Ok, the Apple keynote is coming up and I’ve been checking out the usual rumor mills among other highly regarded Apple sites and I’ve come away with the feeling that everyone is missing something. Normally, I wouldn’t use my blog for speculation, but I can’t shake it—it seems so obvious to me! There are rumors aplenty that Apple is going to release an ultraportable notebook (or subnotebook) and some even think that it’s a bad idea. But a subnotebook would be so… well, Sony, not Apple. It wouldn’t ceate a new product category the way that Apple likes to do (see Newton, iMac, iPod, iPhone). Moreover, Steve Jobs has said that he was more than just intrigued with the iPhone’s touchscreen capabilities—that he could see the technology influencing the entire line of Apple products. And I think it’s precisely the touchscreen technology’s influence that all the subnotebook rumors are missing—namely because they all have keyboards! ((Well, not everyone, sort of.)) Imagine instead, a big Nintendo DS—a subnotebook with two screens. These screens operate in tandem so that documents and windows can be spread across them, or one or the other can become an input device (a keyboard being just one of those). That’s my prediction, at any rate. And at least part of the reason that I feel like it’s not too wild is because Apple’s been after this device for a while. It might’ve been a Sculley-era Apple vision, but Jobs is the only who could make it a reality. Regardless, the keynote will still be valuable.

I can’t believe that Sony missed the boat so badly on this one. Apple realized early on that the iPod was never going to fly unless you could get all your music on to it. They didn’t care how you did that. In fact, their first campaign with iTunes was “Rip. Mix. Burn” It wasn’t UNTIL people were using iPods like crazy that Apple went to the music industry with some leverage and said, “Hey, do you want in on this?” Sony’s horrible DRM and lackluster product design show that Sony probably went to the publishers first who of course only gave a very tentative “Maybe. And only if you erase the books every 60 days!” Duh. I’ve seen elsewhere that book publishers have no offered more than tentative support but in reality who doesn’t want to at least keep some works for reference? For me, at least, there is NO point in having a digital reader unless I can use it for reference. That means BIG hard drive and I get to keep the shit I buy. Content producers will never want to understand that. It’s the job of the hardware companies to make them understand that consumer desire (or at least take advantage of it) and Sony, for one, missed the boat.

This blog is about media and culture and I’m increasingly thinking about adding a section devoted to copyright because its effects on ideas are relevant and because so often the subject gives me something to really go off about. Read more…

I did not know this but somebody ranks the Superbowl commercials using focus groups. Since I don’t trust USA Today to leave their chart up for any length of time, I’ve re-posted the ranking here. After all the magic eight-ball questioning about whether Napster was really a better deal than iTunes, I’m glad to see that people noticed it was just a lousy ad that used hardly any imgination. Why do I get the distinct feeling that a nosy VP of marketing decided they were a creative director? “A sign at the Superbowl! It’s grass roots!” Yeah. Except that it’s a superbowl ad, dummy. Read more…