On Wednesday, Apple confirmed that it was issuing a special, although mysterious, invitation only event to give a few lucky members of the media a sneak peek at some of the latest Apple releases. The event is scheduled for next Wednesday, September 1st (10 am. PT) and is to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
The invitations included little more than a picture of a guitar featuring the iconic Apple symbol with the location and date information. With such a cryptic event, speculation is, of course running wild, as to what exactly Apple will be unveiling next week with predictions ranging from a new iPod device to the introduction of a new updated Apple TV- even a streaming music service is possible since Apple acquired a related company in 2009. Rumors have been floating around for some time about the possibility of Apple partnering with other companies to offer $0.99 rentals of television shows and other content from major media providers.
Other possibilities that are circulating in the rumor mill about the big event include new iPod updates or product features since Apple has a history of making iPod related announcements in September and analysts have been predicting a new touch enabled iPod that would possibly include video features and perhaps wireless capability.
While the announcements are expected to be music related, some are also hopeful that a new smaller version of the iPad may be among the announcements and given the current battle in the smart phone industry, any upgrades to the iPhone 4 may not be outside of the realm of possibility;however, with iPod sales for the June quarter down to 9.41 million, a drop from the 10.2 million that they saw last year, any iPod news at this point could give sales a nice little boost and since they have dominated the industry of portable music players for some time now they are likely to lead with their strongest product, at least to some extent.
Whatever the announcements, Apple will surely give the blogosphere something to buzz about just in time for consumers to begin thinking about the 2010 Christmas shopping season and DaniWeb will be following up with the news after the event, whatever it may be.
