CEO Steve Jobs will take a medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June. Jobs stated that his health has become too distracting for the company. Tim Cook will lead Apple's day to day operations. Jobs didn't provide any specifics but indicated that his health-related issues "are more complex than I originally thought."

Although the iPhone continues to sell well, the iPod Touch is really performing. The device, marketed as a gaming device, currently holds the number 1, 2, and 5th best spots on Amazon. According to Web metrics Net Applications iPod Touch traffic was up nearly 4 times on Christmas day compared to earlier December.

The $99 iPhone rumor is officially squashed, as sources from within Walmart have leaked that the iPhone will be sold for $197 for the 8GB version and $297 for the 16GB version starting December 28th.

Steve Jobs will not be presenting the 2009 keynote at Macworld this year. Apple's Senior Vice President, Phil Schiller, will take his place. Apple also announced that this would be its last Macworld conference stating that its direct relations with consumers through its retail stores and through its website to be taking away the need for trade shows.

According to recent rumors, Wal-Mart may soon start selling a 4GB $99 iPhone. Wal-Mart does not seem to coincide with Apple strategy nor with Apple indicating they have no plans to release a low priced notebook. However, in October, Steve Jobs indicated that they needed to be aware of competitors grabbing market share by releasing much lower costs smart phones.

The iPhone has claimed 16.6 percent of the global smartphone market. The company has been gaining market share at the expense of Nokia and Palm. Just one year ago Nokia dominated the market with 63.6 percent market share; however, this year alone it has lost nearly 20 percent of its market share.

Safari's Market share has reached over 7 percent, according to net applications, a online research firm. Mozilla Firefox posted a 1 percent increase in market share to claim 20 percent of the market. Internet Explorer continues to slowly lose market share now just below 70 percent.

Apple Inc. who is facing a tighter consumer spending environment this holiday season, may be set to offer discounts as high as 15 percent. In the years past, Apple has cut prices by 5 to 10 percent; however, this year Amazon and Best Buy are already discounting Apple products. Best Buy is currently offering $100 to $150 off of certain laptops, and Apple is expected to match these price discounts.

According to some analysts, Apple Inc will be drastically scaling back its production orders for new iPhones as the economy slips further into a recession. According to recent supply chain checks, Apple's 3G production orders may fall as much as 40 percent. The company is also facing increased competition in the smart phone market from Google and Research in Motion.

Apple Inc. reported that its third quarter profit rose by 26 percent led by higher demand for its Apple notebooks and increased sales of its 3G iPhone. As expected Apple released very conservative guidance concerning some investors that consumers may hold back on purchases over the holiday season.

According to AppleInsider, Apple should be soon releasing new iMacs just before the Christmas holidays. The new iMacs are expected to be a product refresh and are expected to have a lot of the same updates as the new MacBooks just released including updated Nvidia GPUs, updated DisplayPort, and updated Intel CPUs.

Apple Inc. launch new MacBooks on Tuesday just in the time for the holiday season. The new line-up uses the same aluminum casings across all three product lines, the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air. The new MacBooks introduced cost $200 more on average having analysts concerned that sales may begin to slow.

Photos have been leaked of the new MacBook and MacBook Pro cases. Both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro will utilize the same casings. The new cases are entirely aluminum instead of plastic and appear to be latchless in design. Apple is set to release the new models this Tuesday.

Rumors are that Apple will launch its new MacBook line on the 14th with 12 price points. The lowest price point is expected to be at $800 a $300 discount to the current base model. Currently Apple sales MacBooks at 8 price points (3 MacBooks, 3 MacBook Pros, and 2 MacBook Air models).

Its official, Apple has invited the media to its yearly macbook conference entitled, "The spotlight turns to notebooks." The photo on the invitation looks to be a picture of a 13" aluminum notebook. The photo may be an hint that Apple intends to bring both its MacBook and MacBook pro lines under a similar design. Currently, Apple MacBooks are only sold with plastic enclosures.