Macenstein

Posted by Helper Monkey

Macenstein reader Tin Man sends in a report he noticed over at Digg that suggests Apple has created a “moviesâ€? directory on its website at http://www.apple.com/movies. When attempting to access the directory, one receives the following message “403 Forbidden: You don’t have permission to access /movies on this server,â€? whereas the usual response for an incorrect URL from Apple is (such as http://www.apple.com/film) results in the standard 404 error page reading “Looking for something at Apple.com?â€?.

Above: the Forbidden directory message is very odd, and the timing is suspicious to say the least.

Odds are this goof does in fact mean something is up, most likely some of the web monkeys at Apple have once again goofed and prematurely posted something to the directory that they shouldn’t have. Apple’s web people have a long history of prematurely blowing announcements for Apple at the 11th hour. Could the fact that tomorrow is a Tuesday (a day Apple often reserves for announcements) mean anything BIG on the horizon?

Maybe, but probably not. An announcement as big as the unveiling of the iTunes Movie Store would likely be preceded by formal press invites. And to be honest, that URL pointing to a 403 page may not be anything new (although we never heard about it before).

On the other hand, since the addition of movies to the iTMS is pretty much a foregone conclusion by the media at this point, maybe Apple figures a surprise announcement before a “real� leak steals its thunder is the way to go. After all, what is there to really show the press that they can’t get from a press release? The movie store will likely work exactly the same as the music portion of the store. Plus it really is odd that only that one specific directory points to a forbidden page when any other URL you can make up at Apple.com returns their standard 404 page. Especially so in light of all the recent movie negotiation talks between Apple and the big studios.

As you can see, we’re 50-50 on this for tomorrow, but we DO feel this development might mean something formal IS announced by this time NEXT week. Stay tuned!

[UPDATE: We have been told by many readers this is old news (on the order of 2 years old), and perhaps merely an un-updated link from the movie trailers section of QuickTime. So I guess we will change our stand from 50-50 to 0-100 for a iTunes Movie store release.]