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Apple To Make "Music To Your Ears" Announcement
supa_k writes "According to an offical Apple invitation sent to the good folks at
MacCentral, on April 28th
Apple will make 'announcements that will be music to your ears.' It remains to be seen if this involves a purchase of Universal - something Apple offically denied just a few days ago but it will undoubtedly be the announcement of their online music subscription service and the other announcement will surely be new iPods."
...that it's really just going to be an opportunity to get drunk with Jobs and listen to Doobie Brothers really loud
At the Apple retail store I work at, we've been waiting for some sort of an announcement. People come in asking when new iPods with color screens and video players are supposed to ship, and we have to say "nothing has been announced." One guy even tried to say that we HAD announced a 970 version of the iPod, and wanted to know when he could pick it up. Hopefully this will quiet a lot of those folks.
I would like to see the new TravelStar 80GN in some sort of small iPod-ish MP3 player. Given, it's a 2.5" drive, but damn!
that they keep the 5 gig and drop the price down to $200. That would bring the mp3 jukebox revolution to an even larger market. I know a lot of people who choke at $300 but would jump on one in a hearbeat if the prices was lowered to around the $200 mark. Might not be have high profit margins, but it would get lots of Apple equipment into lots of hands which is part of what Apple is trying to do right now.
Mac rumors hey, the best source of 'news' we can get? forgive the cynicism, but with Apple's typical tight reign on information about just what they're up to I know by now NEVER to trust rumours. How many of the last year's worth have come true?
The iWalk?
Video iPod?
G5?
USB2?
Dualscreen powerbooks?
The best strategy is to NOT go with the rumors people, except for the dull ones.
It'll be just another iPod.
I doubt getting rid of stock is the reason. Word on the grapevine is that Apple is starting to tighten its grip on the retail front of their business.
It's an odd, but perfectly legitimate trend; Apple wants complete control over how their merchandise is sold. They're opening up Apple stores left and right and driving out old, established resellers in those markets. It's pissing a lot of people off, but it's still within their rights to do this, so long as there are no breaches of contract.
Actually, Dell just re-signed their retail contract with Apple, so unless they're gonna start selling iMacs, I imagine Dell will be selling iPods again soon.
My other computer is your Windows box
where the iPod body can glow inside with different chaning colors
like the Color Kinetics Sauce LED products here
Cheers, Joel
The new iPods should be available in 10, 15 and 30 gig versions according to ThinkSecret. They also say it should also include a docking station.
For all those people who do not believe the rumor sites ThinkSecret has proven time and time again to be nearly always correct. It is not MacOSRumors. :-)
A press release announcing that there will be some announcement made next week, and it's a frontpage story on Slashdot?
News sure ain't what it used to be.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
actually, I found that the new 1.2.6 version of the ipod firmware solves the problem quite nicely; once again I can get 10 hrs of music off one charge.
http://www.iweenie.com/ipod.shtml (iweenie)
has the latest firmware, as well as the older versions and all the tools you need.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
Actually, in a way, you're right. Dell stopped selling iPods because of Apple's iron grip of a contract. However, according to MacCentral, Dell, Fry's, and Micro Center all re-signed their retail contract with Apple.
"Programming is like sex - one mistake and you'll have to support it for the rest of your life."
Ok, so the event is in San Francisco on the 28th. Apple would not let its plans leak easily, but I think we can get better clues by doing some detective work.
1. Are any Universal senior executives going to be in SFO on 28th? Maybe any friends, collegues can answer?
2. Any other recording company executive planned to be in SFO on 28 - with no event planned publicly?
3. Are any major artists (somewhere read Pearl Jam) planned to be in SFO on 28th?
I am sure people can come up with more clues (flight plans, website registration - ok I know about appleuniversal.plan - what else) which can throw more light on the plans.
If Apple is starting a subscription service - they ought to seriously consider the US mobile phone model:
Sign up for one year and get a $XXX discount on one of our pieces of hardware
Imagine how many more people will sign up for a $40 monthly fee if it meant they could finally afford an iPod and have access to an easy to use music subscription service.
...something Apple offically denied just a few days ago...
Who is their spokesman, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob)?
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
If you're waiting for Apple to port OS X to commodity PC hardware, don't hold your breath. If they do switch to x86, which I view as unlikely, it'll require an Apple x86 machine with an Apple BIOS.
Personally, I think it's more likely that they'd switch straight to a 64-bit CPU from AMD, but that's just me.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
No, Apple is going with AAC. I think slashdotters tend to overestimiate the importance of OGG. Like "if only Apple would add OGG support to their iPod they'd sell a million more of them! Shooting themselves in the foot again. WTF is their problem??" Reality: if they did go to the trouble and expense nobody* would notice.
* Well not "nobody" exactly. About 27 people on slashdot would notice, but only after arguing viciously for months about whether or not Apple implimented it correctly, after which approximately 2 of those 27 would actually purchase an iPod.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
If there's any merit to the Universal rumor, then even the announcement of the press event is news. Remember, the LA Times said that if Apple was going through with the purchase it would be done before the April 29 Vivendi-Universal stockholders meeting.
Put all the naysaying aside: an IT corporation in charge of one the largest record group? In eight days time, our view of the RIAA and its view of the DMCA could be 180 degrees different than it is right now.
That deserves a Slashdot story.
Recently, Apple Computer was approached by beings from the Planet Zog. Zog is the richest planet in known space and all its inhabitants are so intelligent that it has no concept of intellectual property, since anybody is capable of inventing anything he, she or it needs as and when necessary. All Zog software is Open Source, mostly written in VLIW assembler by users as and when required.
Unfortunately the Zog economy is somewhat overheated, despite a rise in income tax to 99%, and Zog is looking for a way to lose some cash. They have offered to merge Apple with a Zog publicly owned corporation called "We really are Universal Music" (ZSE: WRUM), the present stockholders of Apple to retain 51% of the equity.
The idea is to introduce a music-on-demand service by which music will be directly downloaded from Zog. Zog has no equivalent of the DMCA since even the cheapest Zog pseudopodheld can crack any form of encryption on the fly, and has been recording the entire data output of the Earth for the last hundred years on the Ogg recorder in some Zog kid's bedroom. To encourage takeup of the service. the new corporation will give away all its hardware and software free for the next 20 years, and offer to replace all Macs in the field free of charge with new terahertz systems running OS MDCLX.
Jobs then demonstrated the new direct thought to text input PowerBook G93000 which projects a virtual reality 3-D image into the entire visual field, runs for a year on an AAA battery and weighs half an ounce.
Following the announcement, Microsoft shares rose $3 and Apple shares were $12 down at close of trading. The usual suspects predicted the demise of Apple within 3 weeks, citing the failure to keep up technically with the PC market, and Steve Jobs was slightly injured by a troll from slashdot complaining about file copy speed on a 9600/300. ...try to keep posts on topic
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.