Despite a hasty fix to repair the last update, reports of problems continue to pour in

Photo: Apple Inc.

Only hours after Apple (AAPL) released version 3.0 of the software that runs its Apple TV set-top box, complaints began appearing on its online discussion boards — the company's own early warning system for detecting major bugs.

By Saturday, Nov. 7, when Apple advised owners by e-mail to immediately update to version 3.01, the discussion topic TV 3.0 — Many Problems had drawn 134 posts and been read more than 10,000 times. A second topic, Apple TV lost all media, had 108 posts and more than 3,000 reads.

Unfortunately, update 3.01 addressed only the "lost all media" issue. The other problems — periodic freezes, random restarts, overheating, sluggishness, disappearing networks, screens going "blocky red" etc. — haven't gone away.

"3.0.1 has actually made things worse for me," wrote user "laozi" late Saturday evening. "Now iTunes won't see the AppleTV at all, and no combination of rebooting/resetting is helping. Totally stuck. Apple, please fix this."

Apple TV may be a "hobby" for Steve Jobs, but Apple's customers don't sound happy about being treated like hobbyists.

"I don't know about you," wrote a user who calls himself baron von benjamin, "but this is the most problem-prone upgrade to any hardware I've ever seen."

Below the fold: The e-mail Apple sent Apple TV owners Saturday afternoon.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Gene Munster has seen the future of television and it has an Apple (AAPL) logo on it.

In a note to clients Thursday, Piper Jaffray's senior analyst offered a scenario by which Apple would enter the cut-throat TV market by 2011 with an Apple-branded television set with digital video recording and home media functions (music, movies, games, interactive TV) built-in.

"Yes, TV hardware is a challenging business if you don't change the rules of the game," Munster writes, "but we see potential for Apple to offer best-in-class software and hardware and charge a premium."

The roadmap to Apple television (as opposed to Apple TV), as Munster sees it:

1. A new Apple TV set-top box within the next few months, with a TV imput and DVR built in. "With the popularity of ad-based internet TV (Hulu.com) and subscription models (Netflix's Watch Instantly), we believe a-la-carte (iTunes) video purchases have lost share against other video models in recent months. As such, we believe Apple is exploring a subscription-based offering for its TV content in iTunes."
2. An iTunes TV Pass within the next year. "Apple could leverage its deep library of content with many network and cable channel content owners to provide unlimited access to a sub-library of its TV shows for a standard monthly fee ($30 to $40 per month). Such a product would effectively replace a consumer's monthly cable bill (~$85/month) and offer access to current and older episodes of select shows on select channels."
3. An Apple television set within the next two years that could wirelessly sync with iPods, iPhones and Macs. "Such a device would command a premium among a competitive field of budget TVs; we believe Apple could differentiate itself with software that makes home entertainment simple and solves a pain point for consumers (complicated TV and component systems)."

As evidence for Apple's interest for pushing deeper into the living room, Munster cites: COO Tim Cook's statement last month that the company will continue to invest in Apple TV because "we fundamentally believe there is something there for us in the future"; patents covering digital video recording; and a five-year, $500 million partnership with LG to produce LCD screens.

Munster notes that Apple currently controls an addressable user base of more than 65 million iTunes users and has sold more than 48 million iPhones and iPod touches that could be used as TV remotes or interactive TV game controllers.

"The argument that Apple will not enter the television market because prices have declined by ~70% in the past three years," he concludes, "is a similar argument used to conclude Apple would not enter the cell phone market, given phones had seen similar price declines. The bottom line, 10 million HDTV's sold in the US a year is a real market, and if history repeats itself, Apple will find a way to compete in a commoditized market with a premium priced product."

Munster expects Apple to sell 6.6 million Apple TVs in calendar 2009, up from an estimated 2.1 million in 2008 — an estimate of 3X growth that he believes may be conservative. By his calculation, every addition 1 million units Apple sells adds $.03 to Apple's EPS.

"We just met with Apple executives at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA, including Peter Oppenheimer, Greg Joswiak, and Eddy Cue."

Thus begins a note to clients sent Thursday by Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes. The note ends with Reitzes raising his Apple price target to $208 from $188 — one of the sparks that sent Apple (AAPL) shares up 1.88% to close at $168.42 for the day.

