"All Things Digital": A Summary

Yesterday, during the well-renowned "All Things Digital" executive conference organized by The Wall Street Journal and moderated by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Steve Jobs has made some product announcements and interesting comments. As we already mentioned it today, he announced an Apple TV featuring a larger HD 160GB which will be able to access YouTube thanks to a firmware update in June. Later on during his discussion with Walt Mossberg, Steve made some interesting comments, among them we picked some:
- When asked about the change from Apple computer Inc. into Apple Inc, and dropping computers, SJ replied: "We're in two businesses today, we'll be very shortly in three businesses and a hobby. One is our Mac business, second is our music business, third business is the phone business, handsets. And the hobby is Apple TV. The reason I call it a hobby is a lot of people have tried and failed to make it a business.” Does it mean that the Apple TV project is a trial, and will be dropped without much trouble if it does not work the expected way?
- About video contents available on the iTunes Store, Steve jobs made a comment potentially announcing the future launch of HD movies/series on the iTS; "You can buy movies off iTunes as well. It's pretty good quality -- we are not selling high def... at this point. But I think in the future that might change!" Will it be more expensive or it was only a technical matter that prevented HD contents to be already available on the iTunes Store?
- When asked about potentially exiting out of the computer business with the name change, SJ replied: "No. If you come to WWDC we're rolling out our new version of OSX -- massive investments in desktops. You'll love it." So in addition to Mac OS X Leopard, one should expect to see new hardware model soon? Then was Steve meaning hardware when saying "desktops" vs. handheld, or should we expect new desktop hardware to be unveiled at the WWDC? One would expect new Santa Rosa-based MacBook Pro to debut at the WWDC, but should we be prepared for a new iMac, or a revamped Mac mini?
- Later on when discussing with Bill Gates, Steve made a comment about .Mac service: "… and we'll make up for lost time in the near future." So, does it mean that Steve Jobs agrees with us: the current .Mac service is overpriced for the current features it offers? Will the .Mac account been updated with the release of Leopard as a part of the new version of OS X or will the future .Mac update be backward compatible with Panther and Tiger? Should we expect a deeper integration of .Mac with iApps, as it could prevent users without a .Mac account to fully benefit from iApps, as it is already the case with iWeb for example...
We would not need much time to wait for as the WWDC is starting soon, Steve Jobs' keynote is only couple of days away.