Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs’s annual Macworld surprise may be a slimmed-down laptop and a higher-capacity model of the iPhone.

Jobs traditionally uses the Macworld Expo in January to showcase new products. Last time, it was the iPhone and Apple TV; the year before, faster Macs with Intel Corp. chips.

Jobs, 52, also may introduce a larger-screen handheld device for playing music and video and surfing the Web, said Andy Neff, an analyst at Bear Stearns & Co. in New York. Apple may also unveil a new version of Apple TV, a $299 device that connects to TVs and lets people watch movies and shows stored on their PCs.

Apple’s Jobs May Surprise With Slim Mac, New IPhone

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Tags: Apple, iPhone, Macworld, AppleTV

 Lost in the news of iTunes updates and DRM-free music, comes the updated AppleTV.  I knew this was coming sooner or later.  The next version of AppleTV sports a 160 GB drive, 4 times the current drive size.  Also upgraded, the price.  The next version is $399, up from the original $299 price tag.

 Apple also announced that AppleTV users will be able to browse YouTube, as well as login to their YouTube account via their AppleTV.  Initially only the most popular videos will be available, until later this year when it expands to the entire YouTube library.

 The new 160GB version if AppleTV is reportedly to be available this Thursday.

 In the midst of an expected announcement from Apple, the iTunes store is current unavailable with just the curious phrase, “It’s Showtime.”

 It is expected that Apple will be announcing the addition of full-length movies for purchase from iTunes.

 In other video iPod news, 4Flix.net has announced non-DRM movies and TV shows, via a monthly subscription fee.  But most of them seem to be the out of copyright films already available for free at Archive.org.  The movies will be viewable on the video iPod.

 UPDATE:

iTunes is updated with movies and games.  Enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean, Life Aquatic, or play a game of Pac-Man.  All with your iPod.  Sadly the movies are way more expensive than if you just bought the DVD, ranging from 9.99 to 14.99.  The games aren’t cheap either at 4.99.

Watch exclusive shorts of The Office, new episodes every Thursday. (I refuse to call them Webisodes, because that’s just stupid.) The short series titled, The Accountants, has the trio searching for who in the office stole $3,000.

You can also check out Schrute-Space while you’re there.

MSN Video has acquired the syndication rights to Arrested Development. MSN plans to make the show available to watch online for free, by this fall.

Despite it’s popularity, FOX cancelled Arrested Development due to low ratings. You’d thought they would have learned from Family Guy.

Stewie from Family Guy will be hosting a Internet talk show that will be found on FamilyGuy.com.

The tyrannical tyke in the Fox animated series “Family Guy” will be the virtual host of a talk show being developed strictly for the Internet later this year.

Stewie’s show will be based on familyguy.com (http://www.familyguy.com) and other News Corp.-owned Web properties catering to the young demographics that have embraced the Fox series.

NBC, currently in last place for viewers within the major networks, will be trying their hand at marketing their shows via iTunes. A collection of current and older TV programs will be made available for download through iTunes.

NBC Universal has inked an agreement for 11 shows–current series as well as library programs. This includes NBC’s mainstay “Law & Order,” as well as “The Office,” “Surface,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” USA Network’s “Monk,” and Sci-Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica,” as well as classic library shows “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Dragnet,” “Adam-12,” and “Knight Rider.”

The shows are currently available on the iTunes store for $1.99 each, commercial-free.

Staring next year NBC will be offering commercial-free on demand shows for .99 cents. This is in response to Walt Disney’s ABC offering it’s popular shows, Lost and Desperate Housewives, on iTunes for $1.99. But instead of downloading the video to your computer or iPod, like ABC offers, NBC viewers will have to have a DirecTV Plus DVR. And hours after the show airs the content will be pushed to your DVR.

Among the shows that will be offered through this service are, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, The Office, Surface, Monk and the best scripted show on TV (only because Firefly was cancelled), Battlestar Galactica.

Where the service falls flat is the requirement to be a DirecTV subscriber and to get a different DVR. If I had a DVR, I would have recorded it anyway, and just fast forwarded through the commercials. And now you have to have a device, separate from your computer, to purchase the videos. And you can’t transfer the shows to another device, such as a computer or iPod. Put all that together and you wonder whether they want this to fail.

NBC is also not alone in the incompetent decision making. CBS will also get into the mix with CSI, NCIS, Survivor and the Amazing Race. These shows will only be available to Comcast digital subscribers. And only in certain markets, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and suburbs of New York City.

In my opinion these restrictions will only serve to cause the IPTV movement to fail. And the service itself is not even worth .99 cents. Thanks for nothing NBC.

Apple has announced that since it started selling videos 3 weeks ago, over 1 million have been downloaded.

Steve Jobs said, “Selling one million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads. Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods.”

This is pretty impressive considering the anemic video selection on iTunes. Although I would say it should do more than “strongly suggest” that consumer want video downloads.

I would also be curious on how many video podcasts were downloaded during the same period.

UPDATE: Slate has good article called, “TV You’ll Want To Pay For”.

Steve Job’s “and one more thing” led to the announcement of an iPod video player. Finally technology pundits get one right. But if you guess long enough, that will happen.

The video iPod comes with a 2 1/2 inch color display. Compare that with the PSP’s 4.3 inch display and it will be hard to challenge the PSP dominance for portable video. The one thing the video iPod will have going for it is disk space. This is severly lacking on the PSP as Sony’s proprietary memory sticks are expensive (1 gig is $100).

This could also lead to entertainment companies selling TV shows or movies over iTunes. This will also give IPTV developers, such as Revision3, a new avenue for their shows.

So far the announcement has had few details. Hopefully more specs will follow.

I see now Apple has the new iPod on their site.

Witness the evolution of the revolution. First it played songs. Then photos. Then podcasts. Now iPod plays video, changing the way you experience your music and more. Again. In lighter, thinner 30GB and 60GB models starting at $299, the new iPod is music to your eyes.

The new release of iTunes 6 will allow you to sync video with your iPod. And iTunes already has music videos and TV shows, including Lost. The IPTV revolution has begun.

• 2,000+ Music Videos
  Browse new, classic and exclusive music videos on the iTunes Music Store
• TV on iTunes
  Download the latest episode of your favorite ABC and Disney television shows, including “Lost� and “Desperate Housewives.�
• Pixar Shorts
  Buy award-winning Pixar shorts exclusively from iTunes.
• Sync to iPod
  Sync videos to the new iPod and watch them anywhere.
• Give Video
  Buy and send music videos and TV shows as gifts to anyone with an email address.
• Video Playlists
  Organize your videos into playlists, just as you would songs.
• Parental Controls
  Limit kids’ access to videos on the iTunes Music Store.