In between, Reitzes rattles off a list of new products he expects Apple to introduce in the months ahead. Although he insists the Apple execs he met didn't divulge any major secrets, Reitzes sounded pretty sure of himself. Among the coming attractions, as he sees them:

• New iPods with cameras (likely September). He expects a launch, possibly before the end of August, of iPod touches with cameras and video capabilities and perhaps even an iPod nano with a still camera — prompting another round of iPod upgrades. "We believe that imaging ties in well with Apple's strengths in software and can help drive more Mac sales over time."
• A new tablet computer (likely in first half 2010, but possibly before the end of the year). He sees it priced between $399 and $999, and eventually becoming the fourth leg of Apple's business model. "We believe this type of product would open Apple up to more opportunities in mobile gaming, navigation services and other content related growth – which could all be distributed through iTunes."
• New low-end MacBooks (Q4 2009) He believes the MacBook line needs to be revamped (there is only one MacBook available now, an old white model). He expects to see new MacBooks before the end of the year that are priced below the low-end MacBook Pro.
• An upgrade for Apple TV (Q1 2010). "We believe Apple TV can eventually become a platform that integrates gaming and other new features."
• An iPhone for China (by year end). But as early as this September, according to his sources, with China Unicom as the most likely partner.
• A new iPhone upgrade cycle (2010) "We believe more can be done with product width, battery life, speakers, gaming controls and more. Also, many developers realize that Apps may need to be recompiled for new screen sizes and Apple may be taking steps behind the scenes to ease any transition."

Meanwhile, in other Apple news, buzz is growing for an early launch of Snow Leopard, perhaps on Friday, Aug. 28, which would put the latest major upgrade of Apple's flagship operating system in stores nearly two months ahead of the scheduled Oct. 22. launch of Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows 7. See here and here.

And leaks from the music industry suggest that there may be an Apple event scheduled for the week of Sept. 7, the usual time frame for new iPod introductions. See here.

It's starting to shape up as a busy fall.

Here's an interesting statistic about Boxee, the freeware media browser that makes it easy to find and watch Web video and streaming TV shows on a computer screen.

Of the 370,000 people who have downloaded the free Boxee client since it became available last June,

• 67% are running it on Macs
• 25% are running it on Apple TVs
• 4% are running it on Linux boxes
• 4% are running it on Windows PCs

This is not the way the world usually works. Developers as a rule will walk through the desert in their socks to get to an installed base, which generally means the 8 or 9 out of 10 computers in the world that run Microsoft (MSFT) Windows.

So we asked Avner Ronen, the Israeli-trained software engineer who founded Boxee, how it came to be that 92% of his users are running Apple (AAPL) products?

The reason stems from a decision he made two years ago, when his team first started developing Boxee.

"We were all switching to Macs as our personal computers," he says. "And we felt many of the early adopters were going there as well."

It helped that Apple's hardware was standardized across the product line, which made it a more attractive multimedia development platform than PCs running different versions of Windows and manufactured by a host of different companies. And there was one more little thing:

"The Mac Mini and laptops were coming with remotes at the time, which made them great media center platforms. We just thought it made sense to start with Mac and then move to the PC."

Although the Mac version is in its second alpha and headed for beta, Boxee still hasn't been officially released on the PC. A Windows alpha came out earlier this year, but only by private invitation. A public release isn't expected for another six or seven weeks.

Even so, Boxee has been getting a lot of attention lately, especially after it won a Best of the Best Award at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. It now offers content both from Web sources like Blip.TV, Joost, TED and Revision3 as well as TV shows from mainstream outlets like PBS, CBS, HBO, CNN, Comedy Central, WB, NBC and Fox.

Over the past six weeks Boxee has been engaged in a game of cat and mouse with Hulu, the joint venture of NBC (GE) and Fox (NWSA) that streams TV content from nearly 450 shows, including such hits as 30 Rock, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. Hulu has twice tried to pull its content off Boxee — most recently this week — but Ronen's programmers keep finding clever ways to get it back on. See here and here.

In March, Ronan drew more attention to Boxee by engaging in a fierce and widely read debate with HDNet's Mark Cuban over the future of video entertainment. It was set off by a Cuban editorial entitled "Why Do Internet People Think That Content People Are Stupid?"

Last week, a Boxee press conference/meet-up in New York City drew a standing-room-only crowd of more than 700 people. Most of them were Mac users.

