Apple Special Event September 12th… New iPods, Movie Store, and Core 2 Duo Macs
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
Well, we just received our invitation to Apple’s September 12th super secret “special event�, and…
…um, ok, so we don’t actually rate high enough to get an Apple invite. BUT we DO waste most of the day reading other sites that DO, and from those we have discovered two things.
First, the date is indeed September 12th, which is also the date that Mac Expo Paris begins. There will not be an official keynote in Paris this year, but apparently whatever the special announcement is, it is big enough to be streamed to London. Why London and not Paris? Well, that’s where Apple’s European headquarters are located. According to MacBidouille, the European press has already been invited to cover the event. Plus, Apple might still be mad over that whole “France vs. iTunes� debacle.
Secondly, there have been reports that the Core 2 Duo chips that have recently turned up in other PC manufacturer’s laptops will find their way into Apple’s MacBook Pros (if not MacBooks) and perhaps even an updated Mac mini or iMac. On top of that, reports of new iPods and the debut of an iTunes movie download store have combined to make this potentially one of Apple’s bigger announcements.
For what it’s worth (nothing), our 2 cents say that all three possible announcements will indeed occur. On September 12th, it will have been 336 days since the last iPod revision back in October of last year. Even if Apple can’t deliver a radically new touch-screen design, they have to at least include a larger drive and Bluetooth connectivity (and/or drop the price a couple bucks) to compete with the latest batch of portable players.
We have faith that Apple will also somehow include a larger screen for playing those downloadable movies we are also betting will be announced. The infamous Lion’s Gate conference call in which the President let slip Apple’s intentions to debut an iTunes movie service before the end of the year, plus a new BusinessWeek article citing info from “unnamed sources� (always the most knowledgeable) pretty much sealed the deal.
As for the Core 2 Duo chips arriving in new Macs, Apple really doesn’t have much choice. As far as new hardware goes, Apple pretty much lost their coveted “element of surprise� the day they decided to use the same chips as 80% of the PC market. Apple can’t really hold off updating hardware by more than a week or two after any other PC manufacturer has incorporated Intel’s latest technology, and all reports indicate slapping a Core 2 Duo into an existing Core Duo motherboard involves all of 5 minutes of effort.
In fact, we’re pretty sure Apple would have already announced the new lap/desktops if it wasn’t for the fact that this year’s Paris Expo fell so close to Intel’s delivery of the Core 2 Duo. Apple is just so used to announcing things at planned events to help build hype and speculation, they figured, “Why pay to cater TWO events?�.
We’re sure Apple will be sending us a special press invitation to their NEXT special event, but in the meantime, we will pretend we don’t know what they are announcing on the 12th and do our best to look surprised, just to make them feel better.
