So if you wanted to celebrate the anniversary of The White Album, you could turn to Purple Chicks Beatles Deluxe, which covers 10 CDs.

Fans who had hoped for a remastered Beatles catalog have had to settle for mementos like a 395 White Album pen.

Other long-anticipated Apple projects, like DVD versions of the Beatles Shea Stadium concert and the Let It Be film, failed to turn up for the holidays as well.

And if you put any faith in Paul McCartneys passing mention, in November, that the 1967 avant-garde track Carnival of Light might be released, dont hold your breath: this track has been dangled before (about a decade ago, when Mr.

McCartney used it as the soundtrack of an unreleased photofilm, made from photographs of the Beatles taken by his first wife, Linda).

Indeed, whenever Mr.

Even the most believable of reports, floated by EMI insiders, proved fruitless this year.

During the summer EMI was said to be preparing a deluxe remastered edition of the The Beatles (popularly known as The White Album) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release.

Instead, Apple sent e-mail messages to fans directing them to beatles.com, the official Web site, where they could celebrate the anniversary by buying a 395 White Album fountain pen.

Presumably, the wizards at Apple think people will want these things in time for the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the computer game to which the group agreed, this fall, to lend its name and music.

Whats wrong with this picture It is not for lack of interest at either end of the food chain that the Beatles cant manage to get upgraded versions of their classic recordings onto the market, except by way of a video game or a site-specific show (Cirque du Soleils Love, in Las Vegas).

EMI, which owns the groups recordings, remastered them at least two years ago.

According to a 1989 agreement that ended 20 years of lawsuits between the Beatles and EMI, the label can do nothing without an O.K.

Apple. But Apple is supposedly keen: early in 2007 it hired Jeff Jones, a record executive whose last job was overseeing historical reissues for the superb Sony Legacy series.

There would have been no reason to hire someone with that background if archival reissues were not in the companys plans, and since Apple acts only with the unanimous consent of its four shareholders Mr.

McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison presumably all four have agreed to a release program, at least in principle.

And how many record labels, just now, are facing an army of consumers who are saying, in effect: Weve bought this music several times already on mono and stereo LPs, on picture discs and audiophile vinyl, perhaps on cassette and most recently on CD but please, we beg you, sell it to us again.

So whats the holdup No one is willing to say, but Mr.

McCartney recently asserted that EMI was demanding an unspecified concession that the Beatles were unwilling to make.

Frankly, the reasons hardly matter at this point: to collectors awaiting these releases, either on physical CDs (improved sound being the main point of remastering) or as digital downloads (where convenience trumps audiophile considerations), the inability of Apple and EMI to get this music onto the market is a symbol of how pathetic the record business has become, and how dysfunctional Apple continues to be.

On Beatles chat boards and Web sites, the 395 pen, in particular, was greeted with derision.

This must be intensely frustrating for Mr.

Jones; in fact, people close to EMI and Apple say he has a significant list of projects that he would love to release.

But in the nearly two years hes been at Apple, he has presided over the video game agreement and a DVD documentary about the making of the Love show (which, in truth, includes a few revealing moments, showing the difficulties of dealing with Apples shareholders, from Cirque du Soleils point of view).

Usually, these unauthorized desktop bootleg projects (which are of course illegal) have attractive cover art and copious annotations, and these days money rarely changes hands for them: the people who compile them distribute them freely (and encourage others to do so) either on home-burned CDs and DVDs or, increasingly, on the Internet.

A label called Purple Chick has assembled deluxe editions of each commercially released album, offering the original discs in their mono and stereo mixes, along with the singles (also in mono and stereo) released at the time, as well as every known demo, studio outtake and alternative mix.

Drawing mostly on an earlier generation of less obsessively organized bootlegs and adding otherwise unbootlegged rarities when they turn up, Purple Chick has generally chosen the best-sounding and most complete takes (editing together fragments where necessary) and has done some speed correction and other sonic tweaking.

It offers upgrades, as well: when copies of the unmixed, unedited four-track masters of four songs from Sgt.

Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band began circulating at the end of last year, Purple Chick revised its Sgt.

The Beatles Oldies But Goldies Rar