Boxee's love for Apple, by the way, isn't exactly reciprocated. Boxee came to the Apple TV as a hack that gives owners a way to get around the set-top box's restrictions and watch content that isn't available on the iTunes Store.

Tuesday's iPhone 3.0 special event drew the biggest headlines, but that wasn't the only Apple (AAPL) news that broke this week. The highlights:

HD movies on iTunes: On Thursday, the company announced that its collection of high definition movies, hitherto available only through the Apple TV set-top box, can now be purchased or rented on the iTunes Store for viewing on a Mac, PC or widescreen TV. Is this a sign that Apple is losing interest in its "hobby"? The pickings for now are slim — only nine of the "box office blockbusters" featured on iTunes' HD Movies page are currently available — and they're pricey. Apple will be charging $19.99 for Quantum of Solace in HD when it becomes available on March 24; as Business of Video notes, you can order the DVD from Amazon for $16.99.

Jim Cramer touts Apple: You would think that after his humiliation on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart — and the first TV broadcast of his advice about how to short Apple and foment FUD to drive it down — that Jim Cramer would just shut up about Apple. But you would be wrong. This time he's an Apple bull. "I'm not going to go against Apple," he declared on his Mad Money Lighting Round Thursday. "There are a thousand Steve Jobs over at Apple and they're delivering product after product."

Revenues plummet at Palm: As expected, Palm's (PALM) earnings took another drubbing in the quarterly results released Thursday. Revenue fell to $90.6 million from $312.1 million a year ago, in line with the warning the company issued two weeks ago, but far below the $155 million the Street had been expecting. The company is pinning its hopes on the Pre — Palm's answer to the iPhone — slighly delayed but still due out before the end of June. The earnings call transcript is available here.

The iPhones of summer: If we didn't already believe that Apple has some new handsets in the works, developers poking around the entrails of the iPhone 3.0 beta software have found fresh clues pointing to new iPhones, new iPod touches and two mystery products simply referred to as "iProd" and "iFPGA." See here.

Congress may have postponed the scheduled Feb. 17 transition to digital broadcast television on Wednesday — ensuring that millions of rabbit-ear TVs won't go dark for at least another four months — but that doesn't mean that the way Americans get their video entertainment isn't in the midst of wrenching change.

Take, for example, the story on the front page of Thursday's New York Times: Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Major Hollywood Studios, in which Brian Stelter and Brad Stone report that bootleg copies of Warner Bros' "The Dark Knight" were downloaded 7 million times in the space of 6 months — despite an elaborate antipiracy campaign, months in the planning, that included monitoring every physical copy of the film.

Or Microsoft's (MSFT) report Wednesday that more than 1 million XBox Live gold members (who pay a $50 annual fee) have activated  a Netflix (NFLX) app and used it to watch, in the space of three months, more than 1.5 billion minutes of movies and TV shows downloaded over the Internet.

Here you have both sides of the sermon Steve Jobs has been preaching to the studios for years: the "Napster moment" the Times article describes, in which pirates do to the movie and TV studios what they did to the music industry; and the alternative, in which video content is legally streamed or downloaded  — for a fee — from the Internet.

So where does that leave Apple TV, the set-top box that Jobs unveiled two years ago as Apple's (AAPL) path to Hollywood's salvation? Originally a device for connecting a computer wirelessly to a TV, it was updated last year to allow shows and songs to be purchased or rented directly from the iTunes Store.

Although sales of the device tripled last quarter, thanks largely to movie rentals, it is still a minor player in the transition from the old distribution paradigms to the new.

"We're going to continue to invest in it, because we fundamentally believe there is something there for us in the future," acting CEO Tim Cook told analysts during Apple's last earnings call, but he still refers to it — as Jobs did — as a "hobby." (link)

The pundits have offered a variety of suggestions for how Apple might solve its — and Hollywood's — dilemma by revamping Apple TV, including Peter S. Magnusson (who urged Apple to add a tuner, a DVR and a Blue-Ray disc drive), Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi (who advised the company to turn it into a full-fledged Tru2Way cable box), and Businessweek's Arik Hesseldahl (who examined a variety of options earlier this week, including buying DVR-pioneer TiVo (TIVO)).

