Apple is holding a big press event tomorrow, Sept. 12, and it’s been titled “Showtime”.
I’ve read many a rumour, and plenty of speculation, but when it comes right down to it, I have no idea what to expect besides downloadable feature length movies.
Does anyone know what time this press event gets underway? That’s the one bit of information I just can’t seem to locate, and I want to hang on the edge of my seat reading live blogs, waiting on The Turtlenecked One’s “one more thing”.
Rumor has it that they’re announcing a new iPod and a new service.
The new iPod is supposed to be a touch screen video iPod.
The new service is supposed to be - as implied - movies.
A touchscreen video iPod has long been rumored. Will be interesting if it’s true, especially in light of Zune coming just around the corner.
There was a patent recently issued to Apple for a multifunction portable device that’s basically one big touch screen, with all functions selected through that. Could be the new face of the iPod, with a bigger screen for video. Or it could just be some research thing that didn’t go anywhere…
From Gizmodo:
*New iPod Nano Announcement (nice brushed casing, while it will have same features as first gen, only a longer battery life)
One More Thing…
Jobs will then explain the pricing structure of the Movie Store. Movies wil be available as either a smaller iPod-format (which will cost $9.99 per movie), or as a larger, streamed movie to be streamed to your TV via TubePort. This cost $14.99 per movie. To purchase an iPod-formatted movie and a streamed version of the same movie, it will cost you $19.99.
Unless their service has faster download speeds than 300KB/s, I won’t be very impressed. If it did-- killer app for 6.0mbit.
Wow, that’s a bum deal on movie downloads if true. From what I understand, you can only ‘stream’ the high-def downloads?
Whatever. As long as there’s third party (illegal) software to rip your own DVDs, the new screen on the iPod will be great.
Yeah, I’ve read all these rumours. They look very likely. I wonder whether or not Apple secured any international distribution rights for these movies yet, or if they’ll launch a US-only movie store at first, and expand to other countries later (as they did with music).
To answer my own question: the presentation starts at 1:00pm Eastern today.
Apple big into games
5G ipods 249 and 349 with 60GB and 80GB capacity
Games for 5G ipods only for $4.99, titles such as Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini golf, pac man, tetris, texas holdem, vortex, and zuma.
They made the shuffle smaller?!?
Yeah! And they made the nano smaller, too! 52% smaller by volume. And there’s an 8GB version available. swoon.
[EDIT] No, wait, they made the packaging 52% smaller to make it more environmentally friendly and cheaper to ship. Not so exciting. But it is smaller, apparently.
Free cover art for iTunes, eh.
The shuffle is now the size of the iPod radio remote. Nutty!
iLounge: TV shows are now encoded at 640x480 (h264), up from 320x240
Really really happy about this one.
Well, well. TV shows are now encoded at 640x480, up from 320x240. Still not HD, but at least 480p. :P
I wonder at what resolution(s) the movies will be encoded.
Movies, but only from Disney studios so far. Rumour is that Wal-Mart has threatened to delay releases of any new DVDs from studios that put their movies up on iTunes.
Same as TV.
Unimpressive. I see why the stock market isn’t very impressed with Apple at the moment. Non-HD movies? Only Disney studios? $12.99? Only in the US? No wireless video streaming device?
I guess it’s much like their TV show offerings, those started pretty unimpressively too and grew over time. Hopefully this will, as well.
And that Wal-Mart rumour is disturbing, if true.
Yeah as Jobs said, the iTunes TV services started with five shows. Now they have a big library. I don’t think it will be long before other studios jump on board.
What’s the Wal Mart rumor?
Woot, tv box!