Apple plans mystery "product transition" before September's end - Page 3

Hmm, if all iPods go touchscreen, what's the point of putting touch in the name? Before the iPod touch was announced, the iPod classic was just the iPod, remember?

So, if Apple does as you say, seems more likely they'll just drop touch from the iPod touch, making it the new iPod and leave the iPod nano's name alone while transforming it into a small version of the full-size iPod. That'll leave us with the iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod, and iPhone. Very simple.

I can see that happening only if they drop the iPod classic, which I'm not sure they're going to do just yet. Now if they can get a 64GB iPod touch out the door for a reasonable price, then most people would be ok with that because in less than a year, a 128GB iPod touch is almost a given. That's more than enough space for most people.

I think we're just as likely to see an iPod transition like that as we are a MacBook and MacBook Pro transition that involves dropping disc drives and slimming them down to match the Air's style. Maybe they'll completely kill replaceable batteries - MBs and MBPs are the only things Apple ships with such batteries. Not sure if SSDs are cheap enough, but they'll likely be optional.

AppleTV might get a minor improvement through Netflix. Obviously Netflix is transitioning from a DVD rental service that's having trouble keeping its head above water to a digital movie service that different devices can essentially tap into. The 360 will be getting an update this fall that allows for the streaming of Netflix Instant movies from a subscriber's Instant Queue online. I'm guessing Apple would like to make that service better by downloading the movies, rather than streaming them off the internet, and enabling the browsing of Netflix's entire digital library from the couch, rather than requiring configuration through Netflix's website.

Whatever Apple's up to, we'll find out ridiculously soon.

we need some product photos even if it is FAKE!!!

bring back the macbook pro photos ....

One more thought. Maybe they have a planned price drop of the iPhone G3 to free (8GB) and $99 (16GB). So, there's money lost there, plus maybe they'll be giving out some $100 store credits to current buyers.

I don't disagree... The point I'm making is not about the names, it's the products..

Yes, when the first iPod went color, it was called the iPod photo, then the iPod video came, then the iPod touch came.. They very well may drop "touch" fro the name. But this transition makes the most sense to me, especially because of the App store.

Maybe Apple has negotiated to eliminate AT&T as sole U.S. service provider for iPhone. Or, Apple comes out with new version that is not tied to the exclusivity contract with AT&T.

Ummm... okay
1) Apr-Jun gross margin 34.8%
2) July-Sep gross margin 31.5%
3) Sep-Dec gross margin 30%

Ummm... so if they released the new product(s) NEXT TUESDAY with only 2/3 of this quarter left... and got stable sales from then onwards, we'd get those kinds of gross margin effects

Of course - if they have the stock and it's going to be hugely popular so they expect it to sell double in the first month then stabilise, then it could be a month later.

I wonder when they're going to release?
edit: I didn't just guess next tuesday... I took the 3.3% margin drop in this quarter, vs 4.8% margin drop overall, worked out the number of days in the quarter required (assuming stable sales) and got Tuesday 29th July. :-)

Sure.

What I have to wonder is if Apple would be having all these back-to-school deals if they plan on launching new iPods and, as I suggested, new slimmed down MBs and MBPs? Obviously they couldn't just not have these deals, they have them every year and it would totally give away their plans if they didn't, but they could endure some backlash from students. Just a thought.

Google didn't buy any spectrum. And even if they did, the spectrum hasn't been vacated yet.

I'm guessing the whole product line of LCD monitors transition over to the LED back lighting rather than florescent tubes.

I take it to just mean transition from old macbooks to the new ones, that clearly have more new features than originally thought. Key question is WHEN will refresh occur. The kiddies are going to college soon....

Yes, the very reason they DO have these deals is because new iPods and notebooks are in the pipeline. The same as it has been for the past several years.. And even when the new products arrive, I can't see much backlash from students.. After-all, the iPods in the promo are FREE.

And how is that something that the competition couldn't match as well?

Where you can keep your "X-Files"...

