In an email sent out to media this morning, Apple has announced a special media event to be held on September 12th.
The invitation states, “It’s Showtime” along with the usual white Apple logo and sweeping Hollywood movie premiere spotlights.
Apple’s special media event is scheduled for Tuesday, September 12, 10am local time at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater (http://www.ybca.org/), 700 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA.
[UPDATE: 1:15pm EDT: According to CNET’s Matthew Elliott , “Steve Jobs is set to take the stage for [the] press event next Tuesday, September 12.]
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Ooooh, where’s my invite… I live literally 6 blocks away, on the same street even. I should get to go by default I reckon.
iMaki: Whatever it is, I just hope it’s about Macs rather than iPods.
Me too, but there’s a fat chance of that. It’s all about the iPods and iTunes next Tuesday.
Who wants to buy a movie, take up hard drive space, & watch it once a year for $9.95??? Better yet! Rent the movie for $1.95 & have it stop working after a week!! I’d rent those all day long.
Last time they did one of these, it was a big YAWN.
“Who wants to buy a movie, take up hard drive space, & watch it once a year for $9.95??? Better yet! Rent the movie for $1.95 & have it stop working after a week!! I’d rent those all day long.”
I’ll agree–I fall into this camp.
I bought one TV episode. It was an episode of “24” that I missed one week. I wanted to see exactly what had happened. I figured out what had happened in broad strokes from the fact that certain characters weren’t around anymore. I watched it, went, “Ah ha! So that’s why!” and have never watched it again.
One of the interesting things would also be a streaming service for movies. Watch it for $1.95 streamed or own it for $9.95. With a large enough library, I’d go for something like that. I’d even go out and get the hardware to do it with my TV set(s)…
What movies tend to be watched over and over again — especially if you’ve got young kids? That’s right — DISNEY movies.
And who is now on the board of Disney?
Disney has been famous for restricting the flow of their movies — they’ll release them for a brief period of time, then lock them up in the vault for years. (I would love a copy of the original “Fantasia” — I love that movie!)
I expect an iTunes Movie Store announcement, in partnership with Disney; expect it to include software (and DRM) to allow a single burn to DVD. Once Disney is on board, and the other movie companies see how successful it is, expect them to jump on the iBandwagon.
Still have doubts about the feasibility of a touch-screen iPod, especially if you want to make adjustments like switching tracks or adjusting volume without having to physically look at the product. The only way it would work is if the touchscreen model is for videos only (since you’re looking at it anyway) and return the clickwheel model to audio use only. Wouldn’t be surprised if higher capacity iPods (80GB? 100GB) were announced — I know several folks who are at or near capacity on their 60GB models.
MW — not: Folks who are hoping for Merom MacBooks/MBPs will have to wait till January at the earliest — Apple is not going to want to upset the early adopters who ran out and bought MBPs in February of this year. Sorry, gang…
For those hoping for a rental service with expiring files, don’t hold your breath..Hollywood will not allow it.. This is going to be a “purchase the movie” download service.
Selling DVD’s is a 17 Billion dollar a year business, this is what Apple will be going after.
Is Apple stealing Eddy Murphy’s material now? “It’s showtime!” was his character’s line in the movie Showtime.
I predict movie downloads, updated iMacs with a 1080p HD capable model, widescreen iPods and, I hope, Airport AV that can do SD video.
– No more Netflix via postal mail (wait for move, pay monthly fee $17.99, only 3 movies at a time.)
– No more video on demand (purchase only good for 24hrs)
– No more double trips to the video store (one to rent, one to return)
All you need is a high speed Internet connection, a Mac and a new low cost Apple device.
Walmart better be scared. Here comes the video rental and purchase wrecking ball!
The searchlights motif, “Showtime” banner, and the fact the presentation will be made in a theater seem to indicate something related to films or multimedia. Forget about your iMacs and iPhones, make some popcorn instead.
Zune is gonna be iPod kill before it even hits the shelves.
>Interesting to note is the venue where they are holding this. Usually, it’s Moscone Center, or the Flint in Santa >Clara. This is a new venue, and if you read the description of the place, there is probably a tad bit of >foreshadowing in there. http://www.ybca.org/b_ybca.html
The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts IS in the Moscone Center — above ground, not below.
As some have already noted, the pricing as it’s reported so far is lousy. I guess it could be worse, but it’s certainly no improvment over what can be typically bought in a DVD case already, and ripped with readily Google-able tools. So, in the spirit of totally off-the wall prognostications, I’m saying now that I think H.264 is THE thing that Apple’s counting on to make this a success.
