Rock and Roll is on like Disks of Tron for 9/9/9 (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/31/apple-holding-rock-and-roll-themed-event-september-9th/

Bring on the new ipods, Beatles and mebbe even Blu!

My bets:
iPod Nano and touch refreshes with more memory and iphone like camera/mic: Count on it
iPhone 3GS memory bumps: Nobody is talking about one but I say yes. 64GB 3GS is possible. No new features on the hardware tho.
iTunes 9: Count on it. Built in Facebook and Twitter? Maybe. Licensed Lyrics server? Maybe.
Beatles on iTunes: Count on it unless Yoko hoses it
More movies and TV shows on iTunes store: Count on it.
Band Holdouts on iTunes store: Cloudy. Please add AC/DC if you can Mr. Steve
"New" Interactive Albums: Likely. I have no idea why or who will buy them. Cassingles anyone? I didnt think so.
iPod Classic with camera: Sources say yes, Sam sez Are You Outta Your MIND, NO.
Updated Apple TV or Merge Apple TV with Mac Mini: 50/50, but if it happens and adds an Apple TV App Store I am in day 1
BluRay on Macs: 15% chance but if it happens I am in on Day 1
MacAppStore: 5% chance but please Jobs, make it so
Tablet? No. This is all about iPods and MAYBE Apple TV. Tablet is January. Count on it.
Hardware refreshes? Maybe speed bumps on Tuesday instead before the event. Not during. Unless they add Blu too =)

iLife? It wouldnt surprise me at all to see iLife and iWork refreshes, wouldnt hurt for iDVD to get a new Blu kick in the ass.

Special guests? If no Beatles (and really, if that's true, this is a crime), then The Rolling Stones to promote new interactive Album format. That or Spinal Tap.

 

[Sam Posten]

Also remember: I'm wrong a LOT more often than I'm right where Apple is concerned =)

 

[Sam Posten]

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/31/how-to-play-next-weeks-ipod-event/

 

[Sam Posten]

From JSiracusa's SLep review:

Apple is now pushing the 64-bit transition much harder. This starts with leading by example. Snow Leopard ships with three end-user GUI applications that are not 64-bit: iTunes, Grapher, and DVD Player. Everything else is 64-bit. The Finder, the Dock, Mail, TextEdit, Safari, iChat, Address Book, Dashboard, Help Viewer, Installer, Terminal, Calculator—you name it, it's 64-bit.

Intriguing for sure. We can posit that iTunes 9 will ship for sure on September 9th. I've been hoping and praying that the DVD player refresh has been on hold for 2+ years while Apple takes the 'bag of hurt' out of BluRay to 'fix' it in ways the rest of the industry cannot.

But why not Grapher??? What does it hold that may or may not be 64bitified?

 

[DaveF]

I'll go contrarian and say it's going to be a yawner.

iPod upgrades with more memory, maybe a camera as rumors say.

iTunes 64-bit? Sure, why not. But who cares? It doesn't make my music sound better or cost less.

No AppleTV, no Tablet.

No Beatles, agreeing with Andy Ihnatko's reasoning.

 

[Sam Posten]

I very much think you may be right.
I very much hope you are wrong =)

 

[DaveF]

My iPod nano is less than a year old. I'm all in favor of boring!

I was groovin' on those crazy AppleTV + DVR + Blu Ray rumors. That's what I want to see. I don't care about Beatles and iPod-cameras. So even if every iPod comes with a Beatle clone who takes pictures for you, it's a yawner to me

 

[Sam Posten]

Rumor roundup:
http://gizmodo.com/5354034/all-the-apple-event-rumors-is-it-only-rock-and-roll

3rd Gen ipod touch accessories just went live on Best Buy's website btw, woops!

