Rumor: Apple planning late February event?
Apple could be gearing up for a late February event, according to a report out Thursday.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog reported that Mira Mobile Television, a West Coast television production firm, is hiring in preparation for an Apple event to be held at the end of February. TUAW notes that the listings aren't posted on Mira's site, and it calls its own report an "unconfirmed rumor" based on a single source.
So why give it any credence? For one, Apple's Greg Joswiak earlier this week reiterated the company's plans to introduce the iPhone software developer's kit in late February. It's hard to imagine how a media event heralding a software developer's kit would unfold, but the timing would be right, and the release of the SDK is a significant milestone in the evolution of the iPhone.
Coming off the new higher-capacity iPhone and iPod Touch introduced this week, it would be a bit surprising if Apple chose this rumored event to launch the 3G iPhone, but that would certainly be an equally important milestone. Announcements about additional European carriers as well as the first Asian carriers are also expected in due time.
AppleInsider said it had heard similar rumors concerning a late February event, but was likewise unable to call it anything else but a rumor. Stay tuned, the invitations for these kinds of things tend to go out about a week or so ahead of time.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
annoyances and appear to be addressed in the current seed of
10.5.2 - nothing meriting anything in the way of an
announcement (particularly since Apple's pattern has not been
to talk about issues but rather just to quietly fix them).
As far as releasing it as a stand-alone OS... I don't doubt that
will happen some day, but it's not likely to happen this month.
Apple needs their hardware and OS penetration to be a little
bigger to make that work. They need to make driver
development as simple as possible to encourage it, make the
licensing models acceptable to OEMs and consumers, and be
able to present a sufficiently large enough software base to
appeal to a larger customer base.
If they wait too long, the competition might land on its feet, if
they don't wait long enough, they risk releasing a product that's
not reliable on OEM equipment and incompatible with existing
apps - which would drive away customers by giving a bad
impression / experience.
I haven't given it a whole lot of thought, but I'm sure that the
business development group has some criteria outlined already
that identify the conditions when it's right. If they do play their
cards right, it'd make a huge wave in the computer industry. Dell
would sell OS X over Windows any day (they've publicly stated as
much). I just don't think Apple's quite yet ready for the sort of
expansion that would precipitate.
Driving their stock up...it might just make sense.
That being said, the OSX on beige PCs theory - forget it. Apple is a hardware company - they use software (and music) to sell their hardware.
Could it be that the *big* news coming out of the SDK release could be that developers (as well as humble end-users) will have access to these environments?
Will some of the OS features that people have been jailbreaking (file and directory access, etc.) be let out on parole?
Let us hope!
already):
http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i152/imacpwr/S-i.jpg
- Yeah Apple abandons OSX switches to Windows Vista
- by Andy kaufman February 10, 2008 8:11 PM PST
- Apple will report "If you cannot beat them, join them!" as OSX 10.5 Leopard will be the last OSX developed and all new Macintosh computers will have Windows Vista installed on them instead of OSX. The iPod and iPhone will switch to Windows Mobile.
- Reply to this comment
-
(20 Comments)Steve Jobs will announce that "Apple will not be going the way of Commodore Amiga, we are migrating to a 100% Windows solution in our products now." as he stands side by side with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer as Apple now parters up with Microsoft on all products now, as Microsoft buys out a large share of Apple stocks.
Bill Gates announces "We could have used the money to buy out Yahoo, but since Yahoo rejected our offer, we realized that investing in Apple would be a lot better in the long run. Now Apple will help us develop Windows 7.0 using the OSX technology, and we will integrate MSN with Apple's iTunes store."