Apple "One More Thing" Event next week! - Page 3

Perhaps not MP3 players but as has been mentioned many times, portable music was nothing new at all. Apple just made it much more appealing and fun.

Portable video is not in any way equivalent to the situation with portable music before Apple intro'ed the iPod. There are portable video solutions in existence now but I've yet to *ever* see someone using one. Prior to the iPod I always saw all sorts of portable music devices being used for years.

I'm sure it's coming, but I can't seem to see the nirvana some see with portable video even done by Apple on a revoolutionary new device. If anyone can do it though (and make it bigtime), Apple can.

And *THAT* is the reason the marketing brand image folks get paid the big bucks. Because we all believe that if *anybody* could pull this off... the only company you'd trust would be Apple.

Why not full screen? Seriously, SD is not a problem for downloading any more. Want proof?

http://www.apple.com/macosx/cnbc/

Now, here's my other loose thread:

"In an interview after his presentation," wrote Mr. Markoff, "Mr. Jobs demurred. The problem, he suggested, was not that Mac TV was not a good idea, but that the cable companies are monopolies. But he did not close the door entirely."

This is from a NYT op-ed from January 2005, so it's behind the NYTs new firewall of greed. The problem not being addressed (as I think he would agree) is not networks and TiVo but restricted access to content that consumers have no way to route around. There are some networks I cannot watch because my cable provider simply doesn't offer them. Yeah, I could do the satellite thing, but I have some issues with that as well.

Steve's other job is as a content producer. For them to make money, they need as many paying avenues to the consumer as possible, and DVDs are the best one right now. Surely he realizes that throttled access (ticket sales, TV) are in decline as a revenue source, but direct sales are growing (DVD). Direct purchase of programming from the content producer, bypssing the resellers that restrict access (theatre owners and cable companies) is the future. That's precisely what iTMS addresses and why I think he'll repeat the trick for video.

A Mac PVR might be interesting, but it dosen't really solve an existing problem so it's not a slam-dunk market and I think that's what his comment above reflects. Scaled down content isn't what they want. People want what they want when they want it. They want SD or HD programming on demand, with as few restrictions as possible. They don't want to be forced to watch it in the next 72 hours, they want to own it. They don't want to be forced to show up at a certain time to watch it or else they'll never be able to see it again.

I think it's why Steve isn't particularly interested in XM/Sirius or FM receivers in iPods - he want's to blow clean past all of them. Want to hear Howard Stern - download him when *you* want to hear him. That's the model.

First,

Second, there are probably some clues in the latest invite just as there were for the one before the nano. (and "One more thing..." typically means ONE more thing)

That said, would Apple update Pro machines with only 3 months till MWSF? It would be nice to see Intel machines, but it just doesn't seem likely. PPC updates I can't see drawing this much attention, that would be a huge let-down to most people (at this point, given all the media attention and hype).

Video iPod would be killer, and warrant this much attention. Can't say I'd bet on a feature film type movie download service though; it doesn't seem like the COMPLETE infrastructure and market are there YET (especially in the US). TV show d/l makes SOME sense but doesn't seem like a very 'Jobs-ian' idea what with his mild dislike for television (at least he hinted at that years ago, "...get people out from behind the boob-tube...").

I would buy an Airport Express AV in a second, but there's not a large need for one YET. Plus, is G speed wireless really fast enough (given sustained, average rates of ~22mbps) for quality Audio and Video? If not they could release something pre-N, but again, this much media attention for just that?

I could be way off, but I'm leaning on it being something entirely new. Speculate on. 8)

.02 USD

Surely they can DRM video files to allow them only to play on authorized computers or iPods and be burned to DVD only a certain number of times. This gives a whole new outlook to pay-per-view. With an iTVS, you'd buy it on demand and watch it at your leisure...AND you get to keep it. How many times have we been at home and thought "gosh, I'd like to watch ________ right now. Problem is, I don't own the DVD and I don't feel like running to Blockbuster or ordering it on Netflix." With iTVS, problem solved. With H.264, it's possible.

I assume you mean 768kb DSL. Assuming you could fully saturate your line (94 KB/sec), it would take 26 minutes to download a 150MB file. Not sure how you are downloading them in 5 minutes over a 768k line...


First you say you have DSL, now its Comcast? The 5 minute download jives up with a Comcast line, so perhaps you were exaggerating to emphasize?

Ya, I need to update my location info. I am currently in Sacramento for school. The Comcast out here is pretty good, 7Mbps/768Kbps. I have seen my line get up to 750KBps on a good download, or if I have a few torrents going.

There are FAR more than 100,000 people out there torrenting. There's estimated to be about 10M users of P2P apps, and BT is safely 1/4 of that. My mom discovered BT for christs sake. If you want specific content, it's about your only resource. And it's not like my mom isn't willing to pay - she's happy to buy premium services but sometimes the specific thing that she wants just isn't available to her at any price.

We know that Apple is selling about 1.25M songs a day right now. I can routinely spot popular torrent files with 5,000 people sharing it - for one file. The useage is MUCH higher than you think.

