by Augie De Blieck Jr.
Forget the Beatles. This would be very cool, indeed, if it actually happened:
The Financial Times may have nailed one hell of a scoop Tuesday evening. According to the paper, Apple is considering an all-you-can-eat plan in which users would receive free access to iTunes “in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices.
I really like the idea of paying extra up front and not dealing with Yet Another Monthly Fee.
Rolling Stone : Paul McCartney Divorce Settlement: $48.7 Million
The divorce saga between Paul McCartney and his estranged wife Heather Mills has finally come to an end, with Mills receiving £24.3 million, or $48.7 million.
Last week, the pundits disagreed with me. They dared to say my prediction that the Beatles catalog would wind up on IDOL that night was bunk. They said I didn’t know what I was talking about. Everyone knew, after all, that it couldn’t and wouldn’t happen until after McCartney’s divorce was finalized.
The divorce is now a done deal. And IDOL is doing a second Beatles week this week. The timing couldn’t possibly be better, aside from Yoko Ono casting a spell to bring Lennon back from the dead to perform a duet with David Archuleta. I thus renew my prediction — the Beatles are coming to iTunes tonight. You’ll see the announcement in an ad during the first half of the show. Bring it on!
And if it doesn’t happen tonight, then it’ll happen on the results show tomorrow night. If it doesn’t happen then, I’ll come up with a new excuse. . . Eventually, you know I’ll be right!
(Let us all just hope that rumors of Mariah Carey acting as a guest judge tonight are horribly horribly wrong. I know she has a new album out to pimp and all, but — Mariah judging Beatles covers? No.)
As I write this, we’re only 2.5 hours away from an announcement of the Beatles on iTunes. I’m guessing it’ll be announced on a commercial at the first break. Come to think of it, tonight’s show was already taped. So I bet Seacrest didn’t make the announcement. (That would have leaked by now, unless they laid it in afterwards.)
It has to be a commercial.
Update: It’s 9:32 and we have no Beatles on iTunes yet. I’m beginning to think it’ll be announced during the results show tomorrow. That’s live, so there’s no need to keep things a secret during the taping of the performances.
Yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Failing that — yeah, the Beatles songs ARE on the iTunes store. They’re just sung by the IDOL contestants. . .
Today, Apple signed the deal with Paul McCartney (rumored to be at about $400 million) to carry the complete Beatles catalogue on iTunes. (I presume it’s an exclusive.)
Tomorrow, American Idol’s Top 12 perform Beatles songs.
Apple is a major sponsor of American Idol.
Apple traditionally releases new products on Tuesdays.
As I predicted a couple of weeks ago, the math on this is too good NOT to be true.
So how will it work? Will Apple announce the Beatles on iTunes tomorrow morning? Will they wait until Tuesday night and have Ryan Seacrest announce it? Would Steve Jobs appear on Idol via satellite to help pad out a two hour show that only needs to be 90 minutes? Or will Apple stay quiet and product a single 30 second commercial during Idol to make it official? (Picture a Beatles song playing for 30 seconds with a montage of pics of the Beatles from their prime, followed by a card, “Only on iTunes” followed by the Apple logo. And cut.)
Make your predictions now!
It was announced today that AMERICAN IDOL acquired the rights to the Lennon/McCartney songbook for the first time in its seven seasons. And what does that mean? BEATLES WEEK!
IDOL has said that they’re focusing on the contestants more this season and only planning on four guest mentors. Surely, scoring McCartney or Ringo would be a huge “get” and one worth doing.
Now, hold onto your hats:
Apple is a major sponsor of IDOL this year. Besides selling all the audio and videos of the show performances on iTunes, they’re also advertising their computers and iPods during the show.
Wouldn’t “Beatles Week” be the perfect time to release the Beatles catalogue to iTunes, with an original Beatle appearing on the show and everything?
It’s corporate synergy. It’s the biggest TV show of the week. It’s masterful marketing and promotion. You don’t need Steve Jobs to make the announcements to a few hundred journalists when you have Ryan Seacrest telling tens of millions of people, after weeks of advertising the iPod Touch on the show.
Discuss.
One more mini link dump tomorrow. Then, it’s some actual writing on Sunday. Promise! (It’s already done, so that’s how I know. . .)
