What does all the recent breaks in Apple announcements, from Macworld to the model numbers to new laptops indicate about Apple in 2008?

Apple used to pride itself on its secrecy. To this date, they are one of the best examples of companies with excellent control over itself- however over the past year I have noticed more and more breaks in secrecy and more accurate predictions from the rumor mills. Could this be an indicator of the company beginning to get too large?

This leads me to question, what has happened to Apple’s extreme secrecy regarding new products? As Apple is gaining market share and growing as a company, it must be becoming harder to maintain the extremely tight security and structure within the company it once retained. As more rumor sites appear, it only adds fuel to the existing hype always surrounding Apple.

Looking back upon 2007, we saw countless photos of unreleased products that turned out to be the real thing. In context, for Apple, this is almost unheard of! A typical Apple ‘slip-up’ used to be something like an empty reference on their website or a change from within the Apple Store itself (like shipping times). I cannot honestly recall from years past, the last time I witnessed a product spy shot of an Apple product that turned out to be the real thing!

It could just be my memory failing me but the fact is 2007 saw more breaks in Apple secrecy than ever before. To me, this screams that something has changed within Apple. Maybe because it is getting bigger, maybe because the attention surrounding the company is at an all time high but- either way I don’t think it is a good sign. Apple is slipping on something that it used to have a tight grip on.

If it is true, it is clearly demonstrating that something within Apple has changed, and evidently Apple is having a hard time coping with it- because they must notice! This could be very early indications that Apple is growing into an uber large, Microsoft type company. While Apple’s growth is great for Apple users, investors and, the technology world- if Apple’s growth exceeds control, it could end up hurting the company in other more serious ways. Will we see new MacBooks today? Will the iPhone SDK be delayed until March?

We’re back again! After our two week absence, we will be back to our normal posting methods. This week is the last week in February- in fact March begins on Saturday! Everyone has been anticipating the release of the iPhone SDK, which is looking like it will be delayed until March; didn’t I say “Late February” was a give away?! We are also expecting some kind of announcement tomorrow, most are speculating MacBook Pros (with Multi-Touch trackpads). Apple has made a consistent record of releases every Tuesday since Macworld so I don’t know what to make of it (if anything). As for theiLife, I will be traveling to Trenton later this week, so Sidney and I might shoot for an audio podcast- look out for it coming late this week, maybe even the weekend. Enjoy your week!

With the recent victory of Blu-Ray as the next-gen format, and with Apple belonging to the Blu-Ray disc camp since 2005, it is only natural that we should start to see Blu-Ray in Apple products.

Apple has long been known to bring new standards to the table. Take USB, or the floppy drive for example: When the original iMac was introduced with just USB, hardware manufactures scrambled to make peripherals, even though PC’s had been shipping with USB for years. While the switch was annoying for the early buyers, the iMac is credited for making USB what it is today — and for killing off the floppy.

Others, and myself, speculated for the past 3 years that we would soon see the introduction of Blu-Ray drives into Apple products — particularly as a build-to-order (BTO) option! However, over these past few years the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle rocked us all, and that could be the reason behind the inaction. Was Apple waiting for a clear winner? Is Blu-Ray still too expensive, even for BTO?! After all, Steve Jobs said that 2005 was the year of High-Def! We are almost three months into 2008!

What that reason was, or is, we will find out soon. I get the feeling that this year, we will see Blu-Ray drives in Macs, possibly standard but most likely BTO. Also, conveniently, with the AppleTV and iTunes shift into the living room, we could see another possible collaboration between Apple and Blu-Ray. It is also good to keep in mind that Steve Jobs is the largest shareholder in Disney, which supported the Blu-Ray camp since the beginning. Be it a free digital download with purchase of a Blu-Ray disc, a hardware upgrade to the Apple TV or something else, time can only tell. The future is Blu.

Okay, its been a very long time! I have to say, we are sorry! Over the course of the last two weeks, I have been incredibly busy, working on a 5 foot, 120 pound robot for the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition. Every year, we get a new game and 6 weeks to build a robot during the “Build Season”, which ended on the 19th. Now, for the next 6 weeks, my team will be going to various competitions to play against teams from across the world. All this robot building has severely hindered content on theiLife.com, and I have to apologize for the lack of it during my absence. We will resume regular work tomorrow and will be in full swing next week. Thanks for sticking with us- feel free to contact us anytime.

Thursday night I went to the Tibet Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall, hosted by Philip Glass. It was a great musical experience, featuring Sufjan Stevens, Marisa Monte and Band of Horses and many, many others. The performances were incredible, with Sufjan Stevens’ reworking of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Nawang Khechog, a Tibetan multi-instrumentalist, doing “The Last Stand of the Wild Yaks” with drums and a mini-didgeridoo. There was also Ashley MacIsaac and Phamie Gow playing a very catchy piece on fiddle and harp, respectively. To bring down the house, they had Ray Davies of Kinks’ fame play two classics, “Lola” and “All of the Day and All of the Night”.

It was a great night for such a prestigious and historical venue like Carnegie Hall, except I was decidedly unfulfilled. The artists were still making the speakers pop when they plugged and unplugged their instruments, and numerous times the performers had to ask a tech to help them get sound out of their amps. All the technical difficulties got me thinking about how just because society might have fancy new phones and computers, the art of performance hasn’t really come as far as it should in the past twenty years.

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The iLife Podcast – Epoisode #4: Macworld Closure

Show notes coming soon.

Hey guys! If you haven’t noticed, things have been very dry around here for the past week. We are still around, but have all been extremely busy. The writers here at theiLife.com have been occupied all week with various things…and we really apologize for keeping the website so empty. This next week content may be dry again, but we ask you to stick with us, once we get things resolved- we will be back in full swing. I hope that you can understand our schedules lack time to work this week but, keep in mind that we aren’t going anywhere. If you would like to help us out, feel free to contact us and lend us a hand!

Ahh, time for a weekly update!

This past week was one of serenity- Macworld is gone and we have sorted out most media from it. Sidney and I recorded a podcast wrapping up Macworld. Spanning over this coming week, you will be seeing the remaining interviews we have from the Expo- but besides that Macworld 2008 is done for good.

Over last week, we added Twitter integration into the site along with a dedicated “theilife” AIM screen name. We are really trying to reach out to our viewers (you guys!)- because there are a growing number of you and we really thank you all for coming back. We want to be open to questions, suggestions and any feedback you have for us or the site.

We are trying to provide a unique perspective on Apple and technology in general. We are open to anyone wanting to join us- be it writing, coding, drawing or whatever. If you want to become apart of theiLife.com, just contact us! We want to make the site a diverse place- by getting more people involved, the better we become.

Have a happy Monday! How about those Giants last night??

This will not be AJAX- you will have to refresh this page to see the latest.

6:09PM: We saw the MacBook Air commercial (#1).
7:00PM: Saw a Doritos commercial touting “Available on iTunes”.
7:53PM: Halftime Report: 1 Apple Ad, 1 iTunes Reference.
8:45PM: Pixar commercial for Wall•E!
10:07PM: The game is over, 1 Apple Ad total!

Many, many, people will be watching the Super Bowl tomorrow. Some watch just for the advertisements. That includes us — but as an added twist, theiLife will be at the computer, looking out for the Apple ads and providing a real-time count on the site. Apple is known to run ads during the Super Bowl — particularly special ads (read 1984 or iTunes+Pepsi). If there’s a new Apple commercial, we’ll be first reporting on it. Watch the game and check the site in case the bathroom calls and you miss this year’s Apple special. Coverage starts at 6:18PM, EST.