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Sometimes, I like to re-watch the Macworld keynote address Steve Jobs orated to the Apple flock in January. I know, I'm sick. In it, the J-o-b (s) specified upcoming products, much like dropping iBombs on your world, which were Apple TV and iPhone. And in it, Stevie-J said a few words that I missed before, yet blew me away when I heard them this time.

He said this during the introduction of Apple TV, the company's new physical iTunes media extender with internal hard drive and Wi-Fi capabilities for watching your tunes and movies on widescreens in the living room. And, he said the following off-handedly so I understand it why no one has picked up on it:

It's got a forty-gigabyte hard drive inside it, so it will store up to fifty hours of video, which comes in handy for something I'm about to show you. [Crowd chuckles.]

—Macworld San Francisco 2007 Keynote Address
(exactly 14 minutes in; emphasis illustrates key point)

Watch The Pounders video:

Woah. I encourage all the experts and pundits to revisit the video at precisely this interval in time. See, it didn't make sense at the time of the speech because the audience didn't know, not really, just what would be unveiled next. Comes in handy for what? What he would unveil next in the keynote was iPhone, turning the above phase into: "It's got a forty-gigabyte hard drive...which comes in handy for your iPhone." Looking at it now, knowing of what he was speaking, gives a new enlightenment as to what he meant by this handy hard drive. So what did he mean?

Well, Apple TV has 802.11 Wi-Fi, and, gee, iPhone has 802.11 Wi-Fi meaning these two citizens know how to talk to each other. To say that Apple TV's hard drive — a repository of 50 hours of video, or 9,000 tunes — is "handy" for iPhone speaks volumes for the interoperability of these two once-seemingly separate products. What it says is that iPhone will directly or indirectly (through the computer) connect with Apple TV, and use its 40-gigger storage space as a media library. iPhone's sophisticated Leopard OS can easily handle Apple TV.

It needs to do this because iPhone can't handle the load, having only a four- or eight-gigabyte storage solution. Disney's Glory Road is a two-hour movie weighing in at 1.35 gigabytes. The smaller-spaced iPhone will only hold about three Glory Roads. This means always syncing to the computer via its dock or to Apple TV through Wi-Fi. Or, connecting iPhone's dock directly to Apple TV's USB port, though Apple says that port is just for maintenance.

The above phrase then becomes: "It's got a forty-gigabyte hard drive...which comes in handy to pull content directly to your iPhone."

It means that, like chess, these separate pieces will work in concert to form a greater whole in the Apple user experience. Up to now, we've only seen the pieces: Apple TV with Wi-Fi draft N. Airport Extreme with draft N. Airport curiously stackable to the Mac mini, along with Apple TV. Airport Extreme's ability to attach a hard drive. Leopard. Time Machine. My herpes. 720p output for Apple TV.

What does all of this mean? No fucking clue. But these will all come together in some way we hadn't anticipated, and I bet the release of the next OS at the World Wide Developer's conference in July will tell us all.

Out on a limb predictions

1. I hereby predict that Apple's new iPhone will at least speak to, if not be able to completely control, Apple TV, making Apple TV one of iPhone's storage solutions
2. I predict Apple will tout a new media server solution that involves these components: Airport Extreme with the new 802.11n capabilities, connected hard drive, & Leopard (the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5); the Airport Wi-Fi base station with its connected large-capacity hard drive will provide Apple TV and any computer on the network with a central repository for all media files (not to mention back up capabilities inherent to Leopard). The speed of the new draft N makes this happen
3. Moreover, Apple will announce its own branded external hard drive with the same form factor as both the Airport and Apple TV, making it the perfect companion for either. For Airport, a connected hard drive provides the perfect place for Leopard's new built-in back up functions called "Time Machine"; for Apple TV, obviously, it will provide a boost in storage to house all those iTunes movie purchases. iPhone (and its touchscreen iPod brother) will connect to the hard drive no matter which it's connected to.

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