9to5 Staff

We think this is very close to what will come on Tuesday – perhaps a bit darker and less iMac-y and we are getting somewhere.  Flickr user Superfunny.  Has anyone else seen any good mockups?

UPDATED: Appleinsider got the goods – spoiler – no placeshifting

With Sling backing up into EyeTV’s territory on the Mac and possibly even on the iPhone, the Mac TV tuner software maker looks to strike back.  TUAW reports that it is readying version 3.0 for Macworld.  Will EyeTV start firing back at Sling by introducing its own place shifting service?  CyTV is getting a little stale!

Also, will El Gato have anything to do with Apple TV 2.0 – rumored to be hitting at Macworld?  It certainly helps when your former CEO is now the head of Apple Germany.  Update: WAS the head of Apple Germany "Freddie Geier resigned as Apple CEO Germany/Austria in May 2007" – we didn’t get the memo.

We hope so just so we don’t have to hear about it anymore.  It is rolling into Macworld tomorrow.  From their website:

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a non-profit, mobile recording studio outfitted with traditional musical instruments as well as current technological advances. Since 1998, the Bus has provided free hands-on programs to hundreds of high schools, colleges, Boys and Girls Clubs, music festivals, concerts, conventions and community organizations. Working together with some of the biggest names in music, the Lennon Bus encourages students to play music, write songs, engineer recording sessions and produce music video projects using the latest audio, video, and live sound equipment.

The interior is divided into two separate recording environments. The front studio offers the chance to participate in the creation of multi-media projects. Audio and video components are demonstrated, with visitors assisting in the recording and editing of original material. The back studio is a more traditional set-up for bands and the remote recording of concerts and special events. It features a full range of instruments including guitars, basses, keyboards, and drums. Also on-board is a P.A. system enabling performances on the side of the Bus.

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple_getamac_timemachine_480x272.mov

YEP – Macbook Air.  Check back for more coverage…

• At the iPod refresh launch, one of our sources told us that there wouldn’t be any significant  MacBook refreshes until Macworld.  We published that info in the post-event post.  That info was recorded by Macrumors as "Of interest, they most recently posted a small blurb indicating that MacBook Pros would see updates in January."
• We then got a report with a blurry/dark photograph in September of darker (and standard color), much  smaller Macbook Pros.  Same size screen as the MacBook but way slimmer case, etc.
• Around the new year, someone started alerting the rumors sites that there was going to be a "MacBook Air" product at Macworld.  Also that it was the "worst kept secret at Apple" (which is very suspicious!)  His/her words sound very similar to this Digg commenter.
• Appleinsider and Arstechnica posted pictures of the Macworld posters with the phrase: 2008 There is something in the air
• Macrumors, seeing the correlation between the posters and the earlier rumor submissions posted that they thought the name would be "MacBook Air".  The similarities (assuming here – and whatever other info they might have had) was enough to make the statement on the name.
• We had previously heard that Intel WiMAX teams were all over Apple months and months earlier and thought there might be a connection as well.  This might be the reason why the "Air".  Also Valleywag jumped on this.
• We found a very well done image (above right) and some interesting hypotheses at Macpredictions.com on a MacBook Air – including Power-by induction – which Apple patented a year ago.  Since then, many more images have shown up across the internet.  Macpredictions was certainly the fastest and one of the most professional looking.   He is in London and unconnected to Apple.
• One of our readers, Jon Cotton, found a mention of a "MacBook Air" on one of Adium’s usage log reports.  Subsequent verification from Google Cache reveals that this log entry was made on January 9th, BEFORE the Macworld posters were revealed.  Therefore, someone would have had to have known about the posters and made the reference to "Air"
• UPDATED: MacDailyNews via Macrumors has some very telling domain name information.  IS it possible with the cat out of the bag, Apple is jumping on all of the domains it can?

Therefore we can conclude that there are one of two outcomes:

1. The MacBook Air is real  – our details may be off slightly but the name is real.

2. Either Apple or someone with knowledge of the Macworld 2008 There is something in the air slogan 2 weeks ago sent the rumor sites false info and went to a few websites with public logs with a browser hacked to show "MacBookAir" as machine-type.