And I still don't see how much it would change for Apple who must already be pushing upwards of 10TB/day out of the iTMS. So maybe that jumps to 50TB. Is 50TB/day any more impossible a problem to solve than 10TB? I don't see it.

The bittorrent app. I use, Azureus, is telling me:

Apple's servers in general are the fastest I've seen on the net. I pulled the Tiger DVD image off their site in about 20-25 min on one of the two OC-3 lines my campus has at about 4 MB/s (yes byte and yes the disk image is legal). At the moment they have bandwidth to burn but I don't see that continuing if they start selling movies.

It would be fast enough if the content already resided in the Airport Express device. Maybe it is more like the Airport Extreme only with a hard drive. If you wanted something from this device, then it would have to be sent/called wirelessly to/from your computer; like, say a web page from the internet or a movie from the hard drive. If you wanted to watch a movie on your big-screen tv, you would just control this new Airport-type device with some app (like maybe iTunes) and it would then send the movie to your tv which is connected to it via wires (RCA plugs, Super Video, or whatever...). No worries about bandwidth in this manner.

No, it's plenty fast enough for video even from any device. Even a HD H.264 stream is only 5mb/s. A SD one is 1mb/s or less.

TiV, Replay, and MCE have been shoving less-efficient video around wireless networks for a while now.

I can't believe you are debating the merits of torrents vs an iTunes Video Store. Have anyone had bandwidth-problems from Apple? Anyone? Ever? I live in Sweden and Apple easily saturates my 10 Mbps connection. I easily get +1 MB/s while downloading stuff (not from iDisk though).

Who knows.. they might even include som P2P functionality into iTunes with a P2P-button if iTMS/iTVS is slow. The cost is that you would also open up your archive to fellow iTuners. iTunes would of couse only share FairPlay protected stuff. iTunes would report the purchase to iTMS/iTVS, bill your credit card and give some cash your seeding pals for their trouble. Micropayments baby!

10 million registered credit cards in iTMS. That'd be one heck of a P2P network and if everyone get something back for participating (cach only usable in iTMS/iTVS and AppleStore of couse) then I think it'd be a win-win-win soution for Apple, the customers and the content providers.

And.. They would get A LOT of press, and it would be really innovative.

looks like powerbook updates next week.
I speculate no more than 1.7ghz.
Displays for the powerbook. based on this quote

'sources expect the number of pixels packed into the displays to increase by about 15 percent on the 15- and 17-inch models'

would anyone care to guestimate possible resolutions referencing our current display res of 1280x854 ?

Hmm, I still have trouble believing Mac updates. Even a screen resolution increase on the PowerBook shouldn't be enough for a special event. Maybe he'll link the video iPod to the increased screen real estate of the PowerBooks - "watch the videos you purchased on your iPod or on your wide screen PowerBook." Still seems like a stretch to me though.

Perhaps each steps up to the next Apple type resolution, so

15" = 1280x854 becomes 1440x900
17" = 1440x900 becomes 1650x1050

17" = 1440x900 becomes 1680x1050 (16:10)

Fixed that for ya.

i'm in the market for a 12" PB, how much better do you think those will get?

maybe 12.5"

And that is for the trackerless torrents only. So only people with those additional ports opened, and are running Azureus will show up in that count.

I read (over the summer) that Bittorrent had become the number 1 p2p app with over 2.5 million users at any given moment in time.

If we get HD powerbooks, it wouldn't surprise me if we get AirPort Express HD and iPod HD.

Explain what would be so high definition about an Airport Express... ?

Or an iPod for that matter. An iPod's screen is too small to make a difference anyway. And if you did for some reason put a small HD display in it, the battery consumption wouldn't be worth it.

- Xidius

They would go to HD rez I would think. 1366 x 768 most likely.

Airport Express that outputs HD rez so it can stream HD movies downloaded from iTunes movie store. The HD iPod is a wet dream IMO because the MPAA will never allow HD (or even 480p) movies to be stored and shared.

I agree. Hardware/software updates are usually done at Apple/Macworld conferences. Any updates to PMacs and PBooks would have to be significant enough so the non-tech public would give a care--and I don't think any Macintosh update, no matter how great--unless it included time travel, would be a watercooler event, unlike an iPod announcement (which happened at my non-tech office after the nano was introduced).

To the public, Apple has grown beyond a computer manufacturer to a lifestyle company (digital and fashion). Calling a press event for a PMac update would be perceived as a little hubristic ("Apple calls a event when Steve Jobs flushes a toilet!") and reduce the impact of any future events because the public (and we, too) occasionally expect too much from Apple--as shocking as that seems, I know.

All that said, if it's not a video iPod but a series of nice, yet not fantastic, updated/refreshed products, Apple may be treading upon "(w)ay beyond on the rumor sites" territory.

Isn't HD resolution 1080 pixels high? ie. 1080i and 1080p

"Full" HD is, yes, though 720p is considered HD as well.

Yeah, and I could even believe that Jobs would call an event like this for an all new Mac, or a new form factor, like they did with the white iBooks. Not for an update though.