I will say this, about all of the 'cool' rumors have been debunked recently, so either tomorrow is going to be a real yawner or Apple's ministry of disinformation is working overtime. Bring on the battlezone! (Tron references ftw)

I'll be parked out in the Panera bread for a late lunch doing the usual play by play, so Ron if you are going to make an official thread for this one lets do it BEFORE the event starts so I'm not off to the races in my own thread while all the cool kids are chatting in the fun one =)

 

[Sam Posten]

Gruber at his best:
http://daringfireball.net/2009/09/rock_and_roll_prelude

(he says no Steve Jobs btw!)

 

[Zack Gibbs]

I think its all but confirmed tomorrow has nothing to do with The Beatles. But maybe that wasn't always the case. They could have planned for it to go either way, and I could see that being why tomorrow may end up much lighter than the hype.

 

[Craig S]

I think tomorrow's event is going to be pretty underwhelming. I'd love Apple to have some surprise up their sleeve, but I'm not counting on it.

Clearly we're going to see Touches with cameras, and a capacity bump to 64GB. Looks like cameras in Nanos too. Ho hum. I bought a 16GB Nano last year to serve as my "car Nano", replacing the 1st Gen Nano that had been filling that role. 2 years ago I bought a 160GB Classic to replace the 80GB Video I had purchased the year before. So this will be the 1st year in 4 years I won't be buying a new iPod. In fact, I may well have already bought my last iPod - I expect to hang onto my 160GB Classic until I can get a 256GB iPhone that can hold my entire library to replace it. Unfortunately, that looks like it's 3 years away.

Gruber's one of the few people who's NOT predicting the demise of the Classic. I'm with him, I think Apple recognizes there is a market niche for the 100GB+ player that right now they are the only major player filling. Makes sense to keep selling the Classic for one more year until they can bump the Touch to 128 GB. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the 120 GB Classic as is and dropped the price $50.

iTunes 9 is surely coming. I could care less about the rumored "social networking" additions. A 64-bit Cocoa iTunes would be most welcome for me as I have a LARGE media collection and that would surely improve performance. And since iTunes has been about more than music for several years, isn't it about time they changed the name? iMedia??

Beatles? Ihnatko & Gruber are right - not happening tomorrow. The date is a coincidence; the only reason Apple bumped this to Wednesday instead of Tuesday like normal is that Monday was Labor Day, and they don't like to hold events the day after a weekend or holiday. I think the choice of a Stones lyric was a deliberate message - "Calm down people, we know it's 9/9/09, and it's the biggest Beatles release day since before they broke up, but they're not going up on the store quite yet."

A Jobs appearance?? 50-50. I will say this - if Phil Schiller or some other underling walks out tomorrow, then we'll have the somewhat boring event everyone's predicting. However, if Steve saunters out then MAYBE we'll be in for a surprise. But not the tablet. The tablet is next year.

 

[Sam Posten]

It just got real, people. Massive price drops before rock and roll even starts! The zune HD which hasn't even launched yet is now MORE expensive than the iPods it was designed to undercut!

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/the-incredible-shrinking-ipod-prices-undercut-the-zune-hd/

So Microsoft will be squeezed here, beat on price by gen2, beat on features by gen3...

Pics of Gen3 iPod Touch? Looks legit to me!
http://gizmodo.com/5355340/first-pics-of-apples-new-ipod-touch-3g-nano-5g

 

[Sam Posten]

Prepare to be disappointed:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/great-expectations-of-an-apple-event/

 

[Sam Posten]

I'm live from the local Panera bread and ready to Rock and Roll!

 

[Sam Posten]

STEVE IS BACK

iPhone OS 3.1 new genius features and ringtnes
#1 music retailer in the world
iTunes 9
improved syncing

 

[Craig S]

Great to see Steve back onstage!!

 

[Sam Posten]

APP MANAGEMENT in iTunes!!!! yay!

 

[Sam Posten]

iTunes LP, liner notes video, interactive stuff! share all your content with 5 other computers.

 

[Craig S]

Home sharing - Excellent!! I've been waiting for something like this. So far, iTunes 9 looks great, and my expectations have already been exceeded!

 

[Sam Posten]

Apparently the sashays at panera have added a 30 minute max wifi time limit, so I'm back to iPhone. I'm never coming back here