Next from Apple

Michael Lopp, a senior engineering manager at Apple, was at the recent SxSW conference and talked about Apple’s design process.
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Appleinsider says Apple will start shipping products with Blu-Ray:

In a report issued to clients early Thursday morning, American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu cited sources who say the Cupertino-based Mac maker, which already occupies a seat on the Blu-ray consortium, is set to begin shipping some of its computers with support for the next-generation DVD format.

Maybe they made a deal? Sony is said to join in on Apple’s movie rental scheme, and in return Apple backs Sony’s Blu-Ray format?

Popular Mechanics has a story about a modular MacBook Plus. I’ve been toying with a similar idea myself, only I think they will rather make a big iPod Touch, with everything inside the screen and a slide-out keyboard at the bottom. Then again, that would be very sensitive to scratches, unless they managed to make non-scratchable glass. Why not? Stuff the thing with 3-4 Flash memory slots and make one embedded to host the OS. Also add the expanding out-popping port dock they recently got a patent for. And they really need to do something about those heat emitting batteries. If anything needs a breakthrough it’s the battery.

The Boy Genius Report has a story on Apple launching a record label together with Jay-Z. Sure, that would be cool, but I don’t think it fits Apple’s business model. They don’t produce content, they make stuff that others produce content on. If they do something new with Jay-Z, it might be some sort of enhancement on the distribution model they now have, where they buy from existing record labels. Imagine if they started their own now, do you think the other record labels would keep selling their music in iTunes? I just don’t see how that could work.