Apple "Let's Rock" Announcements

Tomorrow's "Let's Rock" show marks another big Apple iPod product upgrade announcement when the company is expected to upgrade the iPod Touch, iPod Nano, and new versions of iTunes (8.0) and QuickTime 7.2.2.

Many of us are hoping for an iPhone upgrade to 2.1 in hope that it will fix the crashing, dropped calls and bad battery performance we've been experiencing since the big July roll out of the 3G iPhone, MobileMe, and the Apple Apps Store. And it would be nice if they can fix MobileMe to work as one would intuitively expect it should work.

Friends who are still sitting on the fence before jumping off and buying an iPhone have said they would like to see the iPhone upgraded to 16GB and 32GB models, boosting the hardware capacity just enough to live out period of the terms of their excessive 2-year AT&T contract.

And it would be nice if Apple could fix the really annoying constant problem with upgrading Apps from the Apps Store. I've gotten to the point where I am untrusting and apprehensive when upgrading Apps since it crashes the iPhone (everytime) and it erases all the settings and writes over all the files in those apps. It just doesn't act like you would expect stable and user friendly Apple applications to act.

You can read in various regions of the internet people expecting a sub-$100 iPhone. Ain't gonna happen my friends.

Apple has become increasingly conservative and more corporate in the past year. Their upgrades and changes to technology, I think one can safely bet are going to be creepingly incremental and piece meal. While the iPod Touch will become sleeker and skinny, you should not expect to see added features like a camera, a microphone for voice recording or dictation or hardware improvements that might justify paying more for it than an iPhone.

One feature Apple is hoping to thrill us with is it Genuis Bar the only new feature being added to iTunes. This is rumored to function something like Pandora or a new app in development called Stitcher, whereby the application learns your song and radio preferences and then suggests or puts together playlists from your iTunes library and the Apple Store. While this feature will certainly be welcomed, it is not a radical new idea or approach to digital media devices. It's not going to Rock Your World as tomorrow's event suggests it might.

Apple seems to want to position the iPod Touch as a pocket gaming machine and to keep the Touch from overlapping in capabilities with their iPhone, presumably because Apple now more fully enjoys the revenues coming from the AT&T contract kickbacks than it does giving its customers awesome features.

I can tell you the one big feature I want for my iPhone is the ability to use my iPhone without an AT&T contract. Right now it is the only feature I want Apple to be working on.

Plain and simple: I should not be bound to undesirable terms and conditions, terrible service and a corporate culture that cares little for its customers in order to own an Apple product.