Apple Anniversary Media Event April 1st + 6th Gen iPod?

According to AppleInsider, Apple is preparing a media event somewhere around April 1st, therefore accompanying its 30th anniversary. This has to be the venue where the MacBook (iBook replacement) will be announced if Apple is serious about keeping their education customers who need good reasons to not move to the Windows platform. I personally believe that the "real" iPod Video (a.k.a. 6th generation iPod) will not be announced any time soon.

iPod sales have been keeping up, and actually staying at the same rate as last Christmas' superb sales throughout this year. Why fix something that's not broken by announcing a whole new product line without even half a year passing by? That will just anger people who have already made their significant $300+ investment. Another thing to think about is that if Apple were to make the screen larger, it would therefore eat up more battery, and there is no extra space in the current 5g iPods, and those have a weak battery life of 3hrs of Video, therefore the 6g would have to be larger in some respect just to house a larger battery.

My prediction is definitely with the iBooks (MacBooks) and also the 17" MacBook Pro, which in my opinion, won't be sold for anything less than $2500, maybe $2599 realistically. I just put my order in for a MacBook Pro 15" 1.83ghz with a 120GB 5400 RPM hard drive. Unfortunately it's not expected to ship from Shanghai :( until the 24th of March. But if anyone has any interest I can take a bunch of pictures of the unpacking and setup process and post them (maybe some different views than all the other ones out there). I plan to order 2GB of RAM, and here's a big tip to anybody: DON'T LET APPLE INSTALL YOUR RAM! They charge obscene amounts.

The best tool that I found is http://www.ramseeker.com where you can just select your macintosh model. I can get 2GB (2x 1GB chips) of RAM for the MacBook Pro for $180, and then I can sell the 512 chip in it on ebay for $50, therefore getting 2GB of RAM for $130, Apple would charge $500 for the same RAM, literally (check it out on the website). That's a savings of $370 - enough to buy AppleCare and a nice case and an iCurve (the 3 necessities that I want). That doesn't just go for the MacBook, it goes for all Apple products new and old, it's a really useful site.

Mac Mini Goes Intel

The recent announcement of the Intel Mac Mini has met much critisism from the general public. I mean, sure the big downgrade here is the Intel GMA 950 Integrated graphics chip. But look at this machine, the new Mac Mini compared to Dells, or any other entry level PC. It's really not that bad. I feel that Apple probably should have used a Pentium M or a Centrino chip for a few reasons. Firstly, to lower the price. Secondly, because clock speeds are significantly higher (even if performance is the same or even slightly worse). This is because most PC users are looking at Dell desktops offering these 3.4ghz P4s, and looking over at Apple's Mac Mini and seeing 1.6ghz processors...what do you think they will make of these? The average user certainly doesn't look for benchmarks.

Personally, I think that the Mac Mini is sacrificing too much for size. This computer, a computer that is meant for the Home entertainment / Home users / Media Center PC is using notebook hard drives, notebook sized DVD drives, and a Motherboard that is even SMALLER than Laptop motherboards. Now the Mac Mini is great, don't get me wrong. But it should be larger. It should be able to house 3.5" IDE drives (both DVD and Hard Disk). For the same exact price of a 80GB 5400RPM laptop hard drive, you can get a 250GB 3.5 disk that runs at 7200RPM and has 16mb. of Cache!!!!! IT'S A DESKTOP it does not need to be abnormally small. They just need to add a few inches all around, mainly in height. Surprisingly, the graphics processing capabilities of the GMA950 are on par or better in some cases to those of the Radeon 9200 that was previously in the machine.

HiFi Boombox - way overpriced...for a very niche market.

iPod Leather Cases - $100 for any iPod (nano, or video)...should be cheaper if it uses less leather, not to mention its half the cost of the nano....ridiculous. They'll be lucky to sell any at all.