[UPDATE: Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster issued a report to clients shortly before noon Thursday with his own predictions. See below the fold. ]

But the most thoughtful analysis so far may be the one posted Thursday morning at Roughly Drafted Magazine by Daniel Eran Dilger, who looks at what Apple should — and perhaps more important, shouldn't — do with Apple TV.

"Analysts have voiced a lot of terrible ideas that would actually dismantle or saddlebag Apple TV," he writes, "converting it from a fun hobby into a burdensome money pit failure."

Here, in thumbnail form, are his take on what he calls some of the worst ideas:

• Add a DVR, perhaps by buying up TiVo. "The only thing worse than jumping into a dead market long after the lights have been turned out is buying out the leading failure in the market in order to do so."
• Add an optical disk, perhaps Blu-Ray. "Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: Apple has been pushing digital downloads as an alternative to the DVD for years now, with pretty decent success."
• Add an HDTV screen. "This one takes the cake for ridiculous."

"Apart from those top three ideas for wrapping an albatross and a millstone around the neck of Apple TV," he continues, "there are a variety of smart things Apple could add to their box to make it far more valuable."

• Add iTunes radio features. "Plug Apple TV into your speakers and have streaming radio with graphics."
• More alternative content. "…the other big free content source is podcasting."
• Add an iTunes Store, and an SDK for interactive content. "Make it easy to download little $5 games and app, and Apple TV will explode with the same software interest as the iPhone."
• Additional support for user created content. "How about a custom client for also accessing me.com email, contacts, and calendar on the big screen, navigated by the iPhone’s keyboard?"
• Consider the controversial. "There are a variety of competitive services that Apple might benefit from partnering with, including ad-supported Hulu and subscriber-supported Netflix." (link)

Dilger fleshes out each of these options in considerable detail and in his usual lively style. The full piece is highly recommended.

See also:

• Tuning into Apple TV 3.0
• Apple vs. Netflix: How do they stack up?
• Apple TV Take 2: What's the hangup?

Below the fold: Gene Munster's predictions.

• While Apple downplays the possibility, we expect the company to design a connected television over the next two years (launching in 2011).
• Separately, and in line with published reports, we expect updates to the Apple TV hardware with TV DVR functionality in the next nine months.
• We are modeling for Apple to sell 6.6m Apple TVs in CY09, which assumes a continuation of the y/y growth rate of 3x seen in the Dec-08 quarter.
• If Apple introduces new hardware in CY09 our estimates could be conservative; every 1m units sold adds $0.03 to our CY09 EPS estimate.

Source: Piper Jaffray.

Apple's (AAPL) last Macworld Conference and Expo opens Monday at San Francisco's Moscone Center, but the real action starts Tuesday at 9 a.m. PT (12 noon ET) with senior vice president Phil Schiller's opening remarks — the first Macworld keynote not delivered by Steve Jobs since 1997.

Nobody's expecting breakthrough products that rise to the level of the iMac (Macworld 1998), the iBook (1999), iTunes (2001) or the iPhone (2007), but this Expo is not without its drama, speculation and hype.

Our top 10 favorite Macworld rumors:

10. Snow Leopard release date. We know a lot about Mac OS X 10.6, thanks to Jobs' June 2008 announcement that it was coming, Apple's official description of the product and a steady stream of leaks from the developer community. What we don't know is when it will ship.

9. Unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro. By several accounts, this machine was supposed to be released in October, along with the new unibody 13-inch MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro. But display issues and problems with the optical drive reportedly pushed its release back "several months" — which brings us to next week's Expo. UPDATE: Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac adds this twist: the new 17-inch Pro will sport a superslim longer-lasting nonremovable battery pack.

8. Revamped iWork. The big news on New Year's Eve was the "truckload" of information dumped on various rumor sites about iWork — Apple's homegrown answer to Microsoft (MSFT) Office.  The thrust of it was that what's now a suite of desktop applications — Pages, Numbers and Keynote — is about to be transformed into a collection of Web-based apps like the .Mac Web Gallery, suitable for cloud computing.

7. 32 GB iPhone. Whispers that Apple was set to double the memory of the top-end iPhone have been floating around since September, but AT&T's (T) post-Christmas $99 iPhone sale and word that Apple had sewed up the lion's share Samsung's flash memory production all point to a January release.

6. 64 GB iPod touch. Rumors of this memory upgrade go back even further. It was supposed to happen in August, then in September, and then before Christmas. With memory prices falling, time is more than ripe.

