“It has become a parlor game in some quarters to try to divine where Apple is going and how it intends to get there — and not just at the dozens of blogs that traffic in Apple rumors … Apple doesn’t make the game easy; Jobs is famously secretive and detests leaks — just ask the kid from Harvard whom Apple recently sued after he posted details of the Mac mini
before the stripped-down computer was unveiled at Macworld,” Paul Sloan and Paul Kaihla report for Business 2.0.
“Jobs wouldn’t talk to Business 2.0, but in various public forums, he has stressed how the $499 Mac mini, the low-cost iPod shuffle
, and an advanced operating system called Tiger, due out this spring, are meant to build on the digital-music momentum. In truth, they are but the tip of a very long spear. Discussions with past and present company officials, Apple partners, and longtime acquaintances of Jobs, as well as clues in patent applications and other evidence, point to a gargantuan effort to leverage the iPod’s success by creating an entire line of breakout consumer electronics devices. Dozens of gadgets — from an iPod phone to wireless iPods that talk to one another to the ultimate all-in-one home-cum-car media hub — appear to be on the drawing board or, in some cases, already in prototype,” Sloan and Kaihla report.
Full article (subscription required) here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple just has to have more in the pipeline than the Mac mini and the iPod shuffle to leverage the iPod’s consumer market success, right?
Well, I don’t know if they have to have these items in the pipeline, but I’ll expect that they do.
Yes, a brand new eMac: ins’n it?
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i meant for me….but anyway….why wouldn’t apple take advantage of the ipod’s success? I mean, since when was enough, enough? yes, they have the mac mini and shuffle, but why stop there.
The line about the “ultimate all-in-one home-cum-car media hub” is interesting, and not just because I just dropped the $ for an Alpine unit….
I have been wondering why Apple didn’t license their DRM to products that are not direct competitors to their iPod line – like the Roku SoundBridge or car audio units (how would you like to load a CD or DVD with your iTunes music as M4ps and play it your car CD player?). The above might explain it.
But I’m skeptical about the hub concept above – most of the PC companies have run hard aground on the “Media PC” concept….
Does anyone have a subscription account number for that site they wouldn’t mind posting? Much obliged.
‘Gargantuan’ should be capitalised. Given the number of [sic]’s attached to things like IPod and IMac by MDN, this is a disappointement.
Rabelais will be turning in his grave.
Why can’t they spend 5 minutes in R&D to give us a remote for airport express?
If any company can create the ‘media’ centre digital hub its Apple.
Microsoft failed because there is no version of ‘ilife’ for windows.
As is typical with the the windows OS, nothing is compatible with anything else – you try and do what you can do in ilife 05 on windows pc. It just don’t work!
As SJ said: ‘It’s the software!’
critic: “Why can’t they spend 5 minutes in R&D to give us a remote for airport express?”
Because Keyspan already has?
http://www.keyspan.com/products/usb/urm17a/
That said, I wish Apple would either license FairPlay to Roku for the Soundbridge or come out with their own product – a “Maxi Express” with display and remote.
Who’d they sue for leaking Mac mini info? I don’t remember hearing anything about that… or are they confused with the Tiger leak guy?
Apple did split off the ipod and create a separate hardware division from computers. That division must have all manner of R&D projects – some of which are “in the pipeline” – or so I would assume.
What to think of: a Mac-Midi G5, iTunes-Movies-store, affordable 400 $- 17″ Apple-tft screen and new Apple-Sound systems on wich the iPod’s also work.
I just want a fast PowerMac. Dual quad 4Ghz G5 or is it quad duals…?
I think they’re working on iHologram. It will project realistic moving holograms of your favorite Playboy or Victoria’s Secret model as if she were really sitting on your couch with you.
Everyone, please please please, stop talking about this fabled “midi”. I’m not trying to squelch your dreams, but PLEASE call it something else. Midi already exists and is something completely different. This is right along the same lines as someone typing MAC when they mean Mac.
no more midi: have you ever done a typo? (and about MAC, who cares?) These arguments are a waste of people’s time. Get over yourself!