I like the PowerMacTT - Time travel at 2.7 GHz, and we'll be at 3.0 Ghz in a year!

But your second point especially about lifestyle is well taken. Apple, at least with its consumer products line, is trying to make the computer "invisible" to the content or the creative process. They become appliance like. The lamp-styled iMac, the Mini, the current iMac, and even the iPods, all make the hardware secondary to the content (they do it so elegantly though you can't help but admire the hardware.) The lone product that goes against this though, is the PowerMac, whose expansion capabilities obviously make it hard to "hide." So then they just make it cool and do something logical like make adding hardware upgrades a "tool-less" procedure.

I can't see the PowerMac being the centerpiece of the annoncement even if its got dual core processors. There has to be some substantial content delivery tie-in to another product, or a significant content-creation tie-in with the powermac that most of us haven't thought of but when its announced, we'll go "yeah, that makes sense, why didn't another company think of that."

I'm wondering if Apple will quietly update the PowerMacs and PowerBooks on Tuesday, Oct. 11. They usually update products on Tuesday. Then, the next day announce the new video capable iPod at the "one more thing..." event. Any thoughts on that scenario? Seems like many people are trying to tie everything together with the "One more thing..." event.

We need to enlist the help of kormac77, he has been talking about this day for a long time, and I am sure he is in the know.

Kormac7X

Would a Video iPod dilute the market/take attention away from the Audio iPod? I can't see them releasing a world-changer until the last world changer is sucked dry.


V/R,

Aries 1B

couple of things

apple dont DO what you expect yes??

ipod video therefore is OUT

theres that business about the LEAK RE the inbuilt iChat CAM on MAC note books....

THERES where your curtian is!!!

AND it gets to be a disapointment for all concerned as i read somewhere else... its about time for Apple to Drop the ball on something

i DO hope im wrong and its new intel mobos for whatever machine might be released.

i HOPE im the first to claim braggin rights if i |AM right... if not... i have n o ego so it wont matter

Rod

Some thoughts...

1. I tend to believe that "one" really means "one".

2. It seems unlikely Apple would hold a special media event for modest machine upgrades (which is most likely what we'll see at this time). The "quiet" update in Tuesday scenario seems possible, leaving Wednesday for "One more thing..."

3. Portable video seems mostly useless to the majority of the marketplace. I just don't see it as having great value. Carrying my music around (and listening to it)? Of course! My pictures (like a wallet on steroids)? Sure, why not. Videos? I don't think so.

4. Streaming video wirelessly from a portable video device seems valueless and impractical on so many levels. Power consumption would be chief among these. Plus...see #3 above.

5. Streaming video from my computer seems slightly more practical and useful. I could imagine something like Podcasts for video (some for $) where my favorite video programs download over the course of a day (night) and I am able to view them...streamed to my TV...at my leisure. Still, there are sooo many problems with this. Why do I want video on my computer? I want it in my living room...on my TV! Remote control? Another issue. In short, downloading video to my computer and streaming it to my TV appears to complicate something that TiVO has made elegantly simple (though could still be improved upon). Apple is about making things simpler for people.

6. Apple is, more and more, about "appliances". iPod is an "appliance". you don't know (or care) what is actually inside the thing (other than your music). You don't care about CPUs, memory, OS, etc.) This is part of what makes it such an easy sell for everyone and their neighbor (Mac owner or not).

7. A device that sits in my living room, hooked (possibly wirelessly) to my broadband connection, that downloads my favorite (free or fee) video content, and plays it through my TV sounds interesting. Something like my TiVO without the hassles of conflicting program schedules. Hmmm...

8. Mac mini is a nice, small, visually appealing device that could easily handle what TiVO does. An Intel-based Mac mini might be able to handled it all even better, and, if it is an "appliance" no need to worry about the applications to be ported already.

9. iPod is a brand name that could be attached to other devices if Apple chooses. "iPod theater" anyone?

10. Apple is NOT...I repeat NOT going to sit video out. They have more technology and software in this area than in music/audio.

11. I think the curtains on the invitations could be a clue.

...echo... I mean.. how bout that Ultra Wide Band w/ Bluetooth stuff Freescale has that can do 110Mbps?

edit: and is supposed to be FOR video streaming

Nah, totally different market. People buying Nanos want portability over storage. This would be storage over portability + added functionality. No problem for Apple.

This is a good idea, but now we talk about the possibility of a high end Power Mac with two 970MP chips in it (for a total of four processing cores). Although this would not warrant a special event (unless it is combined with image/video/audio software optimized for 4 processors), I doubt that it would happen quietly. The Powerbook update, as we expect it (7448 processor, higher resolution displays), could be quiet though.

They would never do it the same day as earnings. That needs to dominate the PR cycle for the day and questions on it would screw up the conference call that aft.

PR hardware bumps typically come two Tuesdays after earnings. Look at the 25th or maybe the 18th instead.

Ooops, I forgot about that.

As a shareholder, my interest in next Tues is rather different than that of most around here... ;-)