The Apple blogosphere hills are alive with the sound of rumors!

So, it’s pretty clear that Apple’s iPod and iPhone product line is locked down for the holiday season following last month’s “Beat Goes On” event, right? Right. What’s that leave for new product updates? Why, the glory of the Mac, of course.

The always-enthusiastic, rarely-on-the-money Mac OS Rumors claims that a bevy of big product announcements are coming from Apple “between now and mid-December.”

These include the MacBook Nano (another spin on the long-rumored MacBook Thin) and a rather oddly muddle rumor about both an AppleTV product line featuring optical disc drives (presumably HD-DVD or BluRay) and also a new, even smaller Mac mini replacement called the Mac nano. Now, I have to say, that sounds like exactly the same rumor to me, unless Apple really wants to position the AppleTV as a DVD-player replacement instead of a new device. Personally, I’d rather see them just install some DVR software. But really, would Apple introduce a new AppleTV with a disc slot and lower the profile of the Mac mini? They would look exactly the same.

What are you expecting for Christmas from Apple this year?

Image via Guardian.

BusinessWeek and iSuppli partnered to analyze the costs of the AppleTV. Somewhat surprisingly, the $300 gadget was found to cost nearly $237, which yields a significantly lower margin than the iPod or iPhone.
Even more interestingly, the analysis shows that Apple makes significantly more money on each $400 AppleTV they sell, as the cost to upgrade the drive is much higher than the difference in raw cost to Apple. It is uncharacteristic for Apple to make this little of anything they sell. Anyone think this might be the source of Steve’s calling the device “a hobby”?
Thanks, Bill!

Technorati Tags: appleTV, margins, profit

Apple dropped a few lovely and unexpected tidbits in addition to the already anticipated iTunes Plus DRM-free music downloads. Specifically, Apple’s new “hobby,” the AppleTV, will soon have direct YouTube support, and an build-to-order option to quadruple the device’s capacity to 160GB will roll out soon, for $100 extra. It’s still not a DVR out of the box, but this thing is getting very capable very fast…
iTunes Plus, meanwhile, includes the ability to buy-upgrade (“bupgrade?”) any iTunes Store song you already own without copy-protection and a higher bit-rate for 30 cents per song. I must admit, I’d be moving what few iTS songs I have to the superior format, but none of the songs I have are in the first bunch of iT+ selections. Anyone making the move?

Technorati Tags: appleTV, itunes, itunes plus, youtube

Well, that’s the missing link resolved. The above video depicts an AppleTV running MythTV, an open-source PVR program. If the AppleTV hard drive were a little bit bigger, it would officially be a real TiVo challenger. Will Apple ever release official PVR support?

YouTube – MythTV On AppleTV
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: appleTV, mythtv

Though Apple still won’t acknowledge rumors that it’s about to make a serious video gaming play beyond iPod games, a third party has stepped in and shown that the AppleTV is ready for games now. It’s called Omelette, and it’s basically just Bejeweled. But hey, it works, right? Counterstrike is definitely going to be next.
Via Ars Technica.

Technorati Tags: appleTV, game, hack

Though Apple still won’t acknowledge rumors that it’s about to make a serious video gaming play beyond iPod games, a third party has stepped in and shown that the AppleTV is ready for games now. It’s called Omelette, and it’s basically just Bejeweled. But hey, it works, right? Counterstrike is definitely going to be next.
Via Ars Technica.

Technorati Tags: appleTV, game, hack

Owners of a shiny new AppleTV who are also fans of obscure foreign TV shows like Life on Mars or Doctor Who Series 3 might be interested in VisualHub.

VisualHub is a $23 video converter that transforms popular BitTorrent formats (DivX, XviD, AVI, all forms of MPEG) to MP4 format — which play nice on the AppleTV or video iPods.

VisualHub can batch process files and automatically add them to iTunes. It offers encoding up to 720p and claims to be much faster than QuickTime Pro.

For Windows users, there’s Videora AppleTV Converter, a free video converter designed especially for the AppleTV.

When combined with Videora, a file search and download program, video can be automatically found, downloaded and converted for the AppleTV using BitTorrent and RSS, according to the site. This must be the killer app for AppleTV — if it works. I’m downloading it right now to find out.

Anyone tried it?

Thomas Fitzgerald spent some quality time with his AppleTV and wrote up this thorough and interesting review. His conclusion? It’s a great product, well thought out and executed.

It is the Apple TV’s integration with iTunes that makes it a truly fantastic product. Again it’s the little things. When you watch something on your iPod, and then sync it, it knows your playback position. When you watch a podcast, (if you set it to sync only recent episodes) it removes it and sends the next episode (but cleverly it waits till you have watched it to the end before it does so) Synching seems to happen often and as soon as you change something it will sync. It’s pretty impressive and seamless. Another cool thing is that if you have slideshows set up in iPhoto when you sync your photos it remembers the music you had set with that slide show. I know it’s simple little thing, but it just struck me as being indicative of the seamless integration across all Apple’s products, that competitors just can’t or don’t want to achieve.

…Even if you live outside the US and don’t have access to movies and TV shows on iTunes there are plenty of ways to get content onto the Apple TV. Two must have pieces of software are mediafork (aka handbrake) and visual hub. Visual hub does an excellent job of transcoding all those divx movies you may have acquired through whatever method you may have acquired them (and I’ll make no comment or suggestions on that topic) with no significant loss in quality, which is a pretty impressive feat. Media fork does a similar job with DVDs.

Michael Adberg of WeaKnees, a company known for its TiVo upgrades, wrote in to say his company just started shipping a self-install upgrade kit for the AppleTV. For $200, you get a 160 Gbyte hard drive pre-formatted for the AppleTV. “The installation process only takes a few minutes and then the AppleTV will re-synchronize with your iTunes to download all of your music, videos, and photos,” WeaKnees promises.

Link.

Anyone check out the new AppleTV ad yet? It’s narrated by none other than John Krasinski, better known as Jim “Fat” Halpert on NBC’s “The Office.” Interestingly enough, HP has a huge promotional concern on the series, and its displays are everywhere on the show. Apple always wins, don’t they?

Via TVAddict.
Thanks, Kimra!