I'm sick of health reports, I want technology!

As someone with a pretty acute interest in Apple technology news, these past few weeks have been pretty tough.  It is getting harder and harder to find what I really love about Apple: technology information.

The newswires have been clogged with information (and disinformation) about Jobs' health to the point where it is getting hard to find anything interesting to talk about.

Can we start talking about tech again?  Like, what is the latest on Snow Leopard? 

Glad you asked.

I've heard some rumbling that Apple might be starting a public seeding of Snow Leopard - like  Microsoft is doing with Windows 7 -  starting in either late January or early February.  People who aren't registered Apple developers will be able to download the DVD image and try out the new OS and at the same time they'd be able to send back some helpful feedback to Apple.

I've also heard that iLife is finally set to begin shipping next week.  Amazon has changed its iLife '09 ship date to January 20th which largely backs this up. iLife isn't a huge departure from previous versions except some notable additions to Garage Band (lessons), iMovie (redesign) and iPhoto (Places and Faces).

Finally,  Tom's Hardware is saying that the Mac Mini will be downgraded to a Atom based processor with roughly half the power as current Core Duo Minis.  If Apple is indeed doing this, it is to bring the price of the Mini down to the Nettop-type price range. I'd say in the $299 -$399 if true, and that is a big 'if'.  This could coinside with Snow Leopard betas which would take advantage of the NVIDIA ION Video card which Tom's also believes will grace the new computers.

Yay for Technology!