one side benefit to switching from my pc back to my beloved mac is the reawakening of my mac fanaticism.
yes, i’m an apple fanboy. have been since 1986 and the mac pluses i bought for my journalism classroom, except for my recent brief sojourn away from the fold. and there’s nothing like the evangelical community that surrounds the company and its products.
and evidently next week, there will be lots of new reasons to be fanatical and celebratory.
there are lots of these fan sites and rumor sites. and i check them usually once per day, just to see what’s cooking. you can find out about software upgrades, pick up tips on software problems and computer usage, etc.
yes, i’m a bit geeky–you don’t have to say it. i know you’re thinking it.
today all the sites went into hyperactive overdrive. apple is having a big product announcement event next wednesday, although of course they aren’t saying what the big new products are. which sends everyone into a tizzy, guessing what the new products will be.
and if you read the comments at the link above, you’ll see people surmising just about everything short of mac-branded spaceships.
and i’ve read all the comments for you, and digested it all, and here’s what i think you’ll see next week:
» a gadget (specifically a new airport express) that streams video wirelessly to your tv from the hard drive or the broadband connection to your computer or the cable tv coax
» an offshoot of itunes (itunes media store?) that both gives away video content and sells it
» a mac mini-based computer (with an intel chip inside?) with pvr-like/home theater capabilities added
» a new handheld player to view movies on (the wireless video ipod) that will also be a music player and a remote control device
so basically, what does this mean? eventually, the death of the dvd. forget the battle between dueling hd-dvd formats. it’s over before it starts. ditto for the tivo and your pvr. yesterday’s technology. windows media center? give it a rest. no one trusts microsoft to get this right, they don’t have the vision thing, and they are too focused on the hardware anyway. apple will integrate it all–the content side and the hardware side–and all those people who love their ipods will get that apple gets it.
apple is about to do for video what they did for music.
sometime soon, if you want to watch an old episode of green acres, you’ll just download it for 99 cents and watch it on tv at home, or on your way to work. or both. your choice. or you can tape or tivo or videopod, or whatever the term is or will be, last week’s desperate housewives and watch it either way as well. full-length movies? maybe. maybe not quite yet, but that’s coming sooner rather than later. i’m betting that apple and the movie studios already have the agreements in place.
and the beauty is that all the pieces are already there. it just takes apple to put them together with a big splash.
if i’m right. the rest of the commenters think it’ll just be updated macs.
i prefer to be visionary and hopeful. i’m betting steve jobs does too.
i’m probably all wet. but i hope not. it sounds really cool. i’d like nothing better than to send my pvr back to the cable company along with its monthly rental fee.