Don’t forget next week’s monthly meeting of MMOOS, our local Apple User Group. That’s Tuesday, February 13th, at 6:30 PM at Thornton Oaks Retirement Community in Brunswick. Check out mmoos.net for directions. We’ll start with our Updates & Rumors segment, in which you’ll get to see the richest man in the world come unglued. Our main program is entitled: “.Mac: Your Life Online for $6 a Month”. Yours truly (a .Mac user since Day One) will demonstrate the many .Mac features and services, as well as compare and contrast .Mac to free and low cost alternatives available via the internet. See you there.

This week Apple Inc. (the company formerly known as “Apple Computer Inc.”) and Apple Corps Ltd. (the record/electronics/film/publishing/retail company formed by The Beatles in 1968) mutually stated that “We Can Work It Out” and came to the end of their “Long and Winding Road” of disagreements and litigation (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

To make a long story short, Apple Corps Ltd. has taken Apple Computer Inc. to court several times in the last two decades, claiming trademark infringement. Early settlements prohibited Apple Computer from becoming a music distributor. The two companies’ differences escalated when Apple got into the iTunes and iPod business. Many believed this friction would prohibit Beatles music from ever appearing on Apple’s iTunes Store.

The apparently amicable agreement signed this week gave Apple Inc. ownership of all the trademarks associated with “Apple”. Apple Inc. will then license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use.

This deal had been rumored for some time, and it is probably no coincidence that Apple CEO Steve Jobs used Beatles music to demonstrate the music features of the new Apple iPhone during his presentation last month at Macworld Expo.

So, does this mean The Beatles’ extensive music catalog will soon be available via the iTunes Store? Many think so. Analysts believe that Apple will hold one of their patented “Special Events” later this month in order to trumpet The Beatles catalog on iTunes. Other rumors point to the debut of a new widescreen iPod (the form factor of the iPhone without the phone) at the same event. Or, how about this? A new widescreen special-edition Beatles iPod?

Will this resonate with a generation who thinks The Beatles was the band Paul McCartney was in before Wings? Time will tell.