It's only rock and roll, but we like it -- Apple's 2009 iPod- and iTunes-focused special music event -- has a tag line and a date, this Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 10am PT, 1pm ET. TiPb will be live meta-blogging the event, and following it up with a special edition of iPhone Live! at 5pm PT, 8pm ET.

Last year's event, "Let's rock", started with Steve Jobs saying the reports of his death were greatly exaggerated, and went on to announce 7,000 apps and 1 million downloads in the App Store (yeah, that's changed by a factor of 10 or more!), 65,000,000 iTunes customers, iTunes 8 with Genius, new visualizations, HD TV Shows (and the return of NBC), and Album view, iPhone OS 2.1, the second generation "funner" iPod touch, Spore and other game demos from Phil Schiller, as well as new nanochromatic iPod nanos and down-tweaked classics, and headphones, and in-ear headphones, with remote and mic.

What, oh what, could this year possibly hold?

iPhone

iPhone news will likely come as an adjunct to the iPod touch. Apple may also mention AT&T getting MMS on Sept. 25th, but we wouldn't blame them for scowling as they do so...

• iPhone 3.1 previewed as part of iPod touch announcement (to ship later). See our walkthrough for more.
• New video out cables supporting 720p (and 1080p?). Sure it's unlikely, but it is possible and would be competitive with the Zune HD
• Ringtones pre-fab style. Apparently they make money for Big Music and are too complicated for users to self-create using the process introduced at 2007's music event.
• Scott Forestall will announce MMS for AT&T on Sept. 25, and give them yet another stank-face for the delays and ongoing lack of tethering.

iPod touch

This will be the big news. The iPod touch platform is the future of the iPod platform, and it's closing the gap on the iPhone fast...

• Camera, even if delayed. 3mp with video, just like the iPhone 3GS. Get ready Flickr and YouTube, you ain't seen nothing from Apple's mobile platform yet.
• Mic. Hello ultimate VoIP handset.
• Voice Control. With a mic, both that and VoiceOver should cross over easily.
• All the above will, of course, require iPhone 3GS style internals. ARM Cortex A8 processor, PowerVR SGX graphics core, and 256MB of RAM.
• Since the iPod touch has historically sported 2 NAND Flash memory slots to the iPhone's 1, double the storage is also likely. Yes, 64GB of goodness is definitely in the cards.
• Priced at $199/$299/$399 for 16GB/32GB/64GB
• Could Apple possibly pull an iPhone 3G and keep the iPod touch second gen at 8GB around at $99? We doubt it.
• We also doubt an OLED screen, though the Zune HD will have one. If iPod touch does get it, will iPhone 3GS owners shed some not-as-bright-and-sharp-tears?
• No iPod touch nano -- yet.

Other iPods

Microsoft is abandoning their non-touch iPod rivals, but Apple owns that market and they'll keep it going as long as it makes business sense.

• iPod nano with camera (and mic?). It would need to sync content off, but so do most point and shoots.
• iPod nano 32GB doubtful for an on-the-go device, so we could see price drops instead to clearly distinguish them from the iPod touch.
• iPod classic hangs on one more year -- until the iPod touch hits 128GB. Throw it a camera bone, maybe?
• Both iPod nano and classic could get the VoiceOver (though not Voice Control) upgrade.
• iPod shuffle was revised already this year, so at most a price drop back to $50.

Apple TV

Stays a hobby. Sniffle.

• Nothing. No TV recording or 1080p. (Imagine the bandwidth).
• Okay, maybe -- just maybe -- HD TV rentals. (But what would they charge, $0.50?!)

iTunes 9

• iPhone app management. 11 screens. 180 app slots. We don't need this, we need a mobile solution like categories or stacks or something, but this will do for now.
• Kevin Rose asked for Social, Jens Alfke said Apple didn't get it. iTunes 9 will split the difference and stay with the steady, if uninspired type of integration already seen with Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook in iPhoto. Share your media tastes via Facebook and Twitter. (If there is something better, including a "social app", we'll swoon appropriately).
• Ringtones, already mentioned.
• "Cocktail" album packages. We're ambivalent about this, really. If Apple can wow us with amazingly integrated music, art, lyrics, and more, then we'll be pleased. If this is just some Big Music scheme to bring back DRM, we'll scream bloggy murder. Whatever the package, keep the music easily accessible in DRM free format, you hear us?
• No Blu-Ray. That would require new Macs with Blu-Ray drives, and this isn't a Mac event. We'll revisit this in October.
• TV rentals, per above, would be nice if unlikely still (we blame Hollywood).
• Subscription music hasn't caught on, but that might just be because iTunes hasn't done it yet. Outside chance. Even outsid'er chance for TV/Movie subscriptions (and yes, we blame Hollywood for that as well).
• Oh, and it will once again kill Palm Pre sync dead. (And we're not alone in thinking that)

Beatles on iTunes

• Not going to happen -- yet. Too much money to be made on CDs and Rock Band first. (Blame Big Music).

