Macworld Expo Speculation

Not surprisingly, ThinkSecret has some interesting speculation regarding what Apple might announce at Macworld Expo next week. Seems that they believe that there will be a 'media-savvy' Mac mini and a content distribution system.

In an effort to appease media companies wary of the security of digital rights management technology, Apple's new technology will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user's hard drive. Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user's iDisk, which Front Row 2.0 will tap into. When the user wishes to play the content, robust caching technology -- for which Apple previously received a patent -- will serve it to the user's computer as fast as their Internet connection can handle. The system will also likely support downloading the video content to supported iPods but at no time will it ever actually be stored on a computer's hard drive.

Some of this squares with Apple bumping up the .Mac iDisk bandwidth cap to 1 terabyte per month (then removing that notation from the .Mac status screen). There was also the recent announcement of a podcasting server being made available in the Education market.

One thing is certain, the hype, rumor and speculation will only continue to heat up regarding the Macworld Expo announcements.

technorati tags: apple, mac, macworld, dotmac, podcasting