Last we checked, the full catalog of Beatles songs was supposed to be available for sale on the iTunes Store before the end of 2008.

Well, it's not happening this year, according to one of the band's two surviving members, and for all we know it may never happen.

"The last word I got back was it's stalled at the whole moment, the whole process," Paul McCartney told reporters gathered Monday for the media launch of his latest album, Electric Arguments. (link)

Where's Fake Steve Jobs when we need him?

Nobody was better at cutting through the posturing, lawyering and stonewalling by Apple Inc. (AAPL), the Beatles' Apple Corps and EMI that have kept the world's best-selling musical act off the world's largest digital music store lo these many years. (EMI owns the rights to Beatles recordings, but must get permission from Apple Corps to release them in new formats.)

A year ago, McCartney told Billboard.com that the deal was all but signed. "The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there’s just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it’s being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn’t be too long. It’s down to fine-tuning.” (link)

"Let me put that statement into American English," Dan Lyons (a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs) wrote at the time. "Paul wants more money." (link)

Now, a year later, the sticking points seem to have multiplied.

At Monday's press conference, Sir Paul was asked once again when the Beatles were coming to iTunes. Here, according to Billboard.biz, was his full reply:

"That is constantly being talked of, we'd like to do it," said McCartney. "What happens is, when something's as big as The Beatles, it's heavy negotiations.

"We are very for it, we've been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. So the last word I got back was that it had stalled, the whole process.

"They [EMI] want something we're not prepared to give them. Hey, sounds like the music business.

"It's between EMI and The Beatles. What else is new." (link)

EMI, in response, issued this statement:

"We have been working hard to secure agreement with Apple Corps. to make the Beatles' legendary recording catalog available to fans in digital form. Unfortunately the various parties involved have been unable to reach agreement but we really hope everyone can make progress soon." (link)

Translation: Paul wants more money.

Or maybe Yoko Ono is the problem. One of the classic entries in the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs — before Lyons gave it up to write full-time for Newsweek (and before Newsweek finally muzzled the Real Dan Lyons) — was the scene in which he imagined Jobs and Yoko trying to thrash out an agreement in John Lennon's old apartment in Manhattan. (The deal falls apart on Yoko's insistence that the band be billed as  "John Lennon and the Beatles" with Yoko listed as the fifth Beatle.) (link)

The irony is that the parties involved have dragged their heels for so long that much of the deal's original value may have evaporated. Most everyone who cares about the Beatles has already filled their iPods with songs ripped from the CDs. Meanwhile, as Peter Kafka reports on All Things Digital, the boom in digital music sales seems to be slowing, which could make even the digital Beatles harder to sell. (link)

If Sir Paul is really waiting for a better offer, he — and the Beatles fans — could be waiting for a very long time.

[Photo: The Beatles' Feb. 7, 1964 New York press conference, courtesy of Apple Corps.]

Catching up on late week Apple (AAPL) news…

Beatles on iTunes in 2008. We've heard stories like it before, but this one has a twist. The London Evening Standard reported Saturday that Paul McCartney, who is said to be worth more than $1.65 billion, will begin releasing the Beatles catalog on iTunes in the coming months to help defray the $40 to $60 million it may cost him to get out of his four-year marriage to Heather Mills. A final divorce hearing is set for March 17. But the Standard goes on to say that Mills could could argue that the deal, said to be worth an estimated $400 million, should be included in her settlement. So Sir Paul is going to release a 40-year-old catalog to raise money to pay a settlement that gets bigger as a result of the sale? (link)

iPhone Software Roadmap video. For those who couldn't make it to Cupertino for the March 6 event, Apple has made the entire presentation — all 1 hour and 18 minutes — available in Quicktime and HD. See Steve Jobs present U.S. smartphone market shares in a pie chart tilted to make the iPhone's slice look bigger. See Phil Schiller demo push e-mail and remote wipe. Watch EA's Travis Boatman play a preliminary iPhone version of Will (The Sims) Wright's Spore. (link)

iPlayer on iPhone. As promised (after getting pressured by Mac fans), the BBC has introduced an iPhone and iPod touch version of its iPlayer, which makes BBC shows available for download over the Internet. (link) It's still in beta and is only for British residents and for programs within seven days of broadcast. As Saul Hansel points out in Bits, the Beeb got around the fact that the iPhone doesn't support Flash by reformatting its video into the QuickTime version of H.264 — which is what Google does to put YouTube videos on the device.

A few bits of Apple (AAPL) news worth noting:

Paul McCartney: "It's all happening soon," he told Billboard.com. "Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there's just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it's being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn't be too long. It's down to fine-tuning. I'm pretty sure it'll be happening next year, 2008." (link)

"Let me put that statement into American English," says Fake Steve Jobs. "Paul wants more money."

First Leopard Update: More than a dozen improvements in Mac OS X 10.5.1, issued three weeks after Leopard's release, including fixes in Mail, Airport, Time Machine, Back to My Mac and some pesky Firewall issues. Not yet repaired: Among the repairs: that nasty core data bug.

iMac Anti-freeze: Apple also released a graphics firmware update that's supposed to finally solve the freezing problem some aluminum iMac users have been suffering since September. I'll believe it when my Dad tells me his iMac has gone more than a week without crashing.

Three New Mac Ads: The Get-a-Mac ads are back on TV (and available from Apple here) after a summer hiatus. "Same joke," writes Michael Gartenberg. "Still as effective." But maybe not quite as funny.