And it’s with the usual terse message; this time with “It’s been way too long.” All “long” related jokes aside, the hint seems to point to some of the things I guessed about earlier with regards to products that haven’t been upgraded in awhile.
While the iPod product line is mature, I doubt that Apple is quite ready to put any of the remaining lines out to pasture yet like the classic scroll wheel model. The shuffle, nano, and touch all have their respective positioning (and associated price points) within the entire ecosystem. The touch might be a perfect candidate for some of the 5c internals (like the A6 processor) and camera enhancements.
Apple has also long maintained the $49, $149, and $199 price points for each of those respective lines; it will be interesting if they continue with the status quo or if they decide to move those prices downwards (taking into account their current economies of scale) heading into the holiday buying season.
The Mac mini and Thunderbolt display are both excellent candidates for a major refresh though especially if the rumors of a 27″ 5K Display iMac are in the cards. I believe once they have their own standalone Retina display (thus providing an all Apple solution for both the mini and Pro), they are going to push Retina (the marketing message) hard.
I myself am still using a 2010 Mac Pro as my main workstation (24GB RAM, 3.33GHz 6-core Xeon, 5 internal hard drives with the smallest one being 2GB, a PCIe SSD for my boot drive) that doesn’t have any issues with even current day demanding apps. The main achilles heal is the lack of Thunderbolt which means I can’t use a Thunderbolt display (the motherboard doesn’t have the necessary header information that would allow an actual Thunderbolt compliant card to be created). But that hasn’t been a big deal to date (since desktop displays haven’t seen much major evolutions).
With 5K high resolution displays on the way though, that is one of the key things that would make me look at upgrading near term. The older Mac Pro’s internal storage capabilities is a huge benefit. With the newer Mac Pro, all that storage would have to be moved to an external chassis (many which are costly).
I’ve stayed away from all-in-one solutions like the iMac for myself since my displays tend to be the most long-lived part of the system (like I’m using a late-2005 30″ Cinema Display). And I can still use this display with the newer Mac Pro. On the flip side, there is the Mac mini. My usage requirements exceeds the mini’s performance envelope though. I’m also not a fan of the design when it comes to its ability to get rid of all the excess heat when the system is under constant heavy usage (I’ve already killed one due to heat related failure; and this has been a rare thing for me – only my 2002 Quicksilver G4 tower had reliability issues out of all the Apple products I’ve purchased since the mid-90’s.).
The point of the above is that Apple probably knows they can drive a decent upgrade cycle on their desktop systems by having Retina display solutions for those specific product lines (the laptops are taken care of already). Myself, that would probably mean a Mac Pro (the timing for me is going to be when Mac apps, are mostly supporting Retina resolutions though; thus probably in the late 2015 into 2016 time frame).
Digressing though, as far as the Apple TV, I’m beginning to think it is less in need of a minor upgrade at this time sans an actual Apple TV app store (which doesn’t seem to be on the immediate horizon) and likely won’t get stage time this time around. The Apple TV itself has stagnated in terms of what it can do since the key user facing additions, has been mainly channel apps (many which still piggy back off of having a current cable provider and/or require a premium subscription to a particular service).
I still believe the killer app for the Apple TV is going to be an app store tailored for it. Casual games will be one of the biggest things to come out from that. People can AirPlay games now and use MFI game controllers for their iPhone (albeit with the latency that is incurred with this setup). Note that I don’t expect such Apple TV gaming to be initially competitive with console gaming (ones that begin taking full advantage of the available hardware which most current releases, have still yet to do). I also have my doubts about Apple’s gaming aspirations in the living room (I don’t see them showing any strong interest in getting into that space).
