GeekSpeaker

Everyone is going crazy with excitement over the new iPods and price drop on the iPhone. I can’t help but be excited about yet another quality craftsmanship conjured by the demigod artists at Cupertino but I know it’s not too much of an advancement when you really think about it and Dave Winer agrees. For what it’s worth, Apple under promised and over delivered once again at it’s hip-A-list-only media event today. With all of the excitement, it’s understandable everyone hasn’t put enough thought into the ramifications of the first true next gen iPod.

By far, the biggest announcement was that the 8Gig $599.00 dollar iPhone was getting a 30 percent price drop, and will now only set back your gadget budget by 399.00. I fully believe this is mostly in response to somewhat poor adoption, and a somewhat lackluster response (for an Apple product that is! No Keyboard!!!) but mostly because they know a monster is coming and they want to capitalize on the holiday market before the CEDIA announcements come in less than a week and before the real competitors show up. Gphone anyone?

The point of this post.

That’s not the point of this post right now though. I was hoping for some better insight when I read Saul Hansell of The New York Times’ analysis about the future of digital entertainment devices but everyone on Techmeme scene is missing some key points about the future of the music player.

What does it take to make a successful music player in tomorrow world? Upnp or in Apple’s case, a highly secret competitor to DLNA.

DLNA, or the Digital Living Network Alliance is an international, cross-industry collaboration of consumer electronics. The goal of the standard is the establishment of a wired and wireless interoperable network of personal computers, consumer electronics and mobile devices in the home and on the road, enabling a seamless environment for sharing new digital media and content services. The standard was founded by Sony and Intel in 2003, but is currently made up of 8 board members, HP, Intel, Matsushita, Microsoft, Nokia, Phillips, Samsung, and Sony.

Notice I didn’t say Apple, and notice I didn’t say Google. While the first format was battled over AAC vs. WMA and was a file format war, the second battle will be DLNA vs. something Apple just announced and is testing out with Starbucks today. Upnp Allows for the streaming of media to various parts of the home and is supported by every single hardware manufacture that you will see at CEDIA this year. Steve Jobs did not call the Apple TV a hobby for no reason, he intends to let the iPod be the controller for whole house audio/video, and I am praying that he doesn’t make all of the quality investments out there of other people in the home obsolete.

It’s a shame not too many people read this blog, i was talking about this months and months ago, I have an inside source (not at Apple) that let me in on that fact that Apple is indeed working on whole house Audio/Video.

I sure hope Apple embraces DLNA, but surely I’ll understand if they don’t, afterall, that just means we have to go out and buy all new high end preamps, power amps and all of my other home gear. That will help with Apple’s recent stock price problems.

Disclaimer: I’m a busy guy, I wrote this in less than 15 minutes so there are probable mistakes, I’ll try to correct ASAP.

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Technorati tags: iPod, iPod 6.0, Digital Media Format War, Digital Media Format War 2.0, itunes, iPod Classic, iPod touch, Apple Price Drop, iPod price drop, iPhone price cut, DLNA, uPnp, Cedia, Sau Hansell, NYT, Whole House Audio, Whole House Video