Kevin Rose (Digg, Revision3, Pownce) may have an inside source at Apple – which wouldn’t be surprising given his elite status amongst the digerati and Bay Area location. He’s heard that the entire iPod lineup will see a refresh and iTunes 8.0 will be introduced by the end of September. (Apple’s free iPod promotion ends 9/15…) I’m not extremely fond of the Nano Fatty and wouldn’t mind seeing it replaced with the rendering Rose provided (above) – similar in form to the previous Nano that I’m a fan of.
Supposedly, iTunes 8.0 provides new features and functionality worthy of something more than just a point upgrade designation. Which lines up nicely with our quarterly iTunes music subscription service rumor and iPhone 2.1 update. This time around the claim is $129.99 for a year of unlimited downloads and playback. Works for me if it pans out – cheaper than satellite radio without the continuous network connectivity requirement of a Pandora.
I love my Slacker portable and Amazon MP3. Don’t have time to find most music on my own. Slacker does it for me, and I don’t have to be connected to listen. Plus the “now playing” feature with artist info is awesome.
Not mentioned are Mr. Rose’s previous “insider knowledge leaks” that proved totally false.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/03/kevin-rose-confirms-iphone/
I am a huge Diggnation fan, but would recommend discounting any and all statements from Kevin Rose about Apple products.
He’s had spotty past performance for sure, but he did get the $199 iPhone right and has a picture this time. (Though who knows where it came from – I feel like I’ve seen it before.) Everyone loves a good Apple rumor. Plus it’s time for an iPod refresh and well past due for iTunes “8.0” – so I’ll go ahead and predict the same thing without any inside sources.
It all makes sense. Unlike first-gen iPhone stuff, Kevin isn’t saying anything surprising. The fun part — for me, at least — would be seeing how Steve Jobs spins the subscription service since he’s been against the idea.
P.S. Also, how many days (or hours) will it take for someone to create a tool to un-DRM subscription files (and convert them into proper MP3)?
it makes a lot of sense too, just in time for the xmas season ramp-up… i’d like to see a new cheaper ipod touch
To answer Ivan they already have made a tool to do that ;-)
@ bob: They might come up with something new to make labels feel more secure.
I want what I’ve wanted for a while now, an iPod touch with a lot of storage. Yes I know this means it won’t be super thin, but its time to retire the iPod classic, and I can’t live without at least 100GB of storage for music. I’d love to move to the brave new world with a big screen and multitouch Wifi web-browsing, but I’m not going there unless there’s enough room for all my music, podcasts, video etc.
As far as iTunes, I just wish it was a little more responsive. And didn’t have quite so many bugs (like ignoring the sync settings for my Apple TV in some cases). I’d rather they worked on that than new features, but I know I’ll be disappointed on this one.
Is the photo just an illustration or is it supposed to be a spy shot of the actual product? And if it is supposed to be real, Why are these spy shots so heavily compressed? Well, the fake ones use JPEG artifacts to cover for lousy Photoshop skills.
This looks like a fake to me. And I would doubt that Apple would make the Nano BIGGER. Another ding against this is that if you were watching video in landscape orientation, the control buttons on the click-wheel would be in the wrong orientation. That seems very un-Apple to me.