Monster today unveiled a trio of new, overpriced iPod accessories. The Shuffle charger looks cool, but only if it works to sync as well.

The other stuff is just overpriced versions of stuff you can get a lot cheaper elsewhere. Which is to say typical Monster. Seriously, does anyone even still buy Monster Cables? If you do, please comment so I can ridicule you (just kidding).

In any case, if you want to pay $80 for a car charger… head out to Best Buy and snag yours today.

It appears the new iMacs feature the higher-res iSight camera that made it’s debut on the Santa Rosa refresh of the MacBook Pros.  Test results posted by AccellerateYourMac indicate that the new iMac’s camera captures images up to 1280×1024.

Yet another reason the new iMac rules.

In case you’ve been living under a rock in the Macisphere, there was a question asked at the recent iMac announcement event that set John Gruber at Daring Fireball off.  Basically, Bob Keefe — a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman — asked Steve Jobs why Apple didn’t participate in the “Intel Inside” sticker program and put the stickers on their current and future Macs.

To those of us who’ve been Mac users for a while, this is an astoundingly dumb question.  The answer is Apple doesn’t think the $2-3/machine they’d get to put the stickers on their machines is worth the negative aesthetic effects they’d have in mucking up what are generally the most attractive PCs in the business.

Gruber named Keefe the Jackass of the Week (a running gag at DF), MacUser actually outed Keefe as the guy who asked the stupid question and posted an audio clip.  Keefe’s responded saying he was working on a story about the Intel Inside program and wanted a quote while simultaneously disparaging bloggers by using the insult-quotes around “journalist” when he refers to MacUser’s Dan Moren and Gruber and calling Mac users “thick”.  There’ve also been weigh-ins from MacJournals and the Macalope.

Apple released new iMacs yesterday, but the big news for those of us who really don’t want an iMac is the introduction of two updates to the Apple software suites iLife and iWork.

Like every good Apple fanboy, I immediately and have been putting it through it’s paces. I’ve been an iWork user since I switched back to the Mac from the dark side, using Office 2004 only to open and interchange documents (and to use Excel, since there was no spreadsheet in iWork).

Now that I’ve got 24 hours of iWork ‘08 under my belt, I doubt I’ll need Office at all anymore (though I may keep it around as a safety net for a while).  Read on for an app-by-app mini-review.

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Image Courtesy of Apple

Yup. It’s that time of year again – Apple’s summer Mac madness. I know all the tech blogs are covering the insanity today, but wow, is it ever worth it!

The new iMac is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, you’d think Apple would get it wrong once in awhile – everybody does – but here they are, spot-on once again. Never mind the potential performance power packed in beneath this beauty’s magical metal skin, I’m still obsessed with its outwardly slender form.

Really, how much simpler could it be? Aluminum and glass melt together as one.

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An early-adopting Flickr user has posted unboxing pics of the Apple Bluetooth Headset that’s been recently released.

From the pics, it appears the Apple headset is about the same size as my Plantronics, but it’s charger is integrated with the iPhone. The travel charger cable is a beautiful thing and appears to use Apple MagSafe technology to keep the headset in the charging slot. Very nice.

Other highlights are the on-iPhone display of charge status for the headset when they’re docked together and the dock itself, which is a perfect way to keep both the iPhone and the headset charged up.

I’ve already made the rounds to my local Apple stores and none are in stock here, so we’ll have to wait a while longer for the TechBandito review and to see if it works better than the Aliph Jawbone.

A potential flaw in the iPhone….yikes! If you are using Yahoo Mail, you may want to take notice. When the iPhone grabs email from the Yahoo servers, it may not be a secure connection, leaving your information vulnerable. Here is the quote from Wired:

“…if you’re checking Yahoo! Mail over a public WiFi connection, anyone could conceivably tap in to the exchange, grab your sign-in data and have full access to your account. ”

This is extremely scary…my advice: Get a $8 a year domain name and use a POP email address. Much cooler than john1203920389@yahoo.com anyways.

via Wired

The US and Canadian Apple stores are down for updating. This usually means a new product is coming out. Any idea what’s coming next? Let us know, place your best guess in a comment below…

Update: It appears this was a false alarm.  The store is back with no noticeable updates.

via Engadget

New findings by Lightspeed Research report that 90% of the population has heard of the iPhone and 32% of non-owners want one.  The launch of the iPhone could easily be the most successful product launch in history.

If this is the first time you’ve heard of the iPhone, welcome back to Earth.

via MacWorld

So, both of us here at TechBandito are in love with the iPhone. If you want your IM fix on the iPhone, give BeeJive Messenger for iPhone some love by pointing your browser to iphone.beejive.com.

It looks like a native iPhone app, stores your passwords in a cookie on the iPhone, and even though it’s an “alpha” is pretty darned stable (tho it has crashed my Safari once or twice). I’ve tried Trillian and Meebo on my iPhone and I have to say BeeJive takes my vote.

It’s free, too.