Apple Major Product Announcement on October 12

Apple has invited certain members of the media to an Apple Event at the California Theater in San Jose, CA, on October 12. According to published reports, the invitation contains a photo of a closed curtain with the words, "One more thing..."

Since Apple recently announced the Motorola iTunes cell phone, ROKR, and the iPod nano, there is speculation that the "one more thing" is a video iPod. We first speculated on the possibility of a video iPod just before the iPod Photo and U2 iPod were released in October 2004 because Apple's iTunes Music Store even at that time offered music videos to download along with certain songs. Short song video clips seemed to us like a natural companion to songs rather than movies or other large video files that would seem to demand a much larger screen and battery capacity.

It is also possible that the event has nothing to do with the items previously announced on September 7 but is just a regular "one more thing" that Steve Jobs' announcments are famous for, i.e. any big new Apple product announced in reasonable proximity to the others. It could be the recently upgraded Mac mini plus something bigger like a dual dual-core (quad) Power Mac G5. It's been a long dry spell for new Apple "pro" computers.

Who knows? Stay tuned.

Oh, we also expect Apple's fourth quarter financial results to be released around the same date. More... [Dana Baggett and Bill Fox]