A reasonable file size for high quality content is a start, but my expectation is that H.264 will be leveraged to allow for relatively easy ‘resizing’ of content to fit various devices. In other words, content pricing will probably not be contingent on whether you want high def, std def, or iPod def – just on ‘newness’ (which, for reasons I don’t agree with, Hollywood holds as a primary criteria for pricing here). Once you’ve got that – call it a ‘master file’ perhaps – the resultant video will be reconfigured in iTunes to fit the screen real estate available on whatever device it’s suppossed to be loaded onto from iTunes. This would also bring the TPM chips in the Macintels into functionality, it keeping an eye on what is being done with the ‘master file’. Since the PPC Macs don’t have a TPM, I’ll say that we’ll get some excuse about how only the new Intel CPUs can handle the full range of conversion options, and thus the PPC Macs will be locked out of the hi def resolutions.
Now, of course I may be completely wrong on this specific idea. Yet what brought me to it is that, frankly, I think Apple will need something as compelling as this for marketing reasons alone, since the prices are way beyond reasonable with the presently available alternatives in the market. Like I said, rip a $7-10 DVD (xtras included) and you can play it on anything Apple has ever made, or is likely to make.
Thus, the only avenue I can see, from which Apple can attack the problem of off-setting a bad price structure (they’ve apparently been forced into), is the convenience of not having to go thru all that riggermoral. Throw in a brand new Apple phone, uber-iPods, an iMac/HiDefTV, and/or a video server capability incorporated into AirPort, and the combination could be what they’re now counting on to draw people in. Basically, the message would be ‘buy all this neat Apple-branded stuff from us, and once you get a movie from iTMS you’ll never have to worry about whether it will play on a device you own’.
Might explain all the delays, too, since a straight ‘buy & download’ model, at any price point, is something they could have done a long time ago. The hard stance taken by the studios probably forced Jobs into thinking he had to come up with a better ‘hook’.
Which brings me back to what I’ve said a few times before – I WISH Apple had forgotten all about this distribution crap. If Jobs was going to sell Pixar anyway, why should he care about what makes a movie studio or record company money? They should have just made a better TiVo, leveraged Airport to distribute it throughout the home, and simply let us use the iLife tools to make the content we’ve legally recorded off the air fit on whatever portable device we wanted it to. You certainly avoid all the negotiation & legal expenses to contend with (not to mention server infrastructure). And I think the iPod demonstrates that unit profit on desirable hardware would have made them a gigantic fortune.
Well, an even bigger gigantic fortune that is …
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Either way, looking forward to Sept 12 (and a healthier looking-Steve Jobs too).
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Odyssey67
You are long winded aren’t you, I pitty your friends.
Have you considered getting your own blog?
Apple got into the distribution “crap” because even if Apple makes really good hardware, hardware is getting cheaper and more similar. Content, ability to use and manipulate content, and cache’ are where new business lies. Computers extend our use in many aspects, but, since most people don’t cultivate their own creativity, but instead ask to be entertained with someone else’s, content is the way to go.
Now, wouldn’t it be cool if content could somehow be melded with hardware. Oh… wait…
Apple got into distribution because content sell hardware. Period.
That’s also the very reason there will be no netflix subscription model with movies.
If there’s one thing the “other” services have proved it’s that there is no money to be made in the subcription model.
justme2 said:
“Folks who are hoping for Merom MacBooks/MBPs will have to wait till January at the earliest — Apple is not going to want to upset the early adopters who ran out and bought MBPs in February of this year. Sorry, gang…”
Oh, do you mean these same early adopters that were upset by the persistent production problems in the first gen machines? The same ones that frequently did not have use of their MBP during those periods of time it was in for repair?
Yea, I’m sure they will be upset that Apple finally has the bugs worked out and offers a better quality machine…
“Folks who are hoping for Merom MacBooks/MBPs will have to wait till January at the earliest — Apple is not going to want to upset the early adopters who ran out and bought MBPs in February of this year. Sorry, gang…”
Just like Apple didn’t want to upset the early adopters of the iMac G5 w/iSight with the release of the iMac Core Duo 2.5 months later.
Oh wait.
I’ll put in my €0.02:
1. The replacement for the iPod Nano. It will come in an all-new case that looks like a reduced-size version of the old iPod Mini case, but is now a full scratchproof design for both the case and display. It will come in 8 GB, 6 GB and possibly 4 GB flash memory storage capacities.
2. The video-capable iPods will have their HD storage capacity increased to 40 GB and 80 GB respectively.
3. The iTunes software will be upgraded to Version 7.0 with much-improved ease of use.
4. Don’t expect the true video iPod (aka vPod) until at least MacWorld Expo in January 2007.
a return of the Apple //
DBS says: “You are long winded aren’t you, I pitty your friends.”
Don’t worry, I don’t have any friends. Say … you don’t think … ooohhhhh.
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“Have you considered getting your own blog?
Who needs the hassle?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”cool smirk” style=”border:0;” />