The orange iPod shuffle is a response to the Zune’s brown, right?

Seeing Mac pundits say that Steve Jobs needs to introduce Leopard’s killer features right now to pull the rug under Vista’s feet, I realize that you might actually imagine that could have been part of his motivation for not mentioning the Mac at all at Macworld. If Leopard is at all better than Vista (and, uh, honestly, how could it not?), if it has any sort of impressive feature left unannounced, what better time to introduce it than when people are actually considering their Vista-related options? And what better time to introduce sexy improvements to the Mac lineup, too?

So, here it goes: if there’s a big announcement within six weeks, I’ll officially rescind my paranoid comments regarding Steve Jobs abandoning regular computers (after all, he loves toying with Keynote, so he definitely has to use a Mac for that). It might be a valid strategic move. It sure as hell didn’t feel that way at the time, but it’s not like Apple’s stocks sunk after the iPhone announcement, so the world could easily forgive him.

Damn, I’m speculating — and, what’s worse, hoping — again.

Word is, there’s a workaround to the Vista upgrade refusing to do a clean install: you don’t need to install XP first, then Vista over it. You can just install Vista first, then Vista over it. That, uh… makes sense. Or something.