Ugh, not another one of these:

Does Steve Jobs like making these big keynote announcements? Call me crazy (Hi, Crazy!), but didn’t he just do one of these last month? And then, another one like two months before that? And then, every time Steve plans one of these announcement keynote things, the rumor websites go wild trying to predict things, and looking at what Apple Legal has censored, etc. MacRumors’ rumor roundup has links to all of these places where the legal geniuses have triumphed. You know something, Apple? If you hate rumor websites that much, how about you stop with the keynotes and announce new products like everybody else does? Just randomly pop it on your website one day and issue a press release–it’s painless! You would totally catch the rumor websites off guard!

Okay, whatever, so it’s another big keynote coming up tomorrow, and this time it’s all about music again. And it’s right before the holiday shopping season again. This is starting to sound like a pattern, right? Apparently not, since everyone is complaining again that iPod updates are “overdue.” How long will it take these websites to figure it out–Apple sells most of its iPods during the holiday shopping season, which is why they annually revamp the lineups right before the holiday quarter starts. I don’t see what’s so hard to get here. This is a big reason why I continue to do podcasts: because a mainstream press can be very stupid a lot of times and I feel it’s my duty to get out some stuff that makes a bit more sense. *sigh*

But one of the things that I really want to remind the Apple/Mac news stream is that rumors are rumors. This means that they’re rumors, which means that they really aren’t confirmable, which is why I tend to make my predictions based upon what I’d like to see, not based upon what will happen, because if I say something “will” happen, and it doesn’t, I’ve now successfully reduced my credibility. That’s why I make predictions based on things that I’d like to happen, which means there’s no credibility involved whatsoever. How many times have you seen a rumor be right? You could probably count them on the fingers of one hand, with the last time that I can personally recall being the Intel Macs announcement from June 2005. And Apple always throws something out that you can’t predict. Who would have expected Apple to have ZERO Mac announcements at Macworld 2007? Who was thinking that Apple would do a .Mac Web Gallery–and that’s it? And nobody was ready for the announcement of Safari for Windows. Rumors are rumors, and not much else.

So with that downer, what would I think would be more likely to be seen tomorrow? Again, this is just personal opinion, with absolutely no factual backing. Let’s tackle the rumor roundup one by one:

iPod Touch (or a more probable/consistent capitalization, iPod touch): Every announcement has a “central” product which is near-guaranteed, so the rumors say. For Macworld, it was Apple TV (and arguably the iPhone). For WWDC, it was Leopard. For last month’s thing, it was the iMac. And this so-called iPod touch is supposed to be for tomorrow. I guess this is supposed to be the iPhone without the phone that a number of people have been wanting to see? I’ll say this: I wouldn’t doubt that this is coming tomorrow, and I’d like to see it, but here’s a couple of adjustments I’m going to have to recommend:

• Either a Ripoff or Something Brand New I highly doubt that Apple will have this new iPod be a direct ripoff of the iPhone. What makes the iPhone revolutionary isn’t any one particular aspect of the thing, the phone, the iPod, or the internet, and for Pete’s sake the fact that the iPhone runs OS X is pointless unless developers are allowed to take advantage of it. If Apple were to only offer a copy of the iPhone sans the phone features, I think that the platform’s delicate balance would be broken. Furthermore, I think that Apple wants to see the iPod lineup be a device primarily for music, whereas the iPhone is a device for really creating the optimal mobile communications device, which just happens to include a miniature iPod inside of it. In fact, I personally think that the music features of the iPhone are more similar to iTunes than they are to the iPod. Therefore, if Apple really plans to do iPhone without the phone, I have doubts about it being marketed under the iPod moniker.
• The Widescreen iPod We’ve All Been Waiting For I do think it would be smart for Apple to unveil a widescreen iPod, particularly for all those movie watchers who want the iPhone’s widescreen, but want the hard drive capacity of a full-size iPod, which the iPhone doesn’t offer them. As such, I think this widescreen, probably touch screen iPod should have a different user interface than the iPhone. Whereas the iPhone’s interface is optimized for the interface of icons which represent different applications on the platform, the widescreen iPod’s touch interface will better resemble the existing iPods in its “menu fashion”, or maybe Apple will come out with something completely new.
• If It’s iPod touch, It Won’t Be Touched When Apple released an iPod a few years ago with video support, did they call it the iPod video? No! They simply released a fifth-generation iPod with video playback on it. I personally think that if Apple does plan to release a widescreen/touch screen iPod tomorrow, it will be the sixth-generation iPod. If they actually planned to call it the iPod touch (which is a dumb name, by the way), then they would be doing it alongside the existing iPod, and making the touch version cost more. Which by the way, would be dumb, given that you could get pretty much the same thing for around the same price with the iPhone already, or get something that’s still fairly good with the existing iPod.

Radio on the iPod: Oh man, I’d love to see this. I mean, this is actually something that the Zune offers that the iPod doesn’t. Okay, you’ll tell me that you can get radio on the iPod with the Radio Remote accessory, but who wants to pay for a remote to listen to radio? How is the remote supposed to make navigating radio easier? And there’s also plenty of good stuff on AM radio as well as FM. Built-in radio would be a great feature. Will Apple implement it? I don’t know, but I’d like to see it.

iPod nano: I’m sorry, but this looks stupid:

The iPod nano is already slimmer (thinner, sleeker, insert your own adjective here) than that mockup, and I have a hard time seeing Apple doing that. And I really think that Cover Flow is useless on a screen that small–there comes a point where it gets hard to see the album cover art. If I was using that, I would probably go completely by the name of the album on the bottom. Apple may be planning an iPod nano refresh, but I’m having a hard time believing these mockups.

Beatles on iTunes: It’s totally possible, but it’s been predicted for over a year now. It’s still possible. No other comments.

iPod shuffle PRODUCT (RED): I guess my response to that would be “why not?” But then my next response would be “Why not an iPhone PRODUCT (RED) or an iMac PRODUCT (RED)?” If Apple really wants to support the cause, why make it just the cheap music players?

iTunes Ringtones: Again, I’d say it’s possible, but I’m tending to think it might be announced a bit later on. After all, haven’t we had enough iPhone news for a little while? (Okay, I’ll probably live to regret that statement.)

Apple to Produce Content Absolutely no way. I thought this was supposed to be a joke.

iCar Silliest thing I’ve ever heard. I personally think that Apple producing its own content is more likely.

So as you can see, tomorrow’s event is about music, so I don’t really care as much about this one as I did about the August 7th Mac-focused event, which I was quite a bit more attentive to. Okay Apple, we’re listening, shoot your stuff so we can close up and get on with our boring lives.

Tags: announcements, Apple, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, Keynote, music, rumors, Steve Jobs