Apple Nano-based phone coming

"Apple plans cheaper, Nano-based phone: JP Morgan

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) plans to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone in the fourth quarter that could be based on the ultra-slim iPod Nano music player, according to a JP Morgan report.

Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan, cited people in the supply channel he did not name and an application with the U.S Patent and Trademark office for his report dated July 8.

Apple filed a patent application document dated July 5 that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano's scroll wheel."

There! Now aren't you glad you waited to buy one? You didn't? Oh, sorry....

Source: JP Morgan on Yahoo! News

"Apple" Comes Before "Amazon"

"Apple" Comes Before "Amazon"
No, not in your Wiki, in sales!


Holy Apple Pie, Batman! Apple has just passed up Amazon in the music retailing biz.

When iPod was born, we all hit Snooze, since it was just another MP3 player, but we woke up quick when Apple followed it up with iTunes. As the saying goes, content is king, and Apple knew content would be what made its iPod zoom past all of the MP3 players already on the market. Now Apple is proving that content, services and Sssstyle are way more lucrative products than the nuts and bolts hardware platform. Listen all you dinosaur computer and gadget vendors: people don't fall in love with your RAM size or your logo! They want art and instant gratification by way of instant downloads!

You may have missed a smaller story in the news today that said CD-R for OEM is now only $0.10 a piece, due to a glut of materials. In other words, no one's buying CDs any more. Well, now we know where the music money's going. Look out, Hollywood, with your DRM dissolution...DVDs are the next to go!


Sources: Yahoo! News/Informationweek
and other random synapses

Apple TV is Coming...soon

According to Gizmodo, Apple TV will be here by the end of this month. With an interface that looks something like my Media Center PC interface, Apple TV looks to be a smaller unit than the mini, with a low-power Intel mobile processor, Apple remote and 40GB hard drive and sells for $299, making it an easy fit into an existing entertainment system. The 40GB drive can store about 50 hours of video and iTunes libraries. The built-in 802.11 wireless support lets you download TV shows and movies from the iTunes store to your PC or laptop and automatically synch up the latest on your Apple TV so you can view them on your nice, big HDTV screen. Finally, you can see that mole on Will (ala Will and Grace)'s face again!

Links
Official Apple TV Site
Pre-Launch Review

Peace Through Technology

Long time rivals AMD, Apple and Intel working together to build you the best laptop money can buy? That’s the rumor that is floating around by way of tech review site Engadget. If you’d asked me about this possibility three years ago, I’d have told you to lay off reading The Inquirer for awhile, but today the idea is not so far-fetched.

It started with the Apple-Intel alliance, where Apple became so fed up with heat and production issues of the latest IBM-based PowerPC processor that it finally followed the prophecy of former Apple CEO John “...turning down x86 was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made…” Scully and joined forces with Intel.

Next came the acquisition of ATI by AMD, filling the chipset gap in AMD’s product line and driving Intel CPU-based notebook makers into a quandary. Not to mention the decision point that Apple is now at: Continue to sell ATI, now AMD graphics paired with Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs (presuming they will get along) or switch to Nvidia graphics. Uh, in case you’re thinking the Intel graphics will work here, forget it. Intel makes integrated graphics solutions, not dedicated graphics processors, and lest you forget, Apple fans are all about great graphics processing. And switching from Intel CPUs to AMD-based designs as some suggest will happen is likely to be a challenge for Apple, requiring a new board design to support the hypertransport bus. But imagine it, if you will: The fastest Intel processors paired with the best graphics from AMD wrapped up in the Apple coolest designs! Sounds so good it almost makes me weep!

Via Engadget

Is Zune Out of Tune?

Anyone who dares to compare a Microsoft product to an Apple product risks entering into a religious war about good vs. bad companies, big vs. little guys, quality vs. mass appeal. The details of the products under consideration quickly get lost in the process. Don’t expect things to be any different this time as Microsoft takes on Ipod head-on with the introduction of the Microsoft Zune. Just a quick scan of readers’ comments on the Cnet Zune review page shows the emotion is already high, even though most have not even tried the Zune.

Microsoft’s success on this product will not be based on how cool the player looks or what hardware features it does or doesn’t have. There have been MP3 players available long before IPod and they have come and gone. Some had cooler features well before Apple debuted IPod, but none lasted long. What launched IPod into the high-volume, mass-appeal category was not the product itself, but the content and services that Apple cleverly packaged with IPod, in the form of ITunes. Were it not for ITunes and the legitimized downloadable music business that Apple enabled, IPod would just be a curiosity, heavier, more fragile, more expensive and less versatile than some of the products that came before it. Fortunately, Apple was smart enough to recognize that a portable music device needed music and lots of it. And while other companies struggled with proprietary formats and DRM issues, trying to get movie content out for their portable media players (PMPs), Apple went to the television networks and simply expanded its successful music service to TV shows, driving sales of its video Ipod.

If Microsoft is paying attention, it will start playing catch up on content real fast and not worry so much about the software side of things for Zune. Otherwise, the shiny new music player from Microsoft will end up on the pile of unsuccessful PMPs of the past.