Either way, this is very interesting.

So…

Why would they call it "Air"?

Maybe it is the WiMAX?  Or a sub-kilo weight?

Macpredictions thinks that it won’t have any cables.  Induction charging!  Ultra Wideband Bluetooth!  Wireless USB!  Cool if true.  Most likely…notsomuch.

Oh, and here is the one year old Apple patent application on inductive charging if you subscribe to that sort of thing.

Appleinsider’s pictures also reveal that Apple is using a new skinnier font.  While to the general population, that will mean very little,  to font people, this is a big deal. (IF you saw the movie Helvetica, you know what we are talking about).

Ten points to whoever can name that font first!

EDIT: It looks like it is Myriad Pro Light or just Myriad Light is the cool font of the year.

Appleinsider has some pictures of Macworld Expo with the new banners in the new Apple Myriad light font saying "There is something in the Air."  Could this mean WiMAX?  Could it mean anything else?  The only other thing we can think of is that the new AppleTV will let you stream your movies "over the air" that is if you didn’t hardwire the AppleTV – which works much better.  Maybe the new AppleTV USES WiMAX to get its content?

Or, as a commenter points out below, maybe Apple is doing the mobile phone purchasing with the iPhone that we’ve heard so much about.

Other than that, we got nothing…can anyone out there think of anything better?  While you are doing that, here’s a 5 year old video that is an awesome demo of the coolness of WiMAX…

By the way we thought that WiMAX would be on the scene in August.

DRM is now officially on its death bed – for music that is.  SonyBMG became the last of the big four record labels to start distributing its music DRM-free today.  Amazon will now carry music from the big four record labels and many indies all DRM free.  While the files do contain watermarking which will allow the labels to track the usage of the files (for instance on torrent sites), they will be able to be moved from computer to computer without having to activate other computers or having limitations on how many computers they can run on.

SonyBMG has a outstanding contract with iTunes and hasn’t been given the word to remove the DRM from the music it gives to Apple as of yet, but obviously it will in due course.  The only big label that  currently runs on iTunes DRM free is EMI who removed their DRM shortly after Steve Jobs issued his open letter entitled "Thoughts on Music"on February 26, 2007.  Whether or not it was the motiation, less than one year after the open letter was published,  the music industry is DRM free.

Ironically, as DRM is now pretty much dead in music, Apple is set to release DRM in rental movies next week.

HardMac is speculating that the next generation AppleTV 2 (or 3?) might use one of the new System on a Chip (SoC) designs Intel announced this week at CES.  Currently, Apple uses a standalone  1Ghz pre-Core Intel chip for its AppleTVs.  According to Hardmac,

They plan to release in Q3 2008 the Canmore, an x86 processor-based SoC supporting audio 7.1, hardware-decoding for high-definition video up to 1080p and advanced DRM management.
In summary, all functions required to build a new and more powerful Apple TV which could then become independent of any computer to get access directly to movie catalogs available on the iTunes Store.

According to Intel, the Canmore line shouldn’t be ready until mid to late 2008.  Apple, readying iTunes movie rentals won’t need too much – if any- more horsepower to download and play rentals on the AppleTV.  However, if the device is to operate as a standalone device, a speed bump may be in order.

Apple, for all of its recent success, really hasn’t done what seems so easy for HP, Dell and Lenovo — Make a dent in the enterprise.  Yes, some smaller firms are finding a great deal of success rolling out the MacOS and a large number of companies have creative departments with Macs.  However, no large company, with perhaps the exception of Apple itself, has gone completely Mac.  Huge creative conglomerates like WPP and Omnicom would be lucky to hit 50 percent.

