Singer/songwriter/guitar-hero John Mayer, known in the Valley for his onstage appearances with Steve Jobs to demo Apple's GarageBand software, isn't living up (or down) to his onstage claims that he spends a lot of time alone in his bedroom — you know, with his guitar. Gossip rags report that Jobs's musician buddy was seen shnozzing with both Shrek voice actress Cameron Diaz and Friday Night Lights star Minka Kelly on separate dates over the weekend. We can only surmise that Jobs's reality distortion field works on actresses, too.

Apple has been slapped with a $360 million patent lawsuit over the iPhone's visual voicemail feature. But don't expect that to diminish the Christmas spirit at Cupertino North, here tastefully documented in an OfficeMax ad. Maybe they heard Apple could one day be worth more than Google.

Self-appointed Apple evangelists are far and away the Valley's most exasperating demographic. Yet I feel sorry for them.

Amazon.com and Pepsi have teamed up for a year-long free music promotion, very similar to one Apple and Pepsi had several years ago. The promotion, scheduled for a Super Bowl launch, will have consumers collecting five Pepsi bottle caps for one free music track from Amazon. In short, Amazon is making a major play against iTunes. The Super Bowl is the highest-profile advertising venue in the world, and Amazon will get tons of attention from the Pepsi promotion. For free music, plenty of people will take advantage of the promo — but will they stick around to buy music when it's finished?

AOL has stopped selling videos online and instead is throwing its weight behind Amazon's Unbox download service. AOL, which is shifting from paid downloads to ad-supported video plays, will include Unbox-sold videos in video search results. Amazon.com has not had much success with Unbox and is getting soundly beaten by Apple's iTunes. This deal's unlikely to change that.

Kristin Sloan, from the above iPhone commercial and The Winger, spanked former Apple spokeswoman Ellen Feiss in a recent Valleywag poll. Well, now you can put a price on that kind of celebrity. About $75, or the cost of a ticket to Glasshouse's networking event tonight in New York, where Sloan is rumored to show.

Through-the-mail movie rental outfit Netflix has been very aggressive in fighting Blockbuster's competitive advances — and winning. Analytics firm Compete has a rundown of Netflix vs. Blockbuster and lists Netflix.com as having four times the visitors Blockbuster.com does. Also, Netflix's download strategy seems to be having some success with 450,000 "Watch Instantly" users in November. Blockbuster is still attempting to roll out a download service it gained from its purchase of movie download site Movielink. Good luck to both of them. Apple is rumored to be introducting movie rentals to iTunes. Will they be battle-tested veterans by the time Steve Jobs shows up — or so bloodied from fighting each other they'll fall victim to his shiny white-plastic machine?

The browser wars continue — but no one cares. Unless, that is, you're in the wireless world, where industry observers avidly watch tiny scraps of Web activity, as if they're divining prophecies from the clouds. Computerworld notes an interesting trend. Apple's iPhone browser has grabbed a 0.09 percent share, which might not seem like much until you compare it to the competition. Windows CE, which encompasses every Windows Mobile device shipped, holds a 0.06 percent share; Danger Research's Sidekick product family holds a tiny 0.02 percent share; and the Symbian S60 smartphone platform, favored by Nokia, has 0.01 percent.

NBC and Apple have finally parted ways. All NBC Universal shows have been removed from iTunes completely after talks to renew their contract fell apart. Disagreements on pricing led the partnership, once hailed for saving NBC's The Office, to founder. But Apple found an unlikely replacement: News Corp.'s Fox studio, NBC's joint-venture partner in online-video site Hulu.

Why did AT&T head Randall Stephenson let it slip that a much faster iPhone was coming next year? PBS pundit Robert X. Cringely says — in a roundabout 1,000-word way — that it was no slip. He also reminds us several times that it was he, Cringely, who foretold all of this. All of it. I bolded those parts to make sure he gets the credit. Deservedly. For once, I'm sure the Cringe is right.

