[I'm going to post my own thoughts on the event below the cut, but for those who missed it, Engadget has coverage of the entire event including pictures here. More below. -- Nabil]

It’s still a little early to be writing up the press conference considering it’s tomorrow, but I thought it might be fun to do some speculation as to what they’re going to be announcing at their scheduled press event, which has been announced to press with an invitation stating “It’s Showtime!”

Rather than get folks huffy at speculation on the main page, those who want to know more, click to read the full article.

Okay.  Now, before I get into things, I’m going to add a quick disclaimer that I have no inside sources at Apple, and this is purely speculation, so Apple, please don’t sue us if we get any of these right.  Consider it more like… we care so damn much about your products that we’ve started to think like you.

My first guess is based off the title of the invitation: they’re going to introduce a more robust video service along the lines of (and likely tied to) the iTunes Music Store.  I know that there are already television shows and music videos, but movies have been conspicuous in their absence.  This isn’t exactly rocket science, and those of you who have been following the Mac rumors sites have probably already seen all the details about this for weeks if not months.  Just because the MPAA can be a pain, I concur with the rumor sites that it’ll likely be a rental based system, despite the stupidity of that (and the virtual certainty of a relatively easy hack to keep the movies, coming out within weeks of release).

Another thing I think they’re going to do is upgrade the CPUs in the MacBook Pros to Core 2 Duos or similar.  This would help make more of a distinction between their consumer grade (MacBook) and their professional grade (MacBook Pro).  It would also make me kick myself for being an early adopter.

There is of course the giant rumor that’s been running around for years at this point: the iPhone.  I’m not sure how I feel about the rumor.  There are certainly a lot of indications pointing to it (including an iPod hybrid that functions as an OS X based smartphone… which if it came out would be my next phone, even if I had to switch carriers to get it).   Personally, I’m inclined to agree with recent analyst reports indicating that the iPhone IS coming, but not right now.  Here’s to hoping I’m wrong!

Now, some speculation I haven’t seen much circulation of (if any) is one of my own theorizing, based on my combined passions for Apple and video games.  Nintendo has a major press conference on the 15th, where they will be finalizing the release date, price, and final details of their new console, the Wii.  However, they have been remarkably mum about their plans for the virtual console.  It’s been made clear in prior events (such as Iwata’s keynote at GDC2006) that there is some mutual respect between the companies, and in my eyes, there is room for a corporate partnership of sorts here.  There have been several job offerings at Apple over the months looking for people with game development experience, which lead to a number of minor rumors in both Apple and gaming circles that Apple was considering entering the gaming market.  I don’t think that’s the case, however.  Instead, I think Apple and Nintendo are going to announce a partnership, where Nintendo provides basic emulation support for their virtual console on the Mac, and Apple provides the virtual console store backbone.  It would definitely be a win for both parties, and frankly the only reason we haven’t seen more theorizing in this direction is because most analysts and rumormongers don’t follow both gaming and Apple.

Well, those are the four items I either think we’ll see or hope we see at tomorrow’s press conference.  I’ll update this post with my thoughts after the event completes tomorrow.  In the meantime, please feel free to post your own speculations in the comments!

UPDATE 9/12/2006:
Well, the event is over now. All in all, it was a pleasant presentation, and I’m glad that iPods and iTunes were given their own event rather than being tied into the primary keynotes. As for what was presented:

• New, upgraded iPods across the entire line, with brighter screens, longer battery life, and higher capacities. This was sort of a given, and while the new iPods are looking sharp, this isn’t all that exciting in the grand scheme of things. Those who were waiting to get a new iPod, hope you’re happy, they’re looking sexy;
• New iTunes, with new interface and movies available in the iTunes store. This was entirely unsurprising, but I will say this: if the changes to iTunes are an indication of the direction in the 10.5 interface, I am excited. I’m sure there will be others who disagree with me, but I think it’s looking sharp. At first glance, the new views are interesting, but I’m not sure how much I’ll use them. The grouped by album/album-artwork view has some potential (waiting to toss it on my G5 to see how it works in a large library scenario), but I find the “browse by cd cover” feature entirely useless, definitely falling in the category of “pretty” instead of “functional” (Oh, how much I love that middle ground that is both!).
• iTV is really the item I’m most excited about. The basic ability to stream video and music and photos from a home server (say, my G5, loaded to the gills with drives and ram) to my television, wirelessly and with a clean interface, is something I’ve been hoping to see for some time. This has been a missing piece of the “digital lifestyle” puzzle, in that while you’ve been able to store and access your music for quite some time, video has largely remained tied to some form of physical media (videocassettes, and later DVDs), which shackles you to having to physically manipulate a disc every time you want to watch something new. Now, the next step that needs to occur is an effective manner to rip, encode, and store your DVDs in the same fashion we do with CDs, so that we can truly treat this as a digital hub.

  One of the other things that excites me about the iTV stems from the other potential uses for it, such as in giving presentations, and in academic environments (I’m not sure about you, but I remember being in school where there were two classes both wanting or needing the same video and only one copy available. In a digital world, this becomes moot). If it also supports any sort of DVR or input (perhaps not this version, but iTV 2.0), it becomes a one-stop shop for making recordings from the television or while playing a game. The potential for a device like this is really pretty remarkable.

Anyway, I hope folks weren’t too disappointed that they didn’t release an iPhone, or 16GHz eight-core machines. This was very much an iPod and iTunes centric event, and in that realm, these announcements are actually pretty exciting.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 7:24 pm and is filed under AppleTalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.