Back in the day, Steve Wozniak developed a game for Atari called Breakout. His friend Steve Jobs sold it for him. Jobs told Wozniak he sold it for $700, and split the proceeds. Actually, Jobs sold it for several thousand dollars and kept most of the cash for himself. Wozniak told Knowledge@Wharton he doesn't judge Jobs based on "these encroachments on personal decency or personal honesty with other people or disrespect of people."

So much for a "special event".Linkin Park played a short set at the SoHo Apple store last night. The show was taped for an exclusive iTunes release next month. It's possible that Apple bumped them from an actual secret event because of the leak, but unlikely. [Billboard]

Last week, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh begged Apple CEO Steve Jobs for bug fixes on problems he'd been having for months. Finally, an Apple muckety-muck reached out to El-Rushbo:

Rumors are flying about a secret event Apple is holding next week in New York City. Potential introductions include long-expected software which would allow developers outside Apple to make applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Other rumors are circling about new high-end notebooks, a new iPhone, or more labels offering DRM-free music on the iTunes Store. Rock band Linkin Park posted a note on its blog about a special show in NYC in with Apple. "Shh... it's a secret..." Got more details? Drop us a line. (Photo by AP/Jeff Chiu)

As many do for the Super Bowl, I find the ads on American Idol more interesting than the show. It's among the priciest prime-time real estate around. Last year, ads cost $600,000 per 30-second spot. So it raised my eyebrows to see Apple purchasing multiple spots for the MacBook Air in tonight's broadcast. I counted two in just the last half-hour. Did Apple shell out more than $1 million for a couple of ads?

Laurene Powell-Jobs, Steve Jobs's wife, is in the Apple network on Facebook. Isn't that for Apple employees only? To join an employer's Facebook network, users must have an approved email address. Only those whose addresses ends in @apple.com can join the Apple network. As far as we can determine, Powell-Jobs does not hold a position at Apple. If she did, Apple would certainly have to disclose it in SEC filings. So what is she doing in the Apple Facebook group? Her full Facebook profile is below.

All Hong Kong actor Edison Chen wanted was to get his MacBook repaired. Instead, he's on the front page of all the papers, apologizing for a celebrity sex scandal. See, Chen used his MacBook to store intimate photos of himself and Hong Kong starlets. In the clip above, CNN has footage of the offending MacBook. When Chen took it in for repairs, store workers uploaded the photos to the Internet. And now they're so ubiquitous China has censured popular search engine Baidu because certain keyword searches "have become the platform for displaying and spreading these filthy pictures."

As I read the press release from AT&T announcing its new $99/mo. all-you-can-talk voice plan, I noticed the language implies that new iPhone customers can sign up for the new unlimited plan without the standard two-year iPhone contract.

BBC and Apple have partnered up to sell BBC programming through the UK iTunes store. [Reuters]

· In an uncomfortable marriage pitting one of the coolest brands on the planet with, um, a lesser-cool brand, Apple has become a signature sponsor of American Idol. What does this mean for you, the Apple/Idol fan? iTunes carries show downloads, the iPod becomes the show's "official digital music player," and the company's next top-secret product launch, the iPaula, will perform all the functions of the iPhone, but with improved wasted and weepy functionality. [Variety]
· Toshiba concedes defeat in the high-def war, giving Blu-ray the official win, and relegating HD-DVD to the obsolete technology junkpile. (Attention unnamed dance-punk bands: Blu-Ray Or HD-DVD is up for grabs!) [Variety]

The U.S. Government's proposed tax rebate checks, totaling about $60 billion, will mostly be spent on "household goods" and "electrical items." Translation? Toilet paper and iPods. "These kinds of stimulus packages trigger a rise in sales for clothing, household furnishings, and household goods." [Times Online]

China Mobile, the No. 1 cell company in China, claims there are 400,000 unlocked iPhones running on its network. That's more than 10 percent of the 3.7 million Steve Jobs announced Apple had shipped through mid-January. A very impressive stat to be sure, but why did China Mobile release it now? Apple and China Mobile have been in negotiations for a while about bringing the iPhone to China. The talks had reached an impasse over how much of a kickback Apple would receive on subscriber fees.

Google found that iPhone users run 5,000 percent more Google searches on their phones than other smartphone users. "We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again," said Vic Gundotra, head of Google's mobile operations. At last, the brains of Mountain View have located the elusive Googlephone.

Back to My Mac only works sometimes. Time Machine won't restore individual mail messages. Rush Limbaugh's no newb — he owns six Macs, and these are known problems. Have a look and see if you can fix the bugs that made him send out a personal plea to Steve Jobs.

Microsoft's marketing exec Michael Sievert just lost his job. The Wall Street Journal reported the news today, but the Windows product marketing VP has probably seen the writing on the wall since February 4. That's when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts Microsoft needs "to be doing more to highlight Windows." It's no wonder. At the end of January, Gartner predicted that by 2011 Apple will have doubled its U.S. and Western Europe computer market share.

Microsoft will promote Andrew Lees to senior vice president and task him with gaining a stronger foothold for Microsoft in the consumer market for mobile devices. That means taking on Apple's iPhone. According to the WSJ, Lees replaces Pieter Knook, who shuffles into retirement on today's news. Perhaps this is because Knook last year allowed Steve Ballmer to say "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

Conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh is a Mac user. But not a happy one. Today he put out a plea to Apple CEO Steve Jobs to fix a bug that's been plaguing him for months.

Two weeks after it was supposed to be delivered, Apple has issued an update to its Apple TV set-tops, bringing with it Flickr integration and iTunes movie rentals. On January 15, Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised the update "within 2 weeks." The company later pushed that back "another week or two." Well, better late than never, I guess. What I want to know is who's taking the fall for this one: Tony Fadell, head of the iPod division; Bertrand Serlet, Apple's software-engineering chief; or Sina Tamaddon, who's in charge of application software. Let the fingerpointing begin!

Justin Long, the sci-fi actor who also plays "Mac" in Apple's TV commercials, dropped his precious iPhone into a swimming pool according to celebrity blog Out All Night. "I do [have an iPhone], but it fell in a swimming pool, so it's a little broken right now," says Long. That's too bad, Justin. Maybe you and Digg founder Kevin Rose can commiserate — after all, his iPhone got a little broken too. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)