Thinking about getting an iPhone as a gift for your loved ones this holiday season? Wait 'til next year! That's the message AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson delivered at a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara yesterday when he announced that a 3G iPhone would arrive next year. "You'll have it next year," Stephenson said. Way to help sales, Randall!

What's with the bloggers throwing themselves down, dressed head-to-toe in red, in front of the Apple fanboy stampede? First egoblogger Robert Scoble took on the entire universe of Mac fans. Now Silicon Alley VC blogger Fred Wilson tells the world, "I fear Apple and I hate them. As much as Microsoft." What gives?

German iPhone reseller T-Mobile began selling unlocked iPhones — phones that can be used on almost any network — for €999 ($1,477) because of a court order. Orange, the iPhone reseller in France, was required to sell a "carrier independent" phone from the beginning because of French law. The iPhone went on sale in France today with the unlocked version selling for €749 vs €399 for the standard contract-limited phone. (Photo by mukluk)

Best bug in the new Apple operating system: In some cases if you go into iCal and delete a desktop calendar — a natural action, since Leopard encourages you to use more elegant networked calendars instead — iCal doesn't just delete the calendar. It cancels every meeting on the calendar, even those created by someone else. A 100-person company I know of spent the day recovering after early adopters spammed each other with iCal automailings and employees erased meetings set up by their own managers, even those who hadn't upgraded. Best commentard post explaining how this is not Apple's fault it's theirs gets a $25 gift certificate to iTunes, provided I deem the post worthy. It has to score at least 4 out of 5 Daring Fireballs on my Apple-apologist-o-meter.

"We make a lot of money from him, and suddenly you're wearing golden handcuffs. We would hate to give up that income." — Universal Music Group chief Doug Morris, on why Universal won't leave Apple's iTunes store anytime soon. Steve Jobs does have an interesting relationship with his girlfriends, doesn't he? [The Register]

Apple's iPod may command 77 percent of the U.S. MP3 player market, but that dominance has yet to carry over internationally, Apple marketing exec Greg Joswiak told Fortune. In Europe, for example, the iPod has 58 percent market share in the U.K., but only 28 percent in Germany and France.

Greenpeace has found a couple of new targets in its latest "Guide to Greener Electronics": Microsoft and Nintendo. Particularly Nintendo, which scored the first perfect zero rating. The environmentalist group, once remembered for facing down fisherman armed with machine guns with rubber dinghies and rainbow flags to save the lives of endangered whales, has been hanging on to its diminishing relevance by attacking Apple for more than a year. The manufactured notoriety has backfired. Steve Jobs tore apart Greenpeace's charges in an open letter. Critics have savaged the organization's Electronics Guides as arbitrary and unscientific. So how is Greenpeace to remain relevant?

An Apple ad bashing Microsoft's Vista OS, captured in the video above, became a viral sensation almost immediately after its launch, AdWeek reports. Running on CNET, Engadget and PCWorld, video of the the ad caught on with YouTube and blogs, including Valleywag. The only problem? While Vista may crash your PC, according to Apple, Apple's ad tended to crash users' browsers. Engadget editor Ryan Block went so far as to pull the ad temporarily and apologize to readers.

It's not all iPhones and iPods for Steve Jobs and Apple. Take Apple TV, example. When Steve Jobs announced the device last year, he said Apple TV would reinvent the way people watch movies and television shows. Well the holidays are here and that hasn't happened yet.

Back in October we hypothesized that Apple was going to use iTunes to securely deliver apps to iPhone and iPod Touch users. We thought this would work in the same way that users currently buy and download ringtones, songs and TV shows: "Apple is building an iTunes-based platform to securely deliver apps to users. From movies to music to software, Apple is plotting a way to keep itself in the middle of any money-making transaction on its hardware." Greg Joswiak, Apple's iPod and iPhone marketing VP confirms our hunch in an interview with Fortune.