller iPod is going for a song" and that "Apple has announced it is unveiling a smaller version which will cost around £65 - £185 cheaper than the current bottom-of-the-range model." So England knows, Scotland knows, and apparently the only one who didn't know is, well, you. Try to keep up, okay? You're embarrassing the rest of us over here.

Of course, you're right to raise the point that the Evening Standard then states that "Apple chief Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the cheaper iPod at a San Francisco exhibition next week," which somewhat contradicts the whole "Apple has announced..." bit just three paragraphs earlier. And the Evening News mysteriously includes almost the exact same line ("Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the new iPods at an exhibition in San Francisco next week"-- darn close, isn't it?) at the end of its otherwise quite different article. What do you reckon: intentional misinformation campaign by the UK purely intended to mess with the heads of us bloody colonials? Geez, dump one shipload of tea in the harbor and they taunt you with fake iPod announcements a couple of centuries later. Talk about bearing a grudge.