Steve Jobs

• If he shows, it's to show he's doing well but is he needed? Likely not here, not now, despite the whispers that would no doubt flood his absence.
• "One more thing" Boom! Steve! would be swell, but we're betting he saves himself for the iTablet, which won't be tomorrow.

What Say You?

Well, that's what we think we'll see tomorrow. But what do you think? Did we miss something, everything? Let us know in the comments.

Without fail, the moment Apple launches a great product or new revision, within moments talk quickly shifts back to "what's next?!" Last month it was the iPod and iTunes. This month it's the MacBook. But with Macworld slowly ramping up, and competitors slowly turning iClones into specced out SuperClones, the blogsphere spotlight will inevitably turn back to the iPhone, and just what device they'll dent our universe with next.

What if it's an iPhone HD?

The Next Big Thing. The Paradigm Shift. The Mobile Computing Platform. All of these monickers have been applied to the iPhone, it's multi-touch interface and it's mobile OS X implementation. Rightly so. While other companies have fragmented their mobile strategies among many different form factors, from different manufacturers, some even running different versions of the OS itself, Apple has remained remarkably consistent and ingeniously integrated.

The result? What worked on the original iPhone 2G and iPod Touch also works flawlessly on the second generation iPhone 3G and iPod Touch. Four devices spanning tens of millions of users, all with unprecedented unity and utility.

Apple accomplished this via 2008 revisions that were relatively minor in terms of the platform, yet simultaneously crucial in terms of the feature set. The iPhone really needed 3G and GPS to be competitive internationally, and to a lesser extent the iPod Touch really needed external volume and speakers to cross over into serious entertainment and gaming.

This gave consumers an utterly painless upgrade path, and removed from developers the burden of having to worry about whether any specific device might have a touchscreen or not, a keyboard or not, a trackball or not, etc. If you have an iPhone 2G as opposed to 3G, your internet experience is the same, just slower. If you don't have GPS, your location services are the same, just less precise. This is one of the less discussed but most important advantages of the current iPhone roadmap.

But what's next? What similar revision can Apple do in 2009 to further expand the iPhone platform without breaking compatibility at the same time?

Simple. HD. High Definition video.

The current iPhone and iPod Touch line features what was a very impressive 480x320 screen, and Apple has shown they can deliver that screen at a whopping 202dpi on the last generation iPod Nano.

back at Macworld 2008 (one year after introducing the original iPhone 2G), Apple announced HD movie rentals for the Apple TV and this September, they announced HD TV Shows. The world is moving inexorably towards HD and Apple and iTunes are pretty much keeping pace with it. Not only that, they're laying the pipes. Gizmodo even revealed that the exiting iPhone can already handle HD signals "just fine".

Competitively speaking, RIM is launching a slightly higher resolution screen on their Blackberry Storm, at 480x360, and at the small sizes of handset displays, every pixel matters.

Meanwhile, the HTC Touch HD is flaunting a massive 800x480p screen, and though it may not be hitting North American shores any time soon, HTC is clearly readying even more high density handsets, likely for both Windows Mobile and Google's Android.

Of course, these devices are plagued with either outdated OS or fragmented hardware, which will be limiting factors going forward, but they serve to send Apple a powerful message as to where the technology is going, and what Apple can do to continue leading the way.

Announced with pre-requisite BOOM! by Steve Jobs on stage at Macworld 2009 -- or WWDC in June -- with an 800x480p display at 202dpi-like density would move the platform forward an could do so in the same, unified way as the iPhone 3G.

Resolution independence in the iPhone SDK -- the same type talked about for years in Mac OS X -- and simple things like using vector/PDF icons, buttons, and other GUI elements, rather than non-scalable bitmaps could keep development focused and users from worrying which device what App might work on. If you have an iPhone 3G (or 2G) your visual experience