AN APPLE A DAY
There's a fair bit of excitement on memeorandum since yesterday over ThinkSecret's post titled "Road to Expo: Apple's new media experience coming soon". The piece is about Apple POTENTIALLY:
"...planning to unveil a robust new content distribution system in January at Macworld Expo alongside its revamped media-savvy Mac mini, Think Secret has learned. The new content system and related media deals, which will include feature-length content, expanded televisions offerings, and more, will further cement Apple's increasing lead in digital media delivery."
Regular readers already know how much I like my existing Mac Mini, and that I'm actively looking for the closest thing in the Windows World. Not to mention my speculation on what Apple could do over the next few months to more meaningfully change it's PC market share vs. Microsoft.
Coming back to the here and now, it's likely that the new Mac Mini comes with a new content system that according to ThinkSecret:
"...will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user's hard drive. Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user's iDisk, which Front Row 2.0 will tap into. When the user wishes to play the content, robust caching technology Apple previously received a patent for will serve it to the users computer as fast as their Internet connection can handle. The system will also likely support downloading the video content to supported iPods but at no time will it ever actually be stored on a computer's hard drive.
This method, which will be every bit as simple and straightforward for consumers as the iTunes Music Store is now, poses a number of advantages over Apple's current pay-once-download-once system, including saving users' hard drive space and essentially providing a secure back-up of everything purchased."
Not sure if I like this "owning but not touching" scheme of video content delivery, but will reserve judgment until the actual details are released.
Of course Apple Insider had already confirmed the day before, Steve Jobs' keynote at the MacWorld Conference 
and Expo on January 10 in San Francisco. As they explain:
"Both analysts and insiders are expecting Jobs to use the 2006 expo to introduce the first Macintosh systems that will be based on processors from Intel Corp."
And that was preceded by reports from Wall Street on Wednesday of Apple potentially releasing new Intel-chip based Apple Powerbook laptops, in January, a full six months before earlier expectations.
All this of course help the stock move from $68 to over $72 since Wednesday last week.
So it's been a busy half a week on Apple related news.
What does this all mean for a lot of Apple geeks like me?
That Steve Jobs has successfully pushed Christmas for a lot of us from December to January. It's going to be a bit barren under the tree for some of us on December 25th. Thanks a lot, Steve.
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