Update: Kevin Rose has a new blog post up, with some additional info:
iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have.
With iTunes 8, browse your artists and albums visually with the new Grid view; download your favorite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (2nd generation), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.
Welcome to the first in a new series from TiPb, where we take the often outlandish, sometime surreal predictions of iPhone analysts and pundits, blogeratti and the ‘net elite, and compare them to the potentially equally precise prognostications of a… magic 8-ball (running on an iPhone, of course!)
This edition kicks off with Gene Munster, who boldly states Apple will sell 13 million iPhone 3Gs this year, and 45 million next.
Magic 8-ball? “Most likely”
Next up we have Diggster Kevin Rose, with a multitude of maybes:
Apple Event on September 9th? “Very doubtful”
Firmware 2.1 debuting on sleeker iPod Touch? “Most likely”
iTunes 8 with music recommendations? “Cannot predict now”
New, candy-bar Nano with rounded widescreen? “It is certain”
Massive iPod price drops across the line? “Don’t count on it”
Following up his big blog rumor-fest with an appearance on This Week in Tech (TWiT), Kevin Rose filled in a few details, including that the supposed new Nano, face-lifted iPod Touch, and 2.1 firmware (presumably) would drop on September 9 at a Special Apple Event (or perhaps that the invitation for the special event would be issued on the 9th, it wasn’t crystal clear).
In addition, when bullied by Laporte and Dvorak, Rose — who said he feared criticism if he were wrong — revealed that one of the major new features in iTunes 8 could be song recommendations, perhaps similar to how Pandora or Last.fm work. He also said he’d heard the iTunes Unlimited subscription rumor was false.
Is Rose dead wrong? Startlingly right? We’ll know for sure in a few weeks!
Internet superstar Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, Pownce, and Revision3 has a… er… spottyrecord at best when it comes to iPhone speculation. Still, we give him full marks for getting back on that rumor horse once again. This time, Kevin’s saying he knows that sometime before the end of September we’ll see:
Firmware 2.1, debuting on the iPod Touch (which will get a minor facelift).
iTunes 8.0 with “new features and functionality” he can’t get into.
Price drops along the iPod line to keep them competitive with iPhone’s $199
Rounded wide-screen nano, back in candy-bar form factor
Mac OS X 10.5.6 to feature Blu-Ray support.
Rose, who’s locked in a battle with Barak Obama and Leo Laporte for the crown of top Twitter’er, asks that we follow him there, or on his own platform, Pownce, for more updates.
Our take? Last year’s big pre-holiday Apple event introduced the iPod Touch, which debuted the new 1.1 firmware, including the WiFi Music Store, so that’s quite possible. iTunes 8.0 is more opaque, however. If App Store integration wasn’t a big enough marketing excuse to make the full point jump to iTunes 8.0, what would it take? (7.0, for example, added CoverFlow and iPod Games).
iPod price drops before the biggest selling season of the year make sense, as Apple dropped the iPhone $200 at last years event. Likewise a new Nano.
Blu-Ray support — if it’s to include BD movie playback — is a bigger nut to crack, however, because the short sighted industry killers in Hollywood demands HDCP DRM compliance (i.e. hardware enforced, digital rights managed copy protection) over the full path, from player, through cables and graphic cards, into the monitor — and in the OS. This caused a bit of an internet brouhaha when Microsoft “caved” for Vista. Laptops and the iMac would be far easier to implement, but is there business advantage enough for Steve Jobs to feel like doing it?
One of the most important aspects of the iPhone is how it’s breathed the air of change into long stodgy, backwards thinking mobile cellular providers. We can argue whether its been less effective post iPhone 3G where subsidies have returned, but either way Apple fairly neatly removed the carrier middleman from its usual intrusive position in the smartphone space. App Store is clearly the crowning example thus far, but frequent firmware updates is sometimes likewise cited.
On the latest This Week in Tech (TWiT) podcast, however, Digg founder Kevin Rose credited an unnamed source inside Apple as saying AT&T had to approve the next iPhone firmware update. Of course, Rose has been, er… somewhat less than accurate in regards to iPhone news in the past (including his reports that the iPhone 3G would have video iChat). In his corner this time, however, are server logs showing iPhone 2.0.1 traffic on popular Apple news sites originating from both Cupertino and AT&T HQ regions.
