Hasta La Gadget!

Are Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg best friends forever? I might be jumping the gun a bit here, but let’s face it, when two of the highest profile Silicon Valley start having dinner and taking walks together, people are going to start talking–it’s only natural.

Whatever the case, it’s nice to see the duo put aside petty fights like the battle to the top of Forbes’s richest person list.

Jobs reportedly invited to his home in Palo Alto a few weeks back, in order to discuss Apple’s new iTunes-based social networking service, Ping. A bystander reported caught the two men taking a walk around Jobs’s home.

Introduced early last month, the response to Ping thus far has been fairly lukewarm, in spite of the app’s integration into Apple’s wildly popular music service. The absence of a partnership with a site like Facebook was fairly conspicuous at the music social network’s launch during Apple’s iPod event.

Zuckerberg, consider yourself poked.

So here’s what we know so far: Apple is holding a big event at its headquarters in Cupertino next Wednesday, October 20th. The focus of the event is a preview of the next version of OS X.

Beyond that, there are a few pretty easy pieces to put together. First, this is likely to be the public debut of 10.7. The invitation [featured above] has a lion on it. Given Apple’s longstanding tradition of naming operating systems after big cats, calling OS X 10.7 “Lion” doesn’t seem like to far a stretch.

Also on the invitation is the tagline “Back to the Mac.” The phrase seems to be a direct comment on Apple’s own shift in focus toward non-traditional computing platforms like the iPhone and iPad. Perhaps the company is planning a slight shift back toward its desktop and laptop lines.

Will we see hardware announced at this event? That’s not unheard of.

There’s plenty of speculation floating around in the ether right now, but what we want to know is: what do you expect from the event? What would you like to see? Be as grounded or crazy as you want in your responses. Lay it on us in the comments below.

Whenever the people at Griffin see an Apple product with no case around it, they get a little sad. See, it’s their mission to wrap all Apple devices in colorful plastic, and they take it seriously. Take, for example, the just-announced iPod Touch and iPod Nano cases. Shown here is the Outfit Gloss ($24.99), a slim hard-shell case that’s made of durable, translucent polycarbonate with a deep gloss finish. The bottom of the case can be easily removed for docking.

If you like to view videos on your iPod Touch, take a look at the Outfit Flip ($34.99) case. It’s also a sleek, hard-shell case, but with a li’l something extra. It’s finished in a color-shifting paint that flips from one color to another as you move the case. It also comes with a micro-stand, so you can hold your iPod Touch upright for easy viewing. 

Chelsea Kate Isaacs is conflicted. “I hate Apple, but I don’t hate Apple,” so told a reporter during Microsoft’s recent Windows Phone 7 launch in New York City. Where, precisely, does the whole hating Apple part come from? Well, if Isaacs’s name doesn’t ring any bells, her recent run in with Apple CEO Steve Jobs just might.

Last month the journalism student made news after a testy e-mail dialog with the exec hit the blogs. Isaacs sent an e-mail Jobs an e-mail asking why his company’s PR team wasn’t more responsive to student queries,

Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.

Jobs responded to the question in typically curt fashion,

Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry.

The conversation just kind of devolved from there, with the turtlenecked executive finally responding, “Please leave us alone.”

Isaacs, meanwhile, won a Microsoft-sponsored contest. The company sent her to the aforementioned New York event, where she told press, “I wouldn’t be comfortable giving [Apple] a dime. If that’s the way you treat consumers, that’s not right.”

She did promise to cover both Apple and Microsoft objectively, however, but we know which OS she’ll be using to file her stories in the future.

A Verizon iPhone? Not quite. Not yet. At the very least, however, this surprising bit of news seems to mark the fact that, if there were any issues between Apple and Verizon in the past (Verizon famously was said to have fatefully opted not to carrying the iPhone before launch) that’s all water under the bridge now.

Apple has added yet another store to the ever-growing list of stores that stock the iPad. Verizon Wireless is joining Apple Stores, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and Sam’s Club in stocking the massively popular consumer tablet.

The companies issued a joint statement on the seeming odd matching. Apple’s COO Tim Cook seemed pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing (really? You couldn’t get a sentence-long quote from Steve Jobs about how utterly exciting and amazing the whole thing is?),

We’re thrilled to be working with Verizon Wireless to get iPad into the hands of even more customers this holiday season. iPad allows users to connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before, and together with Verizon Wireless we’re offering an easy way to stay connected wherever you go.

Verizon’s own COO John Stratton, meanwhile, called the match “the perfect pairing for holiday travels.” Just like a pine tree and spray-on snow, right John?

What’s perhaps most interesting about the pairing is the fact that the iPad will be bundled with the Verizon Mi-Fi. The package comes in three pricing tiers–$629.99 for the iPad Wi-Fi 16GB and the MiFi, $729.99 for the iPad Wi-Fi 32GB and the MiFi, and $829.99 for the iPad Wi-Fi 64GB and the MiFi.

There’s no 3G AT&T version, naturally.