Holy smokes, people. According to Britney Gilbert at Eye On Blogs, "Tech blog Gizmodo claims that someone, most likely an Apple employee, left a yet-to-be-release iPhone 4G in a Redwood City bar, disguised to look like a 3G phone." Behold.

If this is the 4G, tapering is out; stronger edges are in. And, if this iPhone 4G is the second coming, which Gizmodo claims it is, the next generation will feature: front facing camera for char, camera flash (praise Jesus), split buttons for volume, metallic power, mute, and volume buttons.

Gangsta rap aficionado and geography major Stefanie Gray has conveniently mapped out all of Ludcris' hos from his ditty "Area Codes." Awesome. Here's just a taste of some of his ho-based area code shout outs:

I’ll jump off the G4, we can meet outside/So control your hormones and keep your drawers on/’Til I close the door and I’m jumping your bones/3-1-2’s, 3-1-3’s (oh), 2-1-5’s, 8-0-three’s (oh)/Read your horoscope and eat some horderves (sic)/Ten on pump one, these hoes is self serve/7-5-7, 4-1-0’s, my cell phone just overloads.

Oh dear.

And according to the map, it looks like San Francisco and Marin are up there.

Marin, huh? Someone's mad at their daddy. But still: way to go, dog. (Oh, and for a more legible version of said ho map, go here.)

Of course, it wouldn't be Apple without that sense of smug self-superiority, so we're glad to see the company got some digs in on the sidebar of its Boot Camp website: accusing Windows of operating in the last century, and reminding users how Windows machines are plagued by viruses.

MacWorld has the FAQs about running XP on a Mac, some benchmarks that indicate the process works pretty well, and speculation on how this will affect Mac gaming. There's plenty more speculation as to how this will affect Mac market share in general, including a MacUser/USA Today debate. And Ars Technica reported on the folks at Apple Matters who are taking the role of French Canadiens in the issue, refusing to let their beautiful Macs be sullied by something as gauche as Windows XP. Also getting a lot of attention is the Parallels Workstation, which allows Intel Macs to run Windows without the need for a reboot.

All the news and speculation and debate just leaves us in the lab with one question: anybody want to buy our used PowerBook G4?

What actually happened was a little less earth-shattering, more a confirmation of what had already been announced. Apple's big push was the release of the first two Intel-based Macs: the iMac and the MacBook Pro. The iMac is functionally equivalent to the iMac G5 released late last year, the key difference being that it's now using the "Intel Core Duo" CPU that Apple claims is 2x faster than the iMac G5. And the PowerBook G5G4 has gone the way of the iPod mini, obseleted for the sake of consistency in the company's product line.

The comparison to last year's iPod revision seems apt, because the new MacBook Pro is a little bit slimmer and more streamlined than the PowerBook, but with more power. In terms of features, it's equivalent to the new iMac — new Intel dual core processor, built-in iSight camera, and Front Row and iLife software included. Apple's switch to Intel was driven by a need for faster and cooler processors on their laptops, and their claims for the MacBook bear that out: it's four times faster in benchmarks than the PowerBook G5G4, and it runs cooler. (Welcome news to those of us who have learned to live with painful thigh burns for the sake of using such a nice computer).

Best Gadget of 2005
The iPod Nano. As pernicious as my gadget fetish is, I still get more than a little unnerved when people talk about consumer electronics using words like "sexy" and even worse, "lickable." It's creepy, it's wrong, and it's disturbingly appropriate when talking about the Nano. I can't rationalize actually buying one for myself, but I might have to. Just to be able to fondle one without the unwelcome stares of other people in the Apple store or the people who give me theirs "just to look at it for a second."
Runner Up: The Mac mini, as cool (and quiet) as the G4 cube, but actually practical.

Gadget Resolution for 2006
Rationalize getting a Motorola Q smart phone. Almost as small as the now-ubiquitous RAZR, but unlike the RAZR, actually practical, useful, and almost worth the exhorbitant cost.
Runner Up: Think Secret's rumored Mac mini media center, assuming such a device exists.

More of the same, then thinking outside the SFist Tech Labs box, after the jump

Sometimes, video games journalists seem vaguely Colbert-ish: earnest, confident, utterly out of touch. (Case in point: G4's "Judgment Day," with the slogan "all verdicts are final" -- oooh, the are final, OMG, they're totally the new Judge Judy.) But we're cautiously optimistic about "Reset," a new gaming news/lifestyle show, locally produced by Big Love Productions. Anchors include trustworthy fragdoll Kat Hunter (whose work SFist likes) and Raymond Padilla (whom we don't know, but he has a pleasant email demeanor) as well as Zoe Flower (who's Canadian and therefore potentially awesome). It's damn near impossible to find quality reporting in video games journalism -- it generally either consists of inarticulate fanboys churning out bland feature-lists, or poindextery assclowns trying to fit Foucalt into a review so they can call it New Games Journalism. So far, "Reset" only has one episode online, but they seem to know what they're doing: low on rhetoric, big on content, what's not to love?

"Being on Yahoo!, 'Reset' has a sizeable mainstream audience to serve," Raymond told us, explaining the first episode's apparent appeal to, well, a mainstream audience. But he added, "that said, all three of the hosts love games and want to cover things we enjoy. … I want to have one segment per episode that's about people and places in gaming, rather than just previewing a game." Legitimate gamers … diverse tastes … meatspace lifestyle reporting … could it be … be still our hearts … video game journalism that's actually GOOD? Hard to say, partially because the show is so young, and partially because it's so hard to watch. "Reset" only comes in the oh-so-convenient WMV and RA formats, with no torrents, and each segment averages 130 megs. Gah. If you can get over those inconveniences, though -- and we recommend that you do, because who the hell do you think you are, anyway -- this might just turn out to be the show we've been waiting for.