Brianstorm

What tune will Apple play tomorrow?

By now I’m sure you’re well aware of Apple’s impending announcement that’s scheduled or 3pm UK time tomorrow.  All Apple had to do was change their homepage to a notification of the announcement date and time and the Twitterverse duly exploded.  Hours later and it’s still riding high in the trending topics.  

So what’s it going to be?  Well, there are two things I would love for it to cover;

Streaming iTunes
This seems to be everyone’s favourite for what’s coming.  The Apple TV 2 is a clear indication of Apple’s (and the world’s!) cloud based strategy - you can stream movie trailers, tv shows, movies, photos, even YouTube videos.  Spot the missing link?  Your music still has to come from a mac somewhere on your network.  An iTunes streaming service would fill that gap.  Add to that the success of Spotify, which is now producing more of a profit for labels than iTunes in Sweden and you can see why they’d want a slice of this action.  And what about LaLa, who Apple purchased earlier this year.  It seems a dead cert.  I just want to know how much they’re going to charge me a month to tempt me away from my Spotify Premium account!

Apple TV Apps
I don’t think this will be it, as the focus appears to be on iTunes, but I’d love to see the iOS app platform launch on the Apple TV.  We’ve seen through the jailbreak community that the groundwork is there.  I’d kill for an iPlayer, Sky Sports or NetFlix app for the Apple TV and I’m sure they’ll come.  Whether that’ll be tomorow or not I don’t know.  The lack of a developer build of the Apple TV OS to test Airplay suggests that there’s a link, but I think it may be the addition of that elusive streaming music option rather than the launch of a full application platform.

The Beatles
No iTunes rumor would be complete with the obligatory ‘it’s the Beatles coming to iTunes’ classic.  I don’t get it - why not just buy the CD and rip it yourself?! :)

Either way, I guess we’ll all know by this time tomorrow! :)