The interest about tomorrow's keynote speech by Steve Jobs seems to be at a really high level. It's two hours long instead of 1:30, Jobs has invited friends and family to attend, a first as far as I know. There was a bunch of extra A/V equipment delivered to Moscone where it's taking place, beefier looking than usual.
Apple has banners hanging up that are 16x9....
My guesses:
It'll be a 16x9 iPod along with a syncing media dock that's a PVR and has component out to the TV.
The iTV thing from a couple months ago will turn out to have been clever misdirection to draw attention away from any TV related Apple patents, and instead people will be able to get natively portable TV shows. Like TivoToGo, but easier and better, as is the Apple modus operandi. Since TivoToGo for Mac is being announced tomorrow, it'd be perfect 'legacy support' for people who already have a Tivo, but will also serve as a marketing tool to go to the 'native' one shot media dock that will keep their iPods synced up with current TV shows.
Oh, and a quick guess about:
1. Why it's 1/2 hour longer
2. Why there is extra A/V equipment
and
3. Why Jobs has invited friends, assuming it's not to announce retirement:
A: Live musical performance tied into a special branding version of the iPod, ala the U2 black one from a few years ago. This time, maybe the Beatles iPod, with Sir Paul McCartney and maybe Ringo performing onstage in concert with a Beatles edition iPod that's a 'member of the group'.
Imagine:
Dark stage, carefully placed spotlights on the two performers, each sitting on a stool with a microphone, and a third stool carrying the iPod, mounted to the newly announced media center and providing the a video montage of the dead Beatles on an overhead screen.
The iPod is also providing a studio remastered track of Lennon and Harrison singing that the two surviving Beatles are performing with. It will be one last performance, in a sense, a Beatles Reunion....
The crowd goes wild. The music fills the amphitheater, and around the world, news flashes.
Then the iPod suddenly says 'Do Not Disconnect' and stops playing music.
McCartney tries to reset it with a safety pin he carries. "It's all right folks, I do this all the time with my own iPod."
And somewhere, the technician who set up the Windows 98 box that blue screened on Bill Gates during CES looks up from scavenging through a dumpster, feeling a quick shiver of happiness before returning to the daily chore of finding something edible among the leftovers of a mid-town Seattle restaurant.