"The Truth Is Out There"

If newbies here can join in baseless speculation, here's mine:

1) Refresh of the ipod touch with a 64 GB model and addition of some non-touch based controls for volume and advancing songs. I love my touch, and some of the new apps make it even better. But I got it for music - videos great, sound damn good (but not the best), and navigation easy if you have both hands and eyes available. In the car and while running, I want to be able to skip ahead in an album or shuffle and adjust volume without looking, just like on old school ipods. I am not alone and an easy upgrade. And that's why they have to keep the oldschool nano - better for hands off and exercise - and someone already pointed out a tiny touch screen (smaller than the touchpad on a laptop) doesn't make sense for a tiny ipod.

2) Refresh/transition for all computers. Look at those Montevida chips already winning the hearts of BTS kids for Sony and HP. Apple doesn't want to fall too far behind and besides lower power consumption and some speed, they already offer the intriguing possibility of a dual integrated and dedicated graphics solution that both imac and mbpros could use to finally break the windows advantage on big time gaming. Run non demanding apps (most) and use the integrated graphics to extend battery life (laptops) maybe past 5 hours. Want to play Crysis for an hour or two, zoom zoom with NVideo or ATI, but keep your charger nearby.
And all of them get a facelift (aluminum) and complete Apples move to the Energy Star Gold standard they don't quite reach yet.

3) Something new - the not so secret touch laptop with atom-ic power.

And all that in the next couple months. After the snows fly (i.e. new OS), quadcore nephalim and touchscreens for more models and who knows what else.

I already said this in another post.... But...

The non-touch controls already exist on the iPod touch.. You can start, stop and skip songs directly from the earbuds. Volume control is tactile and resides on the side of the iPod touch.

An iPod nano touch would not be a tiny screen if the click wheel is removed. Imagine the same size as the current nano phatty except the entire front would be a touch surface. It would not be much smaller than the full sized iPod touch. Very doable..

Instant music would be as simple as adding a "shuffle" icon to the home screen.

I really hope it's a new MacPro or a midrange version. I'm getting tired of Apple's main, and seems like ONLY, focus being on consumer toys. As someone who has used Macs for professional work for nearly two decades, it seems like they have forgotten who kept them afloat in the mid-late 90's.

They are starting to lose what ground they gained in the TV and Film industry. Avid has pretty much caught back up to them in software and price. They announced that Shake is basically dead over two years ago, while Phenomenon was rumored to replace it in 2008, yet I haven't heard anything about it in two years. Motion is hardly a pro motion design application. After Effects has and continues to own it since it was first released. And even though Blu-Ray is the clear winner in the HD wars, there isn't an Apple application to design and create Blu-Ray Discs yet... even though Apple has backed Blu-Ray since close to the start of the format war. What good is editing in HD, if the only medium you can put it back to is one that no one except professionals have?

It's time for Apple to start using some of those profits to put themselves back on the cutting edge of professional technology. Steve Jobs has left Apple before, and while almost all the consumers abandoned it, the Pros were the ones who stuck around. If Jobs retires or dies, I can see Apple becoming another Dell or Gateway in the next ten years.

Which product line has gone the longest without a refresh?
Which product was pulled from the market suddenly without explanation?
What product would compliment Apple TV and reinvent the way we communicate?

The product transition in question is for Apple's Cinema Displays. It's been years since they were updated; they'll have built-in HD iSight cameras via CCD sensors within the display. iChat will become available through Apple TV and accessible with iPhone/iTouch Remote.

Shutting out competitors requires something revolutionary.

I like the sound of that, but with the iPhone 3G just launching and everyone signing AT&T contracts, that might not be such a great idea. My guess? At Macworld in January they'll announce a partnership with T-Mobile, the other major GSM provider in the U.S. to start setting up iPhone contracts in the summer. Now that Apple no longer does cellular revenue sharing with AT&T, they probably don't have to sell the iPhone exclusively through them.

