April 1, 2006 -- the 30th anniversary of the founding of Apple. Could be anything. Will be something cool. Perhaps the rest of the laptop line (the MacBook and MacBook Pro in several sizes, replacing the Powerbooks and the iBooks completely. Perhaps any of these fun rumored products like a video ipod with a bigger screen / a phone / a pda / something no one has thought of ...)
April 23, 2006 - Apple's presentation at NAB (National Association of Broadcasters. Final Cut 6 Studio (almost certainly - my guess is native-Intel-chip-only or universal-install version with more HD support and other power-hungry / render-heavy features that put that faster chip to good use). Plus hardware: The laptops? The new Intel-chip towers? Normally ipods aren't a NAB-type product, but a t.v. / movie-centric iPod would make sense at NAB.
August 7, 2006 - the Apple WWDC (Wide World Developers Conference) - probably OSx.5, plus the new towers / the laptops if they aren't out already... WWDC is usually in June, but Apple recently pushed it to August, presumably to get in line with big hardware announcement(s). WWDC usually includes high-end hardware / big OS changes / power products. I really doubt any iPod announcements will happen there. I think the birthday, NAB and late fall for christmas are all much better marketing days for an iPod. August is a dead retail announcement month.
Also, Apple's recently announced a bunch of products on days without any special events. They've been just calling a press conferences and dropping pretty big bombs -- so they might keep doing that...
My buying recommendations are:
1) don't buy anything the week before one of these for-sure dates. Even if you buy an older model anyway, you'll get a better price if something new has come out.
2) if you need a computer / ipod / whatever now, then buy it now. (I'm about to buy two quad-G5 towers, 'cause I need them now and have to run software that isn't out in a Intel-chip version yet. It sucks, but hey, the show must go on, and there's no pushing our opera's schedule for the computer's.)
3) If you are thinking about buying a laptop or tower and can wait -- then wait (except for the 15" macbook pro). Apple has said, out loud, absolutely for sure they will be replacing all of the G4s laptops and the G5 towers by the end of 2006. If you aren't using the machine for a specific project that's happening now, then wait. The G4 and G5 chips will be dead in 7-8 months or less. Plus, I personally expect a laptop case redesign this year... I find it hard to believe that Apple will stay with the G4 case for the new chip. They've redesigned the case with every major chip change in every product that I can think of for as long as I can remember.
4) If you are thinking of buying an iMac or mac mini, then go right ahead, nothing big will happen with those anytime soon.... (unless Apple redesigns these cases, but there's no rumors about that right now. If they do that, I'd expect it in preparation for the back-to-school and Christmas buying season -- ie: Sept/Oct, after case redesigns of the pro-level productions).
5) ipod -- who knows. Those big-screen video iPod rumors seem strong, but they might just be strongly wishful thinking. There have been plenty of super-popular rumors that never amounted to anything. An ipod with a screen that big would have some serious battery issues, so I'm skeptical. I'm sure someone at Apple is trying to develop one... the question is just will they succeed sometime soon, or will it be a long time from now. And while it would be cool for us videobloggers to have a big screen to watch, do we really want Apple dominating the popular culture with a full blown Movie Store. I want truly independent grassroots media to have most of the space for as long as possible, before Hollywood products take over the popular imagination of video distribution on the web.
imho,
jen
On Mar 24, 2006, at 10:04 AM, Bill Streeter wrote:
True that. Apple doesn't really pre-announce these products. They
like to keep everything secret and then have big events to unveil
them. So all the rumors you're hearing right now are just that
rumors. Sometimes the rumors are right, sometimes they're way off.
So it's best not to make your buying decisions on these rumors. I
mean if you want to wait until june to see if Apple comes out with
something new that probably wouldn't be a bad idea.
