The response to my previous post was immense, thanks for all you replies it seems like I rely struck a cord with the Mac community. Oh, I’m being sarcastic by the way!
So, wild speculation has engulfed the Mac rumors sites and every Tom, Dick and Harry has blogged terra bytes on the meaning of, “There’s something in the air.”.
What can you smell…
Well I’m fairly sure after a drunken conversation with a friend of a friend I’ve cracked the code. As with most of Apple’s recent announcements it wont be revolutionary bleeding edge technology, just cutting edge and repackaged with a sugary interface.
Time to Air
The Air moniker will come to represent the digital home hub product line headed by the Apple TV (possibly re-branded Apple Air) but incorporating a new MacBook, iPhone/iTouch, iTunes and a fancy new iLife application to tie them all together.
The premiss of the Air system is simple – everything, and I mean everything (Movies, Pictures, Songs, PDFs etc) sits at home on your computer (with iLife/iTunes/FrontRow installed) or Apple TV/Apple Air and you can access all these streamed over the internet anywhere in the known universe (with an internet connection).
No more making playlists for your iPhone you can access all your tracks streamed from your home computer, watch Extras you bought form iTunes, get it?
With a .Mac account you can sync tracks to your i(Pod)(Phone) for later playback when you have no connection or it’s too slow for streaming.
Up up and away
For all this to work you’ll need updated iTunes (7.6) update iPhone/iTouch (1.1.3) and a .Mac account (optional). I would expect Apple to add some value to a .Mac account (Google anyone?) to drive take up of yet another subscription service.
As most things in technology this system is a solution to a specific problem, namely battery life of the iPod. Apple need to move to SSD in all the iPods to increase the battery life but the capacity is still to low (a tenth of the the classic iPods) and still to expensive. So streaming over the internet is the obvious solution. It not a bad move either, could they reinvigorate WiMax? Just think of the data usage on a new iPhone 3G? Is this the kill app mobile operators have been searching for to boost 3G take up and drive data services?
One last thing…
Could we see a new iPhone I here you screaming? No, is my answer. But it is a 100/1 long shot, one last thing could indeed be a brand new iPhone Air with 3G priced at slightly more than the current 8 Gig model – £299 with 16 Gig and a price drop of the current offering – £229.
Check back on Tuesday to see how well I did.