Tried to visit the iTunes Music Store lately? You can't - it's down. People all over the world who needed, dammit, needed to get that Weird Al Yankovic track to play to their girlfriend are just going to have to wait, it seems, for another two and a half hours (can this be serious?) until Steve Jobs mounts the stage in San Francisco and doesn't get down until he's unveiled
- new iPods (a revised nano and bigger movie-playing iPod)
- downloadable films
- quite possibly, an updated Airport Express (it is two years old and hasn't seen a sniff of an update all that time) that will let you beam your downloaded film to your TV set wirelessly. (Imagine! Films sent through the air! It's like... vision at a distance! We could call it... television!)
- possibly, just very possibly, a phone that also plays music. (Yes, obviously a mobile phone.)
Seriously, though, everything hangs on the pricing and the DRM. If it costs more than a DVD (rented through NetFlix, perhaps) or if the DRM prevents you burning a DVD of it, this is going to go badly.
Expect the first films to be from Disney and Pixar, since the largest shareholder on both is the person introducing the show. Which implies that he might have been able to negotiate a favourable deal on both the price and the DRM....
In the meantime, if you do need that Weird Al Jankovic track, it's here.
