For Hooper, who was already waist-deep in corporate strategy at Cisco as senior vice president corporate development and head of its consumer division, this is quite a promotion, one that clearly suggests he’s being groomed for the CEO spot. And with former CEO candidates Charlie Giancarlo and Mike Volpi out of the picture, what’s to stop him from ascending to it? As Barclays Capital noted this morning, “The appointment cements our view that Mr. Hooper is well-regarded within Cisco and may continue to progress in the upper echelons of Cisco’s management team.”

“We believe Wal-Mart is actively pitching Apple to carry more products,” Reitzes said in a research note this morning. “With Wal-Mart improving its retail displays, we believe that the mega-retailer could eventually earn the right to sell select Mac products without diluting Apple’s brand….Apple is very particular and exclusive with who sells its Macs and any ‘Mac experiment’ with Wal-Mart would likely start very gradually via a pilot program at first–just like Mac sales started at Best Buy….While we don’t expect an immediate impact this year and believe Apple would need to reposition its line-up first, we believe that closer ties to Wal-Mart makes sense.”

Indeed, Wal-Mart (WMT) could certainly bolster Apple’s (AAPL) distribution, particularly in areas without Apple Stores. A compelling proposition: broader access to the mass-market consumer without the infrastructure costs of a standalone boutique. And surely Apple has overcome its aversion to Wal-Mart now that the big-box retailer has been peddling its iPhones for so long.

Over at Kaufman Bros., analyst Shaw Wu is betting on new iMacs as well as a sneak preview of Mac OS X 10.6 Leopard. “Our sense is that investor expectations [for Macworld] are fairly modest since it was announced that CEO Steve Jobs wouldn’t be the keynote speaker,” he wrote in a recent research note. “Nonetheless, we view new Macs as a positive catalyst as Apple’s desktop business (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro) needs a refresh to re-ignite sales.”

“There will not be any revolutionary products at this year’s event,” writes Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who anticipates the announcement of an updated iMac, possibly a redesigned Mac mini and little else.

Analyst Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital expects a new iMac to the big announcement in an otherwise “neutral event.”

Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi has similarly low expectations. “We expect MacWorld to be relatively unexciting, with the major highlights likely to be (1) a demonstration of Mac OSX 10.6 “SnowLeopard,” (2) new Mac desktops (iMac, MacMini) incorporating the same Nvidia chipset in the new MacBooks, and (3) a modest update to the AppleTV,” he writes. “A new iPhone is unlikely, in our view, though we do expect Apple to introduce a lower-end iPhone model within the first half of the year. Apple announced three weeks ago that this will be its last appearance at MacWorld, and that CEO Steve Jobs will not deliver the keynote this year. Given this, and a relative lack of new product rumors, we do not expect any big surprise announcements at MacWorld.”

Those remarks promptly shaved 5.46 percent off of Google’s stock, sending its share price down to $311.75, a three-year low.

Of course, Google’s 10-Q, which was filed on Nov. 7, said pretty much the same thing, though it didn’t have quite the same effect on the company’s share price.

As result of the continued disruptions in the global financial markets, worldwide economic conditions and their impact on levels of consumer spending have recently deteriorated in many countries and regions. Any decreases in or delays in advertising spending due to general economic conditions could reduce our revenues or negatively impact our ability to grow our revenues.”