5. New Mac mini. Rumors of the most affordable Mac's imminent demise have given way to a flood of new specs, among them  2.0 or 2.3 GHz Core 2 Duo processors, NVIDIA graphics platform, dual display outputs and dual drives that can be configured every which way.

4. New iMac. Some inspired sleuthing in the extension files that shipped with the new MacBooks found references to NVIDIA chipsets for both a Mac mini and a new iMac — along with hints that the reconfigured all-in-one desktop was supposed to ship in November but got pushed into 2009 by unexpected delays. DigiTimes now reports that Apple has ordered shipments of 800,000 per month.

3. New iPod shuffle. FBR Capital Markets' Craig Berger, whose track record AppleInsider describes as "questionable," expects Apple to release a new and smaller version of the iPod shuffle sometime in the first calendar quarter — which started on Thursday. AppleInsider adds that it has picked up chatter of a new shuffle that would be flat as a credit card but thick enough at one end to fit a headphone jack.

2. New Apple TV/Time Capsule. This one also comes from an analyst. Shaw Wu, a veteran Apple watcher newly ensconsed at Kaufman Bros., wrote last week about the possibility that Apple will introduce a new consumer device — "an enhanced version of Apple TV and/or Time Capsule" — that would give users access to their media content, SlingBox style, from anywhere on the Internet.

1. Steve Jobs. Show or no-show, Apple's CEO is both Macworld 2009's No. 1 rumor and the No. 1 source of rumors — whether it be that he's stepping down, that his health is failing, that he doesn't feel there's enough news in Nos. 1-9 to justify a Steve Jobs keynote, or that he just doesn't feel like playing in Macworld's sandbox anymore. We favor the theory that he's set the stage brilliantly for a surprise cameo appearance. Er, UPDATE: See What's going on with Steve Jobs' homones?

Below the line:

• iPhone nano. Despite all the chatter — and spy photos — not this Macworld. Maybe later this year.
• iPod tablet. Maybe later this year. Maybe never.

Is there truth to any of this? We'll be flying to San Francisco Monday to find out. Tune in to this space early Tuesday for our Macworld 2009 live blog.

[Photo courtesy of setteB.IT.]

Below the fold: How Phil Schiller could hit a home run next Tuesday, as imagined on The Mac Observer's Apple Finance Board by one of the regulars, retired Air Force pilot Pat Smellie.

UPDATE: In case you haven't heard, almost none of this came true on Tuesday. By my count, the rumor mill is batting less than 150. See Live from Apple's last Macworld!

From AFB:

Mr Schiller will do great.  He is being coached by one of the best presenters in the business and whether SJ shows or not he will have been over every inch of the presentation.

Start with Itunes Over 6B songs sold., 400M Applications, 300M TV shows WOW.  Bring up the Music execs and announce release of Itunes Plus for all tracks same great price.

Back to Schiller Mac sales growth over 10M new MACs in 2008.  Demo new IMac, MAC Mini, Mac Pro in Feb with Intel I7 and Mac Book Pro 17’ Quad Core.

Switch to Snow Leopard speed comparison of the new hardware on Leopard vs Snow Leopard.  Wow!  Free upgrade to Snow Leopard with new Mac purchase.  Available in June

Software demo of new ILife/Iwork Suite on mobile me.  Free to all Mobile Me subscribers.

On to Iphone 20M sold to date.  Joined on stage by China Mobile CEO.  Announce new Iphone for China/Korea GSM/TD-SCDMA $99 price also available US non 3G via Walmart.  Demo couple new software features.

One More Thing

Finally lights dim and SJ appears on stage with a NetBook and Tablet.  He says he can’t decide which to build so he will let America decide.  Call in numbers or text Netbook/Tablet.  Voting will continue until end of Mac World

Lights come up curtain opens SJ on stage with Sir Paul singing Let It Be announcing the release of the Beatles catalog

It great to dream big.  Reality is its a show as much as anything.  Apple will deliver many great things this year but probably a lot of them will not be announced at Mac World.  — pats

To which one of the moderator adds:

And then you woke up! 

If it was Steve Jobs' intention to take the wind out of Macworld's sails, he's done a pretty good job.

"Expectations are low," wrote Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster in a note to clients early Tuesday, one week before the first Macworld Expo keynote since 1997 that won't be delivered by Apple's charismatic CEO.  "No significant new products are expected."

"Fairly modest" is how Kaufmann Bros.' Shaw Wu described investor expectations for the Expo, which runs from Jan. 5 – 9 in San Francisco and which Apple (AAPL) has already announced will be its last. "Frankly, we would be a little surprised if there is a major announcement, as we believe it would make better sense for Steve Jobs to do so himself at an AAPL event."

Behind Steve Jobs' Macworld exit

Both Wu and Munster are looking for Jobs' keynote stand-in — senior vice-president Phil Schiller — to introduce updated iMacs and redesigned Mac minis — hardly surprises given that both machines are overdue for a refresh.

Munster has not given up on the "new form factor iPhone" — a.k.a. iPhone nano — that he once thought would be announced at the January event. Now he doesn't expect it to arrive before the end of Apple's second fiscal quarter, which closes in March.

And he is sticking with his famous prediction — the most optimistic of any mainstream analyst — that Apple will sell 45 million iPhones in calendar 2009. But he reminds clients that that figure is predicated on his belief that Apple will enlarge its iPhone offerings, vastly expand its retail outlets and significantly lower its prices. So far it's only done one of the three.

Wal-Mart to sell iPhone starting Sunday

Shaw Wu also sees "strong indications" of a lower-cost iPhone and other "larger form factor touchscreen devices" — a.k.a. iPod tablet — later in the year. His sources hint that Apple may introduce a new "consumer device" next week — possibly a jazzed up Apple TV or a superconnected Time Capsule — a.k.a. home server — that would let you grab your files or do backups from anywhere on the Internet.

And Wu hasn't ruled out the possibility that Phil Schiller will surprise everyone next week with a breakthrough product that nobody is expecting, if only to send the message that Apple is a "much broader and deeper company than one person, even if he/she is a living legend."

For our part, we haven't given up on the possibility that Steve Jobs will make a surprise cameo appearance during Schiller's keynote, if only to show that he's still kicking — Gizmodo's latest rumor to the contrary — and still very much in charge.

Like nature, the Apple rumor mill abhors a vacuum, and for much of this month it has been filled with talk of "the Brick."

What is the Brick? The question was first posed the day after Steve Jobs' "Let's Rock" keynote address by Cleve Nettles on the Apple blog 9 to 5 Mac. He wrote that a tipster with "a solid track record" told him that the mid-October introduction of a new line of MacBooks (see here) is "all about the Brick."

"What does 'The Brick' mean?" Nettles asked his readers. "Can anyone out there help us out?" (link)

Readers were happy to oblige. Hundreds of messages, dozens of blog postings, and at least two reader polls later, no definitive answers have emerged. Speculation reached a fever pitch this weekend after The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) reported that Apple had e-mailed resellers with instructions to remove and destroy all Apple TV displays and literature by 5 p.m. Sept. 30, when a webcast "kick off" was supposedly scheduled. Could the Brick be the long-awaited arrival of Apple TV, Take 3?

The Sept. 30 deadline, it turns out, is the anniversary of the debut of those Apple TV store displays, which suggests that the company may simply be destroying some outdated print material containing screen shots whose permissions have run out. (link)

But that hasn't slowed the flood of ideas about what Steve Jobs might have up his sleeve next. As is often the case with Apple watchers, the speculation says more about their needs and fantasies than Apple's (AAPL) product plans.

So what's on their wish list? A sampling of what some have suggested the Brick might be:

• An Apple TV with a built-in Blu-Ray disk, TV receiver, digital TV recorder and its own App store (link)
• A new Apple-branded gaming system (link)
• A Time Capsule with "smarts" that functions as an iTunes server (link)
• A redesigned and much more powerful Mac Mini (link)
• The announcement that Apple has aquired TiVo (TIVO) and is discontinuing the Apple TV (link)
• A tablet-sized Mac with a touch-screen keyboard (link)
• A low-cost MacBook to compete in the sub-notebook market (link)
• A wireless USB hub that that links keyboards, mice, DVD drives, networking, hard drives, new displays (link)
• Nothing brick-shaped, but rather a product or group of products sexy enough to "smash" Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows once and for all (link)

My favorite reader comment, posted by "cardiomac" on TUAW in response to a suggestion that the Apple TV was "not meant to be a computer," borrows from the "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock":

No! I am not a computer, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool. (link)