$100 price drop on iPhones and iPods coming in the next two months | 9 to 5 Mac
We just got a tip that Apple is planning on dropping the prices again on the iPhone and iPod line within the next month or two – perhaps at the late February event, perhaps as late as mid-April. Our tipster says that Apple will drop the prices $100 on both the iPod Touch and iPhone lines.Also, the 8Gb iPod Touch will be dropped from the lineup according to the source.
My favorite story of the weekend remains the one about 3G never happening – AT&T just bought a huge chunk of the spectrum at the auction and will instead offer more wireless access across the country with it. With that, there’s no need to spend more money on 3G, though (contrary to the rumor) AT&T is working on that, too. Confusing, but fun to theorize.
Don’t forget the other rumor about the upgrade touchpad MacBook Pros being announced on Tuesday.
In the summer of 2005, Commodore hobbyists reverse engineered the service allowing them to create a Q-Link protocol compatible clone called Quantum Link Reloaded which runs via the Internet as opposed to using telephone lines. Using the original Q-Link software as a D-64 file, it can be accessed using either the VICE Commodore 64 emulator (available on multiple platforms, including Windows and Linux), or by using authentic Commodore hardware connected to the Internet by way of a serial cable connected to a PC with internet access.
As expected, the howls of disappointment I hear after yesterday’s SteveNote are coming from people not disappointed by what Apple is offering, but rather by how Apple isn’t giving them their imaginary dream machines and products. The disappointment is fueled not by poor products, but by the the failure to live up to impossible standards.
Look, the MacBook Air is a nice concept computer. (I may be the only one who likes the name.) Only the real die-hards are going to spend $1800 on a laptop they can fit into a manilla envelope. It’s just way too expensive for too little computer. The form factor is beautiful and the machine is a marvel of engineering. But is it necessary? Does it really fill a gap in the marketplace?
I know it’s been rehashed before, but the true gap in Apple’s product line is in a more entry-level computer for under $1000 that would plug into someone’s existing keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Picture a Mac Mini, but in a tower form or a pizza box form. Picture the kind of box that businesses would buy, or that home users familiar with a specific PC format would feel more comfortable with. If you want growth, that’s where you want to go.
Tangent: I’m not saying that growth is the be-all and end-all of business. It drives me nuts that companies on the stock market need to grow, grow, grow to keep investors happy and their stock price rising. Note that Apple’s stock price dropped dramatically during the SteveNote today. Of course, I believe it did during the iPhone announcement last year, which has been a money-printing factory.
The real star here is the Apple TV 2.0, which is just a software upgrade and a price drop. This is the set-top box we’ve all been waiting for. This is Apple TV done right. HIGH DEFINITION delivered from the cloud over the air to your TV directly. No intermediate computer way station. You order it up from your TV and it gets delivered to your TV. True, it’s only 720p instead of 1080p, but for a $5 rental of a chick flick, who’s going to mind?
My favorite conspiracy angle on the Next Gen DVD wars is the one that Don Reisinger repeated on TWiT this past weekend — that Microsoft threw hundreds of millions of dollars into HD-DVD to create a war that nobody would win, because Gates and Company knew that the real money would be in digital downloads, not more DVDs.
The funny thing is, if he’s right then Apple just won the first battle on Microsoft’s dime. I do think digital downloads are the future. And the Apple TV 2.0 is the first winning salvo in that war. Yes, the XBox 360 has offered something like this for a year, but it’s been hidden under a gaming box and a cheap HD-DVD player and — well, it’s too much for the average consumer. And it’s too expensive.
$229 for the Apple TV? That’s pure gold. That should just about put the Vudu player out of business, because it does something just as well for a much smaller price. $229 is a great price for this thing. It can replace Netflix and Blockbuster in one fell swoop, creating a product that’s easier to use and more fun, honestly, than anything the rest offer. Add onto that the free HD video podcast potential — we’ve been talking about that for a YEAR now — and the home network possibilities — showing off your pics, playing iTunes music, etc. — and you’ve got a winning product in an affordable form factor without another monthly fee.
Apple TV is the big winner here today. (I’ll be pushing future Amazon Associates points towards its purchase.)
I also really like the Time Capsule for its simplicity. Sure, you can do NAS yourself, and quite possibly for less. But the simplicity and the form factor and the ease of use of Time Capsule should make it a winning add-on for Leopard, too.
On the other hand, this might all be the Reality Distortion Field at work. Give it a week and we’ll see.
