thomas fitzgerald.net

The much rumoured January 27th Apple media event has been confirmed by Apple. The company sent out official invites which showed an Apple logo with a splash of colours and the tag line “Come See our Latest Creation”. Note it says “Creation” singular. Anyway, it will in all likelihood be the unveiling of the over-rumoured tablet. Soon, the suspense will all be over and the complaining about what it doesn’t have can start !

I’ve been doing my best to avoid the whole tablet rumour scene, because for the most part the predictions are too vague and random for any of them to really hold weight, with the possible exception of the WSJ’s recent assertion of a media event on January 27th. I couldn’t help myself though when I came across this gem from Cult of Mac this evening:

According to reader Tom: “I just heard [to] be ready for a steep learning curve regarding the “new” Apple product about to be released [and its] interface. This person is an employee of Apple and had just had a meeting regarding some of the new things coming. He/She would not go into details, but did say that he/she hoped we liked learning.”

A few days ago someone spotted an upcoming book in Amazon’s database for an unreleased version of Aperture due out next year labelled “Aperture X”. This immediately began speculation that the next version of Aperture would be called “Aperture X” rather than the obvious “Aperture 3″. Then, today Hardmac.com had a story claiming that a source has confirmed to them that it will indeed be called Aperture X and that it is being named as such to bring it into “alignment” with OS X’s naming. They also suggest that the date on the Amazon listing is fake and that it will be changed once the product is released.

I just came across this interesting rumor thanks to a tweet from Ian Betteridge. Short version: Apple have told Nvidia to go stick their gpu’s where the sun don’t shine. On the face of it this seems unlikely, considering how fundamental Nvidia GPU’s and architecture seems to be to Apple’s latest Laptop Line Up. But then there’s this page on Apple’s support website about the Nvidia Graphics failures that I like many others was the unfortunate victim of. What’s surprising about this is the language from Apple:

There’s been a couple of fairly unbelievable rumors floated recently, that seem to be somewhat unlikely. The first is that Apple plan to buy Electronic Arts. I find this highly unlikely. While Apple is certainly making inroads into the hand held gaming space, EA’s portfolio covers a range of platforms and it just doesn’t seem like something that Apple would be interested in.

The headline sounds like a cheesy sci-fi movie, but here’s an interesting theory for you. Could Apple have held off on a new 17″ version of the Macbook Pro in order to release a quad core version? Intel have released quad core chips so it is possible. Now that would be nice. Very Nice.

From TUAW:

Apple may be working to seed developers with an early build of Mac OS X 10.6 at this year’s WWDC. 10.6 will not include any new significant features from 10.5; instead, Apple is focusing solely on “stability and security.”

It’s possible I suppose, but I’m not sure how likely. Then agin, it would make sense with the whole two bridges thing (from the WWDC invite). Anyway, not long to go now!
[Read Rumor: Mac OS X 10.6 to debut at WWDC 08? - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

All this talk recently about the possibility of Apple buying Adobe has me wondering, what would happen if such an earth shattering acquisition did happen. I’m not trying to discuss the likelihood of it, because frankly it’s pretty remote, but imagine for a second if Apple did go down that route. It would send ripples through the technology industry the likes of which have never been seen before. Windows users would immediately go into panic overdrive and cries of “monopoly” would be heard across the globe. But what would it mean for the average consumer? Who would be the winners and losers if such a take over took place?