Tech Industry

Apple, this week, let slip another clue in its ambitious plans to become the premiere delivery mechanism for digital content to the content-hungry world.  iTunes Movie rental service, no longer a technical hurdle with the AppleTV sitting in store shelves consumer entertainment centers, is most likely being held up by lawyers, negotiators and studio executives who are undoubtedly wary of selling away the distribution part of the home entertainment value chain that they possess.

It is really only a matter of time until one or two studios relent **cough Disney** and the other studios fall in line.  It would be extremely surprising if the service doesn’t launch before 2008 with the announcement of iTunes 8 with the possibility of some HD quality content deals.  Netflix and Blockbuster should be very afraid.

The reality is that Apple owns the lion’s share of the digital media content distribution for the foreseeable future.  All of the mechanisms are falling into place for Apple while the other players are all scrambling for pieces of the puzzle.  With the iTunes ecosystem (iPod, iPhone, AppleTV) on hundreds of millions of consumer machines around the world, Apple has the ability to deliver a wide variety of recorded content to the entire planet.  The only thing that Apple can’t currently deliver is real time media (news, sports, etc) and full HD content (bandwidth restrictions). 

Old Media stalwarts like Viacom are starting to catch on, developing portals like the new thedailyshow.com which will house the entire archive of Daily Shows (cool!).  However, Apple is again, one step ahead allowing people to seamlessly download and view the Daily Show on the same iTunes platform they are watching their other (Apple)TV programs and movies.  

Joost, is another competitor in this field with technology developed by the Kazaa and Skype founders.  While they do the delivery pretty well using P2P networks and are starting to get some desirable content, they still only cover a small part of the Media-Entertainment spectrum.

Apple, as if it needed any additional momentum, is also wildly popular and fashionable these days and is as connected to the entertainment industry and any technology company could hope to be It can’t hurt that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs is the largest shareholder of Disney, one of the largest media companies.  

MacBidouille, an excellent French-language Macintosh site, has posted what they say is a leaked advertisement for the Tmobile iPhone in Germany.  Of note, the specs indicate 3G speeds and a 16GB capacity.  These specs are in line with our reports from August from our Orange (France Telecom) sources.   They also stated that the Germans and British would get the iPhones slightly before the French were ready to roll it out.

While this image could easily be a fake (they at one point call it an iPod in the advertisement), the specs are likely to be realistic as the next iteration of iPhone will likely match the iPodtouch‘s 16GB capacity.  Additionally, with 3G phones all but ubiquitous in Europe, it would be an embarrassment for Apple to release a EDGE-only phone.  The price point also make sense when one takes into account the Euro/Dollar exchange rate and the absurd VAT Tax rates that add close to 20% of the cost…  There has still been no mention of possible GPS capability.

We are still looking for an announcement at Apple Expo in Paris in late September to give European consumers some lead time in preparing to switch mobile carriers and make a fairly large purchase.  Even if agreements have been reached (and reported on by the Financial Times) the carriers will likely be forced to leave the announcement to Apple.

With rumors of the Apple Hi-Fi

Another Apple Event has come and gone. No big surprises really.  Apple has released some solid but overdue products.

• iPodtouch?     Check (We’re getting a 16Gb yesterday). 
• Video iPodnanos?   Check.  (Wife gets that one.)

• The new shuffle colors?  :/ No comment
• The new iPod Classic?  Reality distortion at its most profound?  I guess the “We couldn’t sell enough of these things before the new ones were ready iPod” didn’t really have the Zing!  160GB is nice I guess but that screen is so..tiny…
• Cheaper  iPhones?  Really?  We bet the early adopters are happy Apple snagged that $200 tax for 2 months of early adoption.  $100/month.  Suckers!
• Mobile Store?  More ways for Apple to get your money for DRM.  That is a helluva “one more thing”
• Ring Tones!?!? Paying an extra buck to get a portion of a song YOU ALREADY OWN on your iPhone? HAHAHAHA.  You are in a reality obliteration field if you are psyched about this.  Seriously, we know this is the record companies’ doing but how does Steve give this to us with a straight face?!  Is this a benefit?  Can we make ringtones out of songs we make in Garage Band?  Way to go corporate whores Apple!

As soon as you wipe all of that Apple event off of your face Apple fanboys, remember:

• no iChat yet
• Starbucks in bed with Apple.  These big deal things always turn out messy – with Apple’s partners hatin’.
• no VOIP on the touch now or in the future – no sound in.
• no open dev. platform for these things.  got to hack hack hack
• 16Gb fills up really fast.  Better hope there is plenty of Wifi around
• what is all of the extra space on that iPodtouch – where are the other apps?

A solid event to be sure.  Kudos Apple for releasing some great products.  Now get back to work!

Oh, btw.  New MacBook Pros coming in January…more… coming…

One more thing?

A store?

That is serious reality distortion. 

A gift to you: A new way to pay us for (mostly) DRM’ed music and videos. 

Suckers!

With the new iPodnano coming in at a little over two inches and almost square, there are a lot more interesting tricks that can be done with them than previous iPods. As small as the gen-2 iPod was, the form factor of the new Nanos begs for more applications. One such use is the watch.

Now don’t get us wrong, we don’t expect Steve to roll up his sleeve to reveal the new Nano on his wrist the way he yanked the generation 1 Nano out of the change pocket in his jeans two years ago. As a matter of fact, we wouldn’t even expect Apple to come out with a watch band for the device. This task will most likely be left to the third party iPod accessory makers.

Oh by the way, before you run to the comments and tell us our artwork sucks, let it be known that we are well aware of this. If you want to be constructive, dear readers, why not put your art skills to good use and make some hot mockups. We’ll replace our ugly, half-assed ones with yours.

BTW, thanks Gizmodo for the original Nano that we slapped on the watches!