For now, I’m thinking that the Apple TV is within my reach. It has a small enough price point and a big enough upside that I think I might be able to get it past the Finance Committee in the relatively near future. And the longer the Writers Strike continues in Hollywood, the better the Apple TV and more movie rentals looks.
Related Links:
I won’t be able to update this site until later tonight, but in the meantime, I’ll leave this thread open for you to all comment on whatever it is Steve Jobs is announcing Right This Very Minute.
For your amusement, I now provide a link to my on-the-fly coverage of the iPhone announcement last January. Ah, memories. . .
I didn’t hear any serious Beatles rumors this year, unlike last. . .
Is Steve Jobs still interested in gaming for the Mac?
Coming to the Mac in 2008: ‘Spore’ | CNET News.com
In its early stages, Electronic Arts’ forthcoming and much-anticipated game Spore was code-named Sim Everything, a play on its heritage as the newest game by The Sims creator Will Wright.But now, “sim everything” has another meaning for the company: EA is set to announce Tuesday it will release Spore later this year simultaneously for PCs and Macs.
They’ll be showing it off on the show floor this week.
Finally, a dose of sanity:
Macenstein | So, remind me again why we want an ultra portable?
With Macworld just ’round the corner, the rumor mill has pegged an ultra-portable Mac as a near certainty. Usually, once 3 or more semi-reliable Mac rumor sites say we’re going to see something at Macworld, odds are we’re going to. The problem is, the ultra portable Mac, in ANY of the iterations I’ve heard thrown about, is the last thing I want to see Apple release. For some reason I am just missing the allure of a wafer thin MacBook, and I would like someone out there to set me straight. What am I missing here?
Steve Jobs makes his keynote tomorrow. And once again, we’ve reached the point where the rumors have been repeated so often that they’re now a given fact. And when Steve Jobs doesn’t confirm these Plucked From Thin Air rumors and make them into products to be purchased at the Apple Store Right This Very Minute — what, wasn’t there a story on Digg yesterday that Apple Stores received special weekend shipments they’re not allowed to open? — people get ticked off.
They saw all those patent filings done in defense just in case one day one of them happens to be useful, and they’ve combined them in their mind to create one uber-device, capable of solving all the world’s computer ills and saving the lives of starving children somewhere in Central Africa, right about where Bono recently forgave a whole lot ofdebt or something.
They’ve laughed at the obvious Photoshop jobs on Saturday, started believing in the made-up device on Sunday, and then sold stock on Wednesday when the product that never existed didn’t ship out.
Get a grip.
MacWorld is tomorrow. Steve Jobs will likely announce some cool things. The only thing I’d bet on right now is movie rentals through iTunes. I’m guessing we’ll hear more about the iPhone SDK, but he might make that a special event next month. I don’t know. My mind is open. I’m hoping for cool things, but I’m not expecting anything.
It’s much more fun that way.
Or, read Apple Insider’s report from last Friday. It says that though the tablet computer is an on-going concern, it’s not going to be ready for MacWorld. (But I’ll take a guess and say that if it does, it’ll come bundled with the same kind of connectivity Amazon’s Kindle has. That would explain that whole “Something In The Air” slogan being paraded around. Or maybe that just means Phil Collins is going to bang on the drums at the end of the Stevenote instead of John Mayer flailing on the guitar.)
If you happen to be attending MacWorld, don’t forget to bring your MacWorld Expo Celebrity Checklist with you!
Next year, you won’t have to wait so long. MacWorld is scheduled for January 5th – 9th.
GAMES:
How to win at Rock Paper Scissors.
McDonalds boss blames video games for fat kids. Hunh.
Forget Guitar Hero. All the cool kids want to play Turntable Hero.
Announced at CES this week: The first third-party Guitar Hero III guitar for the Wii.
TECH:
Funniest ThinkGeek prank ever? A new alarm clock that donates money to a cause you hate for every time you hit the snooze bar.
Belkin’s Podcast Studio: It’s not a joke, but I wonder how useful it can be, particularly with the iPod’s poor audio recording quality.
Apple announced a new Mac Pro yesterday. The thing is a behemoth of power and awe-inspiring bullet points. You know it’s huge when the lowest RAM setting offerd by Apple is 2 GB. The most basic configuration is still $2300.
Noah Wyle imitates Steve Jobs at MacWorld NYC 1999. He’s got the mannerisms down. I wish they still had MacWorld in New York City. I could go, then. . .
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