Computerworld today laments on the issue, blaming Apple’s priorities and lack of any desire to dive into this lucrative market.  If Apple ever had a better chance to hit the big time market share gains it would be now – with Vista bombing hard.  However, the following concerns were given for the lack of adoption:

• Legacy concerns
• Cost of support and ownership
• Are third-party software vendors on board?
• The complexity factor
• No second source
• Service and support

Until Apple addresses these concerns, marketshare isn’t going to move much – Apple might get a few points here or there but double digit gains won’t happen.  Also, as sad as it is to say, Apple needs to start marketing itself in the enterprise space.  It is very difficult for Macintosh Administrators to overcome perception that Apple isn’t ready for the enterprise.  Most business leaders don’t think the Mac platform is Enterprise-worthy and most CIOs are too change-adverse to investigate making a switch. 

Until Apple spends some time and money on the enterprise space, their marketshare will continue to hang below 10%.  Maybe things will change next week?

ElectricPig.tv is saying that Sling is ready to build an iPhone-iPod touch client for its popular place shifting video and TV over the Internet hardware.  Obviously it won’t work well over EDGE, but it will work over WiFi and eventually over 3G.  Their Sling source said:

iPhone and iPod touch are OS X devices, and we can write OS X apps with our eyes closed. It’s coming.

We know the 3G iPhone’s coming so that’ll obviously be better. But for now the iPod touch could end up being the best way to use Slingplayer.

The iPhone-iPod makes sense as a fantastic platform for the Slingplayer.  However,  Apple might not want them on their platform for fear of interfering with iTunes TV shows.  Perhaps Sling can build a streaming Quicktime format with web controls that can be utilized through AJAX?

As Slingbox and iPhone owning expats, we can only say to Apple….Bring the Sling!

Everyone is getting into the game now it seems.  Now that a lackluster CES is over, all eyes are on Macworld.  The Guardian gets a few insiders to give their take on what will go down at Macworld.

All of the usual suspects are there:

• Leopard 10.5.2
• iTunes movie rentals/iTunes 7.6
• SSD Drive based slim laptop, sans optical drive
• 16Gb iPhone, $100 price drop on 8Gb – 3G was mentioned but doubtful
• Tablet/Mac Touch/ iPad

Something we have heard very little of, but gets mentioned a few times is.. the Home Network Server.  Apple could roll out a Terrabyte home server the size of a Mac Mini that could be used for backups as well as storing shared Media across a family or workgroup.  Perhaps running a mini version of OSX Leopard Server.  It makes sense to us.

Read more here…

The panel includes: Chuq Von Rospach spent 17 years at Apple, working on enterprise and IT projects, before joining a Silicon Valley startup and "can now watch a Macworld Keynote without stressing out that everything works". David Sobotta worked at Apple for nearly 20 years, leaving in 2004 as director of federal sales. Mike Evangelist worked for Apple until July 2002, responsible for Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro and iDVD. Daniel Jalkut was a senior systems software engineer at Apple until 2002. He now runs Red Sweater Software. Michael Gartenberg is consumer technology analyst for Jupiter Research. Adam Engst is the editor of the TidBits site, and has repeatedly been named one of the five most influential people in the Apple ecosystem. Wil Shipley is founder of Delicious Monster Software. All Delicious Monster’s staff, except himself, have subsequently been hired by Apple. Gus Mueller is founder of Flying Meat, an independent software company that develops exclusively for OS X.

Wired today has an incredibly good article on the iPhone, what it took to get it built and how it changed an industry.  There is no shortage of insider details throughout and it really puts a great perspective on the difficulty of making this product and the challenges Steve Jobs/Apple had to overcome

Go.  Read.  It.   (if you haven’t already)

Parallels Server beta is now public according to ServerVirtualization.com and InfoWorld,  Parallels Server runs on both Xserves and Mac Pros as well as Linux and Windows machines.  The virtualization of the MacOS is only allowed on Apple machines however, according to the EULA.  As we mentioned back in November, Parallels was working closely with Apple to make this happen.  We have yet to see the Mac OSX Server running in virtualization but we should see it shortly.

Rogue copies of OSX Leopard and Tiger have been running on VMWare for awhile but because most of the drivers are unsupported and not optimized, it is a dog on performance.  An Apple blessed and supported version of this would allow a huge leap forward in speed and performance.  It would also mark a big change of direction for the company who has always had a zero tollerance policy for Virtualizing OSX.