I'd be floored if they did that. Having used AT&T and T-Mobile, I strongly prefer the latter. If they wanted to undercut the competition, perhaps Apple could get AT&T to make switching from them to T-Mobile free, or at least allow T-mobile iPhone owners to use AT&T's GSM cell towers when out of range and vice versa.

Yes, the Cinema Displays are due for an update. However, updated displays would be considered a feature set or product update, not a KEY product transition.

Out of all of Apple's products, the only ones I'd consider "key" are the Mac, iPod, and iPhone.

And if this "key" product transition is going to happen before the Sept quarter ends, the only logical product line would be the iPod line. It's going touch, nano and full size.

My guess is a tablet that is an "evolved" iPod Touch/iPhone. Bigger than either, but smaller than a 12" laptop. Students can have them on their desks in class to take notes on a nearly full sized virtual keypad while also listening to their favorite tunes during a boring lecture, checking their e-mail and visual voicemail, or playing a game. Cheaper than a laptop but more than a Pod or Phone while including the features and functions of both. Outputs to a printer. Best of all worlds. Fills the needs/price niche between pocket devices and laptops. Stands up on your desk at home while you plug in your chiclet keyboard for the old school typing experience.

I'm with those who think it could involve something with Apple TV. Perhaps sell them so cheaply (reducing margins) that a lot of people will buy them that otherwise wouldn't think about it. If Apple thinks that online distribution of movies is ready to take off then this is one way to make it happen while grabbing the lion's share of the market.

What might be Teh Steve's overarching message for this mysterious upcoming transition? I'm thinking 'high def done right', or something along those lines. Steve would define this to mean HD offered in manner which leverages nearly the entire Apple product line.

The rationale goes like this...

HDTVs sold like hotcakes last Holiday, but HD disc players were left behind, relatively speaking. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that changing this year. Sony, Best Buy, and the rest of the consumer electronics industry need it to and, with the physical format wars over, 2008 seems poised to be the year of Blu-Ray.

Therefore, Apple's most obvious 'one-up' is making Apple TV the most desirable Blu-Ray player this Holiday. At ~$250, an AppleTV with Blu-Ray playaback would fly off the shelves. We can debate exact pricing, but suffice to say: if the product is an Apple, and the price looks good vs. the competition, it will sell.

In doing so, Apple will seed their iTunes media hub and storefront, which is what they really care about. If there's any area in which Apple faces competition, it is this one: Vudu, the Netflix box, PS3, 360, to name a few. Aggressively competing in this space certainly affects margins. Last I checked, the least expensive Blu-Ray player is still a highly-subsidized game machine.


So what else might Apple do to conquer the high-def playback market?

Enabling Technologies:

• Blu-Ray drives
• DisplayPort
• 'Secure Copy' (or whatever they're calling it now)

Obvious Product Moves:

• BD-capable drives throughout the notebook line
  - readers on consumer models, writers for pros
• Display Port on every machine
  - port design enables smaller form factors (notebook redesign)
  - full compatibility (DVI, HDMI, even VGA out)
  - keeps the MPAA monkey off Apple's back
  - HD iTunes rentals now enabled for notebooks

Apple Bonus:

• buy the Blu-Ray, put a (protected) copy on your iPod
  - syncs from both notebooks and Apple TVs
• securely copy the film to your hard drive
  - improves battery life, key for long flights
  - Blu-Ray playback solution for Air users

Long Shots:

• Display Port on iTouch models (maybe not, but soon?)
• Apple home theater (return of the iPod HiFi speaker experiment)
• Apple TVs within actual TVs (it'll happen eventually)
• Free WALL•E Blu-Ray with every notebook purchase (never!)
• Cinema Display refresh (sorry, CWeb, but we all know this won't ever happen)

Okay, that's my list. Pick it apart...

I assume the AppleTV currently has a higher margin than other Mac products, but that would be a guess. Assuming it has the same margin, if they drop the price by about $160 (to $69/169) and sell a million of them in 3 months, it could reduce their margins as described. I think.

