The US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple (APPL) today that reveals various concepts behind a newly advanced service in development that entails subsidizing an incredible array of hardware from Apple. The hardware ranges from their sizzling hot iPhone to Apple TV–the set top box–to an actual television, notebook, iPod touch and more. The subsidization could also cover software from Apple or third party developers.

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Break out that mixtape. You know, the one with “Don’t Stop Believin’” and “Thriller.” It’s the Sony Walkman’s 30th birthday.

And it got a present. Kind of. The modern Sony (SNE) Walkman digital music player beat out Apple’s (AAPL) iPod share of the portable music player market in Japan in the last week of August, according to a study by BCN, a Japanese electronics research firm. The Walkman took 43 percent of sales, compared with the iPod’s 42.1 percent, capping 241 weeks where the iPod reigned in Japan.

The study didn’t take into account sales of the iPhone, which researchers viewed primarily as a cellphone. But nostalgic Walkman aficionados might recognize the frenzy over the role of the iPod in popular culture.

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RealNetworks (RNWK) shares have spiked more than 10 percent this morning, on zero news.

TheStreet.com notes that there has been “heavy upside options activity” in the shares, asserting that “volume was nothing short of explosive” in both the stock and the options.

The last time the stock had a big move, the company won approval from Apple (AAPL) to offer an application for accessing Real’s Rhapsody music subscription service on the iPhone/iPod app store.

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TV Everywhere is a concept put out by TV distributors that basically says that if you pay for cable or satellite, you should be able to watch the content you want, where you want. Everywhere. To some people this is not a good idea.

As is always the case, many people think tv programming should be widely available for free on the internet. Of course the content is never free. Someone has to pay to create it and we purchasers of cable and satellite services pay the subscription fees that pay the content companies and allow them to create all that content.

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Tomorrow’s crisis today: Apple’s (AAPL) critics haven’t yet realized that the iPhone App Store has fueled millions in software development efforts to produce content exclusively tied to the company’s proprietary Cocoa Touch mobile platform. Is this a credible threat, and what is Apple’s real motive behind its iTunes rich media content strategy?

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The new iPod nano is a tour de force, the Swiss Army Knife of mobile entertainment. I’m sure there’s some obscure gadget from Japan that packs more features per cubic millimeter, but I’ve never heard of it, and chances are neither have you.

This one’s a major consumer product, just in time for stimulating the economy this holiday season. Speaking as a technophile, I want one of the new nanos for the same reason I want a Dremel with 300 different bits: just because.

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One sign that Steve Jobs is back to his old self: He’s already sniping at rivals.

After Apple’s (AAPL) iPod launch event on Wednesday, the New York Times’ David Pogue asked the CEO whether he has doubts–as he’s expressed in the past–about the market for e-readers, especially Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle.

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So Apple (AAPL) announced a new iPod lineup on Wednesday.

I think they botched it, and in doing so, they showed very un-Apple-like cracks in the product lineup. Here’s why…

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Though technically he returned to work two months ago, it was as the host of Wednesday’s Apple (AAPL) music event that Steve Jobs publicly retook the reins of the company he founded.

Jobs was the first person to emerge on stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts here to open the now-annual September iPod introduction.

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Apple’s (AAPL) control issues have been a key ingredient in its success. CEO Steve Jobs is fond of pointing out that Apple’s hands-on approach to crafting both hardware and software has led to such breakthrough products as the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone–and it’s fair to say the attention to detail hasn’t hurt Apple’s marketing, either.

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By any measure, he is among the most important figures in technology of the last decade, a major influence on the way we use and interact with computers and mobile phones, a British designer who ranks with the Conrans and the Dysons. But have you ever heard Jonathan Ive, the Apple (AAPL) designer behind the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone, talk about his work?

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My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day. He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

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“Boring! Can we fast-forward?” my daughter asks as Joan Baez warbles “Joe Hill” at Woodstock. We are “sharing” the newly released 40th Anniversary DVD of the Woodstock documentary, but she is doing here what she also does when we run my iPod through the car stereo.

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The news this week that Napster is relaunching with a $5-a-month subscription plan that includes 5 free MP3 downloads would appear to be a troubling development for RealNetworks’ (RNWK) rival Rhapsody service, which will set you back $13 a month for a streaming service that lacks the free MP3s. It is also no doubt irritating to Real that it comes from a company that is now a unit of Best Buy (BBY): in the past, the Best Buy digital music store was a re-branded version of Rhapsody, which came pre-loaded on non-Zune, non-iPod music players sold by the retailer.

Earlier this week, I chatted about the situation with Neil Smith, VP of business management for Rhapsody America. His spin on the Napster story is that what they’re really doing is going head-to-head with Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store–that Napster is “all about the downloads.” He says Napster basically wants to use the new approach to get into the pre-paid music gift card market, using the free downloads as a driver to steal share from Apple. He thinks selling tracks is more their goal than “turning the tide toward subscription from purchase,” which is where Real is focused.

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