By now you might have heard: Apple is holding an invitation-only news media event Sept. 1.
Invites like these show up two or three times a year, and it is always a puzzle wrapped in a cryptic bow of noninformation. Such is the case with the most recent one, which shows a picture of an Apple-branded guitar.
So what could it mean? Is Apple going to start selling wooden guitars? Will Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, stand up on stage and announce the long awaited iGuitar?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it: Probably not. But what could Apple be readying?
One possibility, which is floated every time Apple sends an invitation, could be the entrance of the Beatles catalog into the Apple iTunes store. Apple, the Beatles and Yoko Ono have been stuck in a fight over the Beatles music rights for several years. The odds are slim.
Keeping in line with the musical vein, the announcement could mean a new iPod. Rumors have been floating around the Web that a new iPod Touch could be imminent with updated internals, front-facing camera and the high-resolution retina display technology used on the new iPhone 4. The AppAdvice blog says it is FaceTime on the iPod Touch.
Or, it could be TV related, as more news surfaces of Apple’s third attempt to foray into the living room. Bloomberg Businessweek is dubious and suggests betting on iTunes.
My colleagues Brian Stelter and Miguel Helft noted in a New York Times article Wednesday that Apple, “which is widely expected to announce a revamped product for television sets next month, is pressing the television networks to rent their TV series through its iTunes service for as little as 99 cents an episode.”
I wrote an article in July pointing out that Apple had been hard at…