If the main reason you’re hoping for Apple to announce the new, iOS-driven iTV is for the promise of some app gaming on your 50-inch plasma, you don’t have to bank on Cupertino. Accessory maker Griffin has a new dock in the works that allows you to hook your iPhone or iPod Touch up to your television and then use it to play multiplayer games with up to four players at once.

Don’t expect it to work with just any game: the Griffin PartyDock will only work with select Griffin games, which have yet to be announced and are of unknown quality, with no word yet if Griffin will open the PartyDock up to third-parties.

Download a supported game, though, and you can play an iOS game multiplayer without having to awkwardly hot seat it by passing your iPhone around. Instead, four included remotes allow you to control the action from across the room.

Obviously, a lot of this device’s niche could be filled by a $99 iTV, but if that doesn’t materialize next month — or doesn’t support apps — the Griffin PartyDock might be the only solution in town to treat your iOS device like a game console.

Apple is today sending out invitations to a special event to be held on Wednesday, September 1st in San Francisco. The event starts at 10:00 AM PST.

Unless Apple is getting into the guitar business, the image on the invite suggests a music focus. The September event is traditionally when Apple rolls out new iPods for the holiday buying season. This year, Apple is expected to update the iPod touch with a Retina Display and FaceTime. An update to the Apple TV is also rumored, as well as $0.99 TV show rentals.

Apple’s recent deal with Liquidmetal Technologies will give it access to the most advanced manufacturing machinery on the planet, one insider says.

Apple will soon start experimenting with a new prototype injection molding machine, says Drew Merkel, who is perhaps the most knowledgeable third-party expert on Liquidmetal Technologies. It may allow Apple to make advanced iPhone antennas and seamless gadget cases with holographic logos cast right into the metal.

“This is the most advanced injection-molding machine ever made,” Merkel says. “It is state-of-the-art.”

Apple recently licensed Liquidmetal Technology’s IP for use in consumer electronics. Liquidmetal Technologies is one of the leading companies trying to commercialize space-age metal alloys that are extremely hard and lightweight but can be processed as easily as plastics. NASA has said Liquidmetal is “poised to redefine materials science as we know it in the 21st century.”

As Mac fans, we all know that Apple habitually throws an iPod event in September, where the obsolete iPods allowed to grow dusty in our love are whisked off behind the killing sheds, while the shiniest new models are simultaneously heralded. These events usually see an updated iPod Touch and a new version of iTunes, and this year, everyone’s expecting word on the new streaming iTunes features and perhaps a relaunched, iOS-driven AppleTV called the iTV.

Needless to say, excitement is high… but Apple still hasn’t tipped their hat on when we can expect the conference. Well, you might want to pencil September 7th in for following our iPod Event liveblog, because Bloomberg’s sources are now saying that date’s a lock.

Of course, since Apple traditionally doesn’t alert the press to an iPod Event until a week ahead of time, we won’t know if Bloomberg’s sources are right until the end of this month… but Apple certainly can’t put it off much later. If you’re hungry for a new iPod Touch or even an updated AppleTV, earmark some credit for that date.

We’ve been hearing rumblings of an iOS-driven AppleTV rebranded as the iTV and priced at $99 for a couple months now, and now it seems that Digg founder Kevin Rose thinks that these rumors have a lot of weight.

Although it’s not clear if Rose has any inside information, he writes: “From what I hear we should expect to see the iTV launch in September.” That would certainly confirm rumors we’ve heard that the new ‘iTV’ will debut alongside a freshly rejiggered iPod Touch at Apple’s iPod event in September, and it makes a lot of sense besides: the AppleTV, after all, has always pretty much been just a big iPod you could hook up to your television.

More to the point, Apple themselves said that their plans for a media-streaming iTunes update would likely be “more limited in scope” than people were anticipating. We all know that the music industry and film industry have been being difficult when it comes to signing licensing agreements with Apple for streaming, but television’s another story… as an institution, they are already quite comfortable with digital streaming. Could that mean that the streaming iTunes rollout will be limited in scope for everything save television at first?

Might Google do to television what the Internet giant has already done for publishing – linking to video content and bypassing the content creators? That seems to be the fear of some television executives who are voicing objections to an Android-based set-top box.

Although Google wants to combine web data with TV episodes and online video, content owners are “skeptical that Google can provide a business model that would compensate for potentially cannibalizing TV owners’ existing broadcast business,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

We’ve been hearing from analysts how the iPad will destroy the netbook market. Now we see the end result: from one of the companies that began the trend toward inexpensive laptops, Asustek Computer. The maker of the Eee PC expects to ship 1.4 million Eee PC netbooks in the third-quarter – fewer than planned, according to a Monday report.

“Because of decreased shipments of motherboards, notebooks and netbooks, Asustek’s financial performance for the second quarter declined on quarter,” Asustek Computer president CEO Jerry Shen announced August 13.

This app requires practically a Best Buy full of hardware: not just an iPhone, a TV and a Wii as well. But if you’re already set up — or eager enough to run out and pop for the hardware because of this app — for $3, WiiPhoto will connect the dots and let you display photos on your TV from the iPhone via a wifi connection.

The app will also let users pull images from a Flickr, Facebook or SmugMug account, or from a Mac attached to the same local network, and throw them up on the screen  — with all these sources easily accessed from within the app. Pretty cool idea for easy image-surfing from the couch.

At times, it seems, store employees fill many Apple retail outlets at a near one to one ratio with customers. Which raises a question about just what those employees are doing on the clock, for this summer’s favorite prank is quickly becoming jailbreaking Apple devices right under those employees’ noses — or behind their backs, as the case may be.

Perhaps it’s nothing more than bored kids on summer break with nothing better to do, but since our report Monday of a self-proclaimed “bored” anonymous prankster jailbreaking all the display phones at an unnamed Apple store, at least three more incidents of similar mischief have been reported.

Back in the day the entertainment industry tried to stop consumers from videotaping TV shows to watch at a later time. But the courts and Congress said taping TV shows is a non-infringing use of copyrighted works: it is “fair use.”

Now, the Copyright Office has determined that Apple locking the iPhone to prevent it running unapproved apps is an unfair restriction on consumers’ fair use rights.

Consumers should be allowed to jailbreak their iPhones and install whatever applications they like: not just those approved by Apple. Unlocking your iPhone to install non-approved apps is a legal exemption to the DMCA, the Copyright Office has just ruled.

To reach this conclusion, the Copyright Office applied the four famous “fair use factors” to the case: