What's going on at Apple?

Apple has announced a lot of new products and updates over the past several months. All new iPods in Fall, then updated Mac Pros, then Time Capsule, Apple TV Take 2, and MacBook Air, then refreshed Shuffles, and now updated MacBooks. So almost the entire line-up has been touched in the last 6 months. Its uncharacteristic for Apple to update so much in such a short period. So what do they have up their sleeve? They need a big wow thing for everyone to talk about at the end of the year. So what is it?

I think we are going to be looking at a new iPhone, possibly an iPhone Nano of some kind but definitely a 3G iPhone. I'm not sure what will happen on the iPod line. There seems little reason to touch the Touch other than capacity (more please) and the iPod Nano is pretty good where its at too. I could see a mid-sized iPod in there with a screen bigger than the Nano but smaller than Touch. I could also see a Nano with the multitouch screen and that may be their big play for the end of the year. I think Shuffle is what it is for a while. They also need something on the high end to bring the multi-touch screen to Classic. Classic has been selling better than expectations because of the capacity that Touch doesn't have.

The MP3 market is slowing down. Apple needs to push portable video and apps. To push apps, that means they need to get to a common aspect ratio on their products and a common interface, ie the touch screen, all compatible with the SDK. The future of iPod is apps, apps, apps. And so that if what they will have to pushing this year and it will impact the hardware by the end of the year. So the more I think about it, if they do a multi-touch Nano, they have to do a multi-touch Nano phone and I bet we will see both by the end of the year.

I think the rest of the product line is as is for the rest of the year...unless they enter some new category we haven't thought about.