Road to Expo: Apple's new media experience coming soon

Apple is planning to unveil a robust new content distribution system in January at Macworld Expo alongside its revamped media-savvy Mac mini, Think Secret has learned. The new content system and related media deals, which will include feature-length content, expanded televisions offerings, and more, will further cement Apple's increasing lead in digital media delivery.

In an effort to appease media companies wary of the security of digital rights management technology, Apple's new technology will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user's hard drive. Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user's iDisk, which Front Row 2.0 will tap into. When the user wishes to play the content, robust caching technology Apple previously received a patent for will serve it to the users computer as fast as their Internet connection can handle. The system will also likely support downloading the video content to supported iPods but at no time will it ever actually be stored on a computer's hard drive.

This method, which will be every bit as simple and straightforward for consumers as the iTunes Music Store is now, poses a number of advantages over Apple's current pay-once-download-once system, including saving users' hard drive space and essentially providing a secure back-up of everything purchased. iTunes Music Store customers at present are charged 99 cents every time they download a song, regardless of whether they already bought it, and must back-up purchases themselves. A customer who experiences data loss and loses purchased songs is effectively out of luck as far as Apple is concerned.

Some questions remain about the particulars of the system that sources have been unable to clarify, including how customers without a .Mac account will be handled and how Apple will market the system to laptop-toting road warriors. It also remains to be seen whether the iDisk tie-in will only apply to some content. Apple's current video offerings are downloaded directly to a computer's hard drive, for example. Additionally, it's unknown whether the content system will be marketed as a Mac mini-only feature, which is unlikely but possible if it is dependent upon technologies in that system, or whether it will be available to Mac and Windows users as a whole.

Alongside this announcement Apple will also be rolling out a number of new partnerships with various content providers. Those Apple has not signed at the time of launch, one source speculated, will likely want to jump on the bandwagon soon afterwards, not unlike the vast number of additional record labels that were added to the iTunes Music Store soon after its inception.

One source explained that when Apple rolled out its video-capable iPod in October, limited content—five TV shows, a few shorts, and music videos—was seen by executives as an acceptable amount to offer customers and watchers alike a glimpse of what was to come. WIth the roll-out of the new Mac mini, which sources continue to maintain will be bigger than anyone can imagine, Apple will blow the doors off legal video content delivery.

Many analysts agree both on the need for a service and Apple's ability to deliver one.

"I think there is clearly a need for someone to facilitate the digital distribution of content. When I'm looking at the TV and home entertainment sector it's very clear that all of this content is available illegally and too easily," Richard Greenfield, an independent media analyst told Think Secret. "There needs to be legal high quality ways to access content online, especially as your making more and more methods of transporting content around."

Greenfield added that with residential bandwidth speeds approaching if not exceeding 5-10Mbps in an increasing number of areas, online, on-demand video content will make more and more sense for consumers.

"The content creators need to give people legal, high-quality alternatives, or they are simply going to turn to piracy. This sounds like, on the surface, a viable answer to this issue for all concerned," he said.

Concerning the reborn Mac mini and Apple's media ambitions, Nitin Gupta, a technology consultant with the Yankee Group, stressed the importance of widespread content.

"Initially, I'm concerned about the content and how much content Apple will be able to get," Gupta said. "How the rights work around digital distribution will play a big role. What content can Apple get that others don't already have exclusive use rights to movie channels for three, four, up to eight years?

"What will be the draw is access to great content they can't get elsewhere. Yes, this needs to includes movies and a lot more television shows, but it needs to include exclusive content. If it doesn't and it includes niche programming, like independent films, it's going to have limited appeal."

Analysts have heard rumblings that Apple is close to striking deals with NBC, CBS, and Paramount Pictures.

"It jives to a certain extent with what I'm expecting Apple to be able to do when Intel-based Macs arrive," said Rob Chira, computer hardware analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners. "I've always thought this Intel/Apple relationship was going to be much more than just chips in PCs. I think they're playing off of each others strengths and I wouldn't be surprised to see at least some part of this home entertainment/video content distribution model include some other technologies from Intel's Viiv project."

Viiv is the name of media center technologies Intel is developing ahead of the release of Microsoft Windows Vista, the major Windows upgrade formerly known as Longhorn and slated for delivery next year. Viiv PCs will include hardware specifically designed to optimize media management and playback, and will all ship with a special remote control from Intel along with the Media Center Edition of Windows Vista.

"I'm sure Apple doesn't want to do another version of the Windows Media Center PC," Chira said. "They want to one-up it, or ten-up it, as the case may be."

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