Apple opened the door for this when they changed the server licensing wording for Leopard from Tiger.  From the Leopard Server License:

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Mac OS X Server software (the "Mac OS X Server Software") on a single Apple-labeled computer. You may also install and use other copies of Mac OS X Server Software on the same Apple-labeled computer, provided that you acquire an individual and valid license from Apple for each of these other copies of Mac OS X Server Software.

Perhaps we’ll see something next week at Macworld?

Yeah, you heard that right.  An Opera developer has stated that they are working on an iPhone version of their browser to be released alongside the iPhone SDK – whenever it comes out.  Why?  It is hard to speculate – the Safari browser really makes the iPhone/iPod amazing.  Opera is persistant though.  They want their browser to run on every single device that exists in the universe – from toasters to spaceships, Opera wants to work on everything.  Oh and there is this thing called FLASH.

Realistically, though, they aren’t going to have much of a chance against Safari on the platform.  Opera is a solid browser and brings some awesome features to the fold (built in torrent downloading for instance) but the mobile Safari, with its panning and zooming features will be hard to beat.

I guess we’ll have to see.  Competition is always good for consumers (us) and perhaps they’ll come up with some new features that aren’t available yet on Safari.  We are looking forward to trying it out.

Video after the break…

He mentions the iPhone at the VERY end and (full disclosure) who knows exactly how seriously he’s thought about it?

Apple today announced the availability of Apple Xserves that utilize the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors.  Eight cores, 1600Mhz bus, 32GB of 800MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory supported.   As we said yesterday, Apple didn’t use an event to announce this.  Specs over at Apple.

The Mac Pros also got a set of Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors  – which means nothing new design-wise at Macworld.  Check the specs.

Not too shabby. But not terribly impressive either.  The cheesegrader design is getting kinda tired.  And no…

• New enclosure, smaller/lighter?
• BluRay (or HD-DVD) burning capability
• eSATA built in for fast external storage
• Video card upgrade is good, not great.
• Not much else new.

Yawn.  Bring on Macworld.

 (Oh – I guess the glass 1/2 full way to look at this is that something that Apple wasn’t sure would make it to the Keynote has made it and bumped this news off of the Macworld docket.  Rentals?  Tablets?  Oh my!)

An interesting blog post seems to have gotten some goods on the next version of Windows Mobile 7.  Unsurprisingly, Microsoft went to their old standby of copying Apple and getting rid of the stylus- using the touch interface, including pinching for zooming and swiping for panning, multitouch and even using accelerometers for landscaping and portaiting the screen.  It remains to be seen how "vigerously Apple chooses to protect its patents" – as Steve Jobs stated at last years Macworld..

People have been calling for the Internet to get crushed under the weight of its own bandwidth since it was created in the 80s.  Of course it never has.  But the threats have always been overstated. 

However, next week, Apple will almost definitely launch it’s iTunes movie rental store, and millions of people will start downloading like they never have before.  One and a half hour movies can get up to one gigabyte in size.  Contrast that to a four megabyte iTunes music file which is 250 times smaller.  This is a huge amount of data.

Additionally, these movies will only be good for a short time – at that point they will be deleted from the computer.  So if you want to see Casablanca again, you’ll need to download the whole gigabyte of data all over.  In iTunes you hopefully only have to download a file once.

Apple already utilizes Akami for media distribution which house web file servers all over the globe and at ISPs to help alleviate Internet congestion.  This will certainly help – but will it be enough?  Other people have said that Apple could use the AppleTV as a bit torrent client which would help distribute files quickly and more cost effectively.

Or perhaps this threat is overstated.  It isn’t just Apple in this game.  Netflix and Amazon are currently selling movies as downloads without crippling the Internet.  But neither of these vendors has anywhere near the marketshare as Apple.  iTunes currently resides on over 100 million computers.  Again, we are talking about a lot of bandwidth here.

By most accounts,  Apple’s movie rental store will most  be a big success – hopefully not at the expense of the Internet.