I think they'd be running at a loss though... and even if they want to drop their margins I'd doubt they'd go for a loss.

nope, AppleTV is not high margin product, it is already very competitive... do not think they can reduce a lot

No it doesn't.

September is the beginning of the TV season, so you may be onto something.

How about a Comcast-killer Apple TV -- a $49 box with a $20-a-month all-you-can-watch plan?

The price reduction I suggested ($160 drop) is based more on the decrease in Apple's overall profit required to make the decrease in margin they forecast (in connection with the secret product).

The current sales and the current margins affect the calculation a bit - but not hugely. It's basically "how many do they need to sell to make $150million less" (ie: $150 less on 1 million sales - and yes I know this is loose!).

So if you're right then to be the secret product, the AppleTV would need to make quite a loss and sell a lot, and as I said I don't think they want that.

128GB SSD with the most cutting-edge Intel chip, tablet touchscreen, 4 lbs., 15"MBA w/three USB ports + built in 3G chip, for $1799.

I am in line.

From a RoughlyDrafted article:

Apple TV is not the classic economic razor and media sales are not the disposable blades; both are only minor product offerings that help support Apples other businesses. Apple TV was created to allow Apple to get established in the emerging market for Internet movie rentals and purchases. Without it, the company would have had a tough time trying to sell the movie studios on its plans to market their movies exclusively on iPod and iPhone screens or for playback directly on PCs.

Apple TV plays a supporting role. Competing devices from Vudu to Microsofts Media Center have similarly had a hard time making much progress. Unlike the iPod, theres no vast potential hardware profits to tap, and unlike the iPhone, theres no significant service revenues to earn. Apple TV is a slow growth device that requires a supporting ecosystem of iTunes and iPods to maintain it.

Apple has that but nobody else does. That will make it very hard to compete against Apple TV, even harder than the competitive efforts mounted to displace the iTunes Store, where small profits require large volumes of sales to break even. Apple is building a juggernaut of slow growth sales that support new product categories that couldnt exist on their own; Apple TV is a key example of that.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/0...g-up-apple-tv/

Solsun, as someone else has noted, you are either wrong or already have one of the new model ipods. The only tactile controls on mine are the on-off/dim screen on top (not counting the switch program button on front.) And my stock white earbuds don't have any controls whatsoever. Where do you get ipod touch earbuds with them? In fact, both of these feature would be nice on a refresh.

And if you remove the clickwheel from the nano making it a tiny touch, you've just made it less functional for the one handers who don't want to have to look at it to make things happen. Not saying there's no market for a tiny touch, but we know the current nano is the top selling ipod model. Why remove part of what makes it attractive?

Rather than see all iPods go touch screen, I'm thinking that Macs will be going to a touch interface, we may actually see a Mac Touch, in the form of a Tablet PC. But with no physical keyboard at all. Basically a big iPod touch

The iPhone has the volume buttons.

I get the impression that DisplayPort is more for computers, HDMI is more for home theater.

Noted about the volume control, I was looking at my iPhone.. At any rate, the point I was making is the nano is not so tiny once the click wheel is gone.. It actually becomes very realistic and usable size as a touch device by doubling the screen real estate.. And again, simply adding a "shuffle" icon to the home screen enables instant music that requires no more user interaction than a current nano.. The iTouch was the start, but it is inevitable that this is where the entire line is heading.

Ultimately, a nano touch makes a huge amount of sense.. Apple are building a mobile platform with the iPhone, app store, OSX and touch technology. Opening up this platform to developers via the app store to it's best selling mobile device (the nano,) and keeping the price-point the same may cut into near term profit margin, but will ultimately slaughter the competition.

I am aware of that. Look at what Solsun wrote.

