Apple Expo Paris opens on September 12, and while El Jobso is not due to attend, there's a press conference in San Francisco, California on the same day. UK journalists will be able to watch a live relay.
Anyone for a proper iPod video launch with movie downloads from iTMS? According to Business Week, there's a battle brewing between Apple and Wal-Mart:
As the largest seller of DVDs, Wal-Mart accounts for roughly 40% of the $17 billion in DVDs that will be sold this year, a financial lifeline to big-spending studios. But now Wal-Mart's video business faces a potential threat by Steve Jobs and Apple Computer, which in mid-September, sources tell BusinessWeek, plans to announce it will start offering movie downloads from its iTunes store.
The notion of kids running around with full-length movies on new, wider-screen iPods that Apple is expected to unveil as well is causing grief in Bentonville, according to Hollywood executives. The $312 billion a year retailer, they say, wants concessions that could include lower DVD wholesale prices.
Also note that Intel started shipping Merom (64-bit Core 2 Duo) chips this week, and ExtremeTech tests say it's substantially faster. It's pretty unlikely that Apple will leave all the Merom chips for Windows notebook PCs. When you're on the Intel treadmill -- which Apple now is -- then you tend to ship new systems when Intel ships new chips.
