Looks like Apple is launching a new line of iPods next Wednesday, and bloggers are posting speculative mockup photos. They include a square nano -- nicknamed the "phatty" -- and another one that looks a lot like an iPhone. Read on for links to the photos, and more discussion of the announcement.
Engadget has a speculative mockup photo of the "phatty", and 9 to 5 mac ran a contest for readers to come up with the best mockup photo of a new iPod that resembles an iPhone..
MacRumors speculates that Apple might introduce wireless iPods., using Wi-Fi to either browse the iTunes store remotely, or use the iPod as a remote control for iTunes.
I’m not exactly going out on a limb here, but I have a feeling that the sixth-generation iPod will be a widescreen edition that flips its display horizontally or vertically depending on how you orient the device. Alert readers may recognize that this feature already exists in the iPhone, and that’s a pretty good guide for what we can expect next Wednesday. Remember all those second-generation iPhone rumors that breathlessly predicted $249 iPhones in the fall? Well, my guess is that this is that—only it’s an iPhone without the phone and Internet part of the equation. Rather, it’s a music player that takes all the innovations of the iPhone’s multimedia features and puts them in a $249-or-so case.
AppleInsider draws a connection between the Sept. 5 announcement and the Beatles:
The invites, which arrived by e-mail, depict an enlarged CoverFlow interface with the caption, "The beat goes on." The wording appears to have been borrowed from the trailing line of The Beatles' final press release, which was issued by Apple Records on April 10, 1970, following the band's split.
"Spring is here and Leeds play Chelsea tomorrow and Ringo and John and George and Paul are alive and well and full of hope. The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you," read the 1970 Beatles release. "When the spinning stops -- that'll be the time to worry, not before. Until then, the Beatles are alive and well and the beat goes on, the beat goes on."
Apple and the Beatles have had a strained history since the computer company's earliest days. In February, Apple and the remaining members of the Fab Four settled a trademark dispute -- the Beatles had been making prominent use of the apple trademark since long before Woz and Jobs cooked up their company. Beatles music is not available on iTunes, although the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album, and 15 other albums from Lennon's solo career, are available on iTunes.)
So will there be a Beatles connection at the Sept. 5 announcement? We have no idea. Macworld's Philip Michaels thinks so. I love his analysis. I've read it three times. It reminds me of the way people pored over Beatles records to find evidence to fuel the Paul-is-dead conspiracy theory:
Still, speculation based on that phrase, "the beat goes on," is pretty thin; it was a popular catchphrase everywhere in the groovy 60s, not just for the Band Formerly Known As The Quarrymen. And if the phrase is associated with any individual musical group, it's not the Four Lovable Mop-Tops, but rather, Sonny & Cher..
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