I'm just not feeling the iPods or Apple TV as representing "technologies" that others "can't match." Notice: not "products that are a jump ahead of the competition," but "technologies others can't match." Maybe it IS their much more complex multi-touch technology we've seen several patents for. If it weren't too soon (I was really expecting it with Snow Leopard) I'd trot out my pet theory (yeah, so? A lot of you have them, some crazier than mine) that PA Semi will design hardware accelerators for all the Core Functions of OS X, taking performance into a whole new area. The competition couldn't match that; they've been talking about doing the same thing for Windows forever, but it's probably such a convoluted mess that it could never be made modular enough for that kind of treatment.

Also, this could explain their rather subdued reaction to Psystar. After this transition, they could tell everybody: "Clone this, suckers!" Plus all the clones would just be moving people into the Mac camp, but if they want real performance, they have to buy the real thing.

And this would reduce their profit margin, because let's face it, there's going to be more chips in the box.

What exactly are you trying to say wobegon?

That AppleTV is something that fits their statement? Or not?

It's definitely going to be a newish product.

Maybe iMac like dock for the laptop line (though this seems to targeting a limited audience)

A tablet mac is highly likely, with a very affordable starting price point. Perhaps the tablet is wirelessly tethered to a box that does the computing separately. Wireless HDMI is already out there in the wild, so the video signal is taken care of, the only other thing would be sending the touch recognition to the box. Maybe this isn't as desirable as a full portable tablet unit would be.

I'm thinking xMac might finally rear its head (I've always. This xMac could be modular and suit a variety of needs. DVR + Media Center + BluRay player... or a File Server + NAS + Drobo like backup system... or a desktop with limited expandability based on a mini atx form facotr. Perhaps its not as flexible as this (perhaps it is) and its the counterpart to the tablet.

/wildest apple dreams of the last 20 years coming true

There are far fewer possibilities once you look at what Apple said.

Even the title of this discussion is misleading - there's a mystery product transition before September's end that will substantially affect margins between July & September. And they gave comparison margins for this quarter and next quarter - if sales remain constant on the mystery technology, it needs to be released next Tuesday.

I agree I can't see much in the iPod area that's needed to give Apple a leap ahead. It comes down to something that pushes into a new area that others can't match. The AppleTV is a vague possibility if they pull together and mass market a new model of sales/rental/record/ad-support, but my first choice has to be putting touch into all Mac products.

ps. Your pet idea of custom accelerated chips gives a speed increase, but I'm not sure it's significant enough to call a transition. And it's too soon.

One thing I've noticed is my AppleTV gets really HOT just sitting next to my 42" Plasma doing nothing. For consumer electronics this isn't all that good.

My guess is AppleTV will be updated with a new chip, possibly an ARM optimized by the PA Semi team or an ultra efficient Power based chip.

IPhone developers will be able to "1 Click" convert their iPhone games and Apps to run on the new AppleTV. As well as new API's to allow for higher resolution displays.

For games on the AppleTV an iPhone or iTouch will act as a controller. I'm not 100% sure of the latency issues with using 802.11b/g/n for remote game control so perhaps bluetooth will be used instead. All iPhone games in the AppStore will run on the AppleTV though.

Apple giving away all the iTouch's to students with their new laptops in the back to school promo was definitely help make sure there was critical mass of game controller remotes available for gamers. For standard AppleTV functions the current remote will work fine.

Sony recently have the new top end HDTV coming out with built-in AppleTV type technology. It's possible that a MAJOR transition of the AppleTV could be to attach a TV to it. The margins on HDTV's is a lot lower than most computer products and entering this market could be the reason for dropping gross margins going forward.

A 42" LCD AppleTV for your lounge wouldn't really be too hard for Apple to make. They already have the control system technology in the current AppleTV and have contacts with major LCD makers for all their notebook and desktop machines.

The big HDTV makers could be shut out of the market of integrated HDTV based home media and internet centers. Apple can use PA Semi's chips to have the AppleHDTV take on xBox in the game console market at the same time. Wouldn't Steve Job's just love to take Microsoft out to the woodshed and chop it's head off for ripping him off all those years back.