Michael Bull, a film and media professor at England's University of Sussex, has spent three years interviewing more than 1,000 iPod owners — only to reach the most obvious of conclusions. In the process, Bull dubbed himself Professor iPod and won a book deal. The book, Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience, holds no revelations: People carry their digital content around with them, relying on it to get them through the day. iPod owners use the devices to create personalized, controlled environments insulated from the dislocation of their work lives and the cacophony of the city. Is it any shock Apple found his research worthless?

Also in Apple's movie rental deal yesterday with Fox: Apple will license its FairPlay copy-protection technology to the studio for DVD movie releases. This will allow DVD purchasers to easily — and legally — copy movies to their computers for playback on iPods and iPhones.

The Financial Times reports that Apple and News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox film studio have signed a deal for digital movie rentals. Consumers will be able to rent the latest Fox DVD releases from iTunes for a limited time. The deal, which will likely be announced at Macworld in January, would likely be matched with an upgrade for the woebegotten Apple TV which has been de facto dead on arrival since it was released. It is suspected that Disney, which has extremely close ties with Apple — Steve Jobs is its largest shareholder after Mickey bought his Pixar animation studio — will be on board at launch as well.

Fake Steve Jobs has confirmed our very special correspondent's spoiler: The Apple lawsuit Dan Lyons blogged about is as fake as his blog. Some of you may feel duped or even a bit angry. Don't.

With light trading volume because of the holiday, Apple stock hit an all-time high today, closing at $198.80. The company now has a market cap of $174 billion, and has risen 134.32 percent on the year. Apple is now worth about as much as networking giant Cisco. Shareholders are likely reactiong to predictions strong holiday sales for the company, plus possible introductions of new products at the Macworld Expo in January.

Is Steve jobs turning into an overprotective nanny in his old age? As Apple continues its attempt at world domination through well-designed products and heavy advertising — at one point I saw Apple ads on four TVs simultaneously at my local sports bar, thanks NFL Sunday Ticket! — it's good to know that the company is looking out for our eardrums. Apple has gotten a patent that illustrates a technology for an automatic volume control. Your next iPod could calculate how long you've been listening to music at high volume, and reduce the volume for a "quiet time" before allowing you to increase the sound to full volume again.

Folks, please stop emailing us that either (a) Valleywag is afraid to run the story that Apple is trying to shut down Fake Steve Jobs, or (b) Fake Steve author Dan Lyons is perpetrating a hoax to — I love this — to get onto Techmeme. Let me spell it out for you: LYONS IS KIDDING! He's trying — and failing — to illustrate that the legal settlement between Apple and Think Secret is a bad thing. Two reasons: (1) It's corporate thuggery from Apple, which once compared itself to friggin' Gandhi in an ad. (2) By shutting down and probably taking a payout, Think Secret's publisher has done himself a favor, but set a bad example. How much should Apple pay Valleywag to shut up? Ok, don't answer that, but you get my point.

Valleywag is of course known for its dead-on accuracy, so our predictions for 2008 need no introduction. Inside, my 25 predictions (made without inside information) cover the futures of Facebook, Google, Digg, YouTube, Twitter, the Wall Street Journal, Apple, Yahoo, Gawker Media, AOL, Dell, LOLcats, the president, and more.

Look for yourself. Apple's world-changing TV console, introduced just a few months ago, is completely absent from the landing page of its holiday gift guide. It didn't even make the photo montage. Apple TV is hiding below the fold on a second-tier "iPod Gifts" page, with lower billing than a set of Bose headphones. I only noticed because I was moving old mail out of my inbox. I found a bunch of messages from fanboys warning me to repent, repent my published disinterest in the device, because quote "cable TV will be dead by Christmas." Just like record companies!

Mac users are more likely to pay for music, says market research firm NPD Group. Some 50 percent of Mac users purchase digital downloads opposed to 16 percent of PC users. Makes sense: Apple fanboys are used to overpaying. [Gadget Lab]

Apple will announce in January that it has sold 5 million iPhones, according to 9 to 5 Mac, an Apple rumor site. At the iPhone's launch, Steve Jobs set a public goal of selling 10 million iPhones — next year. With the iPhone only on sale for six months, that means Apple's already selling its sleek smartphones at 2008 speed. And that means Jobs could be set to beat his goal significantly next year.

With over 160 entries at last count, we've given up trying to decide on a winning caption for this photo taken in Apple's new 14th Street store in New York. Instead, we narrowed it down to 10. Choose your favorite in our latest Valleywag poll. Feel free to write in candidates you think deserved to make the cut. (Photo by Meredith Scardino)

Last night, Steve Jobs attended a Product (Red) party with Bobby Shriver, the charitable venture's chairman, and Steve Jurvetson, the spotlight-hungry, Nazi-missile-loving venture capitalist. Jurvetson got a wall-of-fame shot with his new pals, and transcribed the following conversation:

As his three-year legal battle with Apple reaches a settled end, Nick Ciarelli, the writer behind Think Secret, states that shutting down the Mac rumor site while not revealing his sources is a "positive solution for both sides." Most people aren't buying it, blaming Apple for shutting down Think Secret. Which is exactly why it is a positive result for Ciarelli.

Apple is planning to open a store on the Upper West Side at 67th and Broadway where a ridiculously huge Victoria's Secret now sits, according to the New York Post. Finally the neighborhood's upscale progressive commerce quotient is complete! Zabar's, Patagonia, Murder Ink and Fairway were getting worried.

Apple is in talks with Japan's top cell-phone company, NTT DoCoMo and with Softbank, the No. 3 carrier in the market. Reuters spoke to a source inside DoCoMo who said "the negotiations are not going smoothly, as Apple's conditions are extremely hard to meet." No surprise there. Apple likely wants similar terms to ones that AT&T and Deutsche Telekom agreed to: a cut of the subscription fees and a hefty markup on the iPhone itself. Apple had similar negotiations in other countries, in which Jobs infamously referred to prospective partners as "girlfriends." One of these companies will end up married to the iPhone, likely for the price that Apple quotes. When it comes to for-richer-or-for-poorer, Apple usually picks "for richer." (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

iSuppli tore apart the iPod Touch. Turns out it's not just a broken iPhone. WIthout all the phone components to clutter things up, the Touch is thinner and has room for more memory. And, at $147 in parts per device, the iPod Touch costs Apple about $120 less to make. Then again, it doesn't reap the iPhone's service-fee kickbacks.

In a press release today, retail analysis firm NPD Group claims that Apple's share of the PC market increased from 6 percent last year to nearly 9 percent in the first 3 quarters of 2007. [BusinessWire]

This photo, taken at the new 14th Street Apple Store, shows that the Genius Bar can solve computer malfunctions, but not wardrobe ones. Where's our promised "Apple Elites" now, Fake Steve? Best caption wins our spot in line. (Photo by Meredith Scardino)

Last week we noted that the unlocked iPhones being sold in France might not actually be usable outside that country. Orange, the iPhone reseller in France, says non, it is selling fully unlocked iPhones which will work with any SIM card, in any country. Liberté, égalité, we overpay! [The Register]