More ugliness after the jump….

The previous iPod nano was squeezed on a wrist. If they dared to do this with the old Nano – the temptation to do this with a more watch-faced Nano will undoubtedly irresistible.
Lots of other “wrist watches” come in much bigger than the new Nano
yeah we know the headphone won’t come in there…
Yuk
There are other absurdities that are much bulkier that have been put on wrists……
Maybe even the iPodtouch can be put on your wrist?

With the September 5th Apple announcement sure to be exciting for those who are waiting for new iPods, questions still remain on the final specs of these devices. Perhaps Apple dropped some clues on us with their recent Airport Extreme update (Probably not).  If not, the questions still loom: will these new flagship iPods have WiFi?  Are they hard drive or flash based?  POLL

Our informed readers and insiders have been somewhat split on the answers to these questions.  

A hard drive (compared to Flash/NAND) uses a lot of juice.  Hard drive-based devices require more battery and stabilization space than RAM based device like the iPhone.  To have both in a device the form-factor of an iPhone would be pretty tough  – but doable if the device were to be made thicker.  The hard drive alone would add significant bulk to the device and its spinning could also throw off the accelerometer that adds so much cool functionality to the iPhone’s OS.

However, 1.8 inch hard drives are relatively cheap and huge.  For the price of a 16 Gb flash-based iPod, Apple could probably give you a 160 Gb hard drive based iPod that was a few millimeters thicker and might not have the same battery life.  Would users be cool with that?  Yes, certainly.  Would Apple’s designers?  Probably less so, but it certainly is in the realm of contention – especially knowing that millions of potential customers are salivating over the possibility.

As for Wifi, we know the iPhone certainly does it quite well.  The only question is if including Wifi will hurt the iPhone sales (it certainly could) and will Apple – and by extension AT&T and the Euro-carriers be willing to accept that?  We know Apple doesn’t really care too much about it’s partners but  they do care about their iPhone.  If they release Wifi in their iPods, they will have to beef up the storage in the iPhones at some point soon as well.

Wifi-based iPods bring up a lot of other possibilities as well.   Perhaps some of the storage loss by going exlusively flash RAM based could be made up by having your music/video data on Airport Extreme based, inexpensive USB hard drives?  Streaming your MP3’s and movies over the WLAN or Internet would be extremely cool.  Just ask Sling customers.

VOIP also comes to mind.  We know however, that the new iPods don’t have phone-like speakers and mics.  Therefore, it is probably not Apple’s long term plan to use the iPod as a phone.  Of course Bluetooth or tethered headsets could easily be used and I am sure someone like Skype or Cisco would be happy to add a bit of software that could enable this.

What about future releases?  At some point in the future we know that the iPod and iPhone will be the same device.  It is just too easy and imperative to add VOIP functionality to a iPod sized device. The flexibility and function of VOIP services kills traditional carriers’ capabilities.   Look how hard it was to get visual voicemail from AT&T?  Skype and Vonage had that functionality a few years ago.  

When the smoke clears in the portable device industry, Apple wants their devices to the THE SINGLE device people carry around.  Apple’s current portable device lineup have the ability to be those devices.  Maybe by Macworld, we’ll see something moving in that direction.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG7sAwv5Sj8]
Wait a new version has been leaked!!!
The SpaceBalls Warp at the end does it for me!
Via digg, Via 9rules Apple notes

Yeah we had a spy picture to show you but we’ve learned our lesson – twice. We’ll just describe it and let your minds wander:

Update: We are having a contest!

Name – iPod XXXXX… HTC be damned!

Same form factor as the iPhone with some notable exceptions:

• Outside rim is black, not silver like the iPhone and more flush with the screen like the 5.5G iPods not rounded like iPhone
• No ear speaker or microphone for phoning
• Thinner – slightly

Things that are the same:

• OSX Embedded OS
• 480×320 screen
• Coverflow-enabled iPod application
• Single button home navigation

Things we wish we knew:

• WiFi?  (This is the Capper)
• GPS?
• NAND RAM and/or 160GB Hard Drives configs?
• Cost?  (Like it matters we want them!)

Also, just a quick note to Apple Legal.  We’ve learned our lesson and will shy away from posting what could be considered trademarked information.  9to5Mac is an Apple enthusiest website and we are all huge Apple fans here (obviously).  We are not trying to hurt the company – just inform other Apple consumers who might want  more intel on upcoming products so that they may make more informed buying decisions.  No one wants to spend their hard-earned money on a product that is about to get put in the dumper.  We are just hyping your products and informing your consumers.

Who doesn’t want that?  Apple, let’s just hug it out!

Peace!

The big iPhone news today is what appears to be certain confirmation of the mobile operator deals for iPhone in Germany, France, and the UK. What remains to be seen is the feasibility and longevity of these exclusivity deals, given the differences in European laws and U.S. ones. 

We talked to an employee at Orange in Paris about details of their agreement with Apple to carry the iPhone.

1. He reiterated that Apple is going to get 10% of the revenue from Orange. However, French Law states that after 6 months, you can take your phone to another provider (you can also keep your number – like in the US). The initial provider must allow the phone to be moved and provide whatever access codes necessary to move it.  The iPhone will still be sold with a 2 year plan…so that will be interesting to see play out.

Because of this, we speculate Apple may only collect from Orange for 6 months. Apple and Orange may get around this at least in the short-term by offering only 2-year plans, but after 6 months a user could pay an early termination fee and move on. Additionally, the illegal unlocking of iPhones could therefore be a significant revenue risk for Apple, since operators other than Orange would, by law, have the right to have the iPhone on their network. The link below has more information about the French law and its implications.

http://www.minefi.gouv.fr/directions_services/dgccrf/documentation/fiches_pratiques/fiches/b31.htm

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