Has AT&T always played a role in firmware testing or is this a new factor in a post 3G world? If it’s new, will it make 2.x updates take longer than 1.x did? And do international carriers like 02, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Rogers, Orange, etc. all have similar advanced testing privileges? If so, will 22+ (70+ eventually) carriers wanting to test new firmware result in huge delays or staggered launches? Or is this just another well Dugg tempest in a Royal Jasmine teapot?
On a side note, the same episode of TWiT saw the crankiest of geeks, John C. Dvorak “dot org slash blog” claim that one particularly damaging rumor circulating about Steve Jobs current health was deliberately and maliciously spread at an exclusive CEO gathering by an as-yet unnamed but well known executive with a personal grudge against Jobs and Apple. Dvorak maintains the rumor, which recent reports have indicated is false, was spread to other CEOs who then propagated it, adding to the confusion and downward pressure on Apple’s stock. If he can get a second anonymous confirmation on the story, Dvorak claims he will name names in his Marketwatch column.
As a huge fan of Karma, that should make for an interesting day, and likely more than a “slime bucket” response from El Jobso.
“Inside Steve’s Brain” author Leander Kahney of Wired magazine is reporting a programmer source inside a major software house has revealed that the next generation iPhone 3G will thinner — we’re talking Paris Hilton thinner — by a whopping 22%.
Not only that, it will sport better battery life than the already impressive 8 hours talk time of the first gen model, and twice the NAND flash capacity, topping out at 32GB. (Paving the way for 64GB iPod Touch’s?)
Still not enough, echoing Kevin Rose (historically not the most reliable of iPhone prognosticators), Kahney thinks the phone may be heavily carrier subsidized — down to the $200 level in some cases — in an effort to put the hurt on Blackberry.
Okay, fess up, who left the rumor mill jacked up to max?!
Joking that the iPhone Risk map was getting a little crowded up in Europe… turns out not to be a joke anymore:
Swisscom on Wednesday confirmed it will begin selling Apple’s iPhone in Switzerland this year, possibly bolstering a recent report on the matter which also stated that the handset would arrive with video conferencing and other fresh features.
What fresh new features? As if borrowing from Kevin Rose’s twitter feed, GPS, bi-direction video iChat Mobile, and mobile TV.
Checking the score board:
Europe
North Am.
South Am
Asia
Africa
Oceania
Antarctica
Total
Launched
5
1
0
0
0
0
0
6
Announced
6
2
15?
3
2
2
0
30
Rumored
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
Total
13
3
15?
3
2
2
0
38
Personally, I’m not sold on 2-way iChat yet, or Mobile TV unless Apple can break it out of the carrier-controlled sandbox in which it now languishes. This is a little too close to rumor-regurgitation for now. GPS, on the other hand, seems likely.
[With apologies to Eminem and - ahem - our readers.]
Rumor’s back. Back again. iPhone packed. Tell your friends.
From VP. Close to APPL. Kevin tweets. He’s top lvl.
3G soon. GPS spin. Here by June. FTW!
Kevin’s back. Back again. {interweb hums}
For those of you who aren’t up on either your Eminem or your Twitter, the story here is Kevin Rose posted up another teaser, this time on Twitter, that he has the inside line on the 3G iPhone with the above specs. He’s playing with us, right?
Digg and Pownce founder and web 2.0 darling Kevin Rose, during the latest Diggnation podcast, made the following prognostications about the eventual 3G iPhone (via Apple Insider):
[Kevin Rose] claims that a 3G version of the iPhone hardware due in a few months will employ two digital cameras situated back-to-back — one on the front side of the unit behind the transparent touch-screen, and a second one on the back of the handset as it exists today.
Rose also conjectures that this may be why Apple has limited background processes in the current SDK: to prevent competition to their upcoming iChat Touch application.
iChat Touch, according to Rose, will allow full-on video conferencing via high-speed HSDPA between 3G iPhone users and desktop iChat users alike.
As to how reliable Rose’s predictions may be, Apple Insider reminds us:
In the week’s leading up to last year’s iPhone introduction, the Digg founder cited sources in saying Apple would introduce the handset with a slide-out keyboard, two separate battery compartments, and make it available for both CDMA and GSM networks — all of which turned out to be false.
So, um… er… yeah — we’ll take this with a shovel full of salt for now.
Still, the idea iChat Touch with video is exciting and functionality I’d love to see on the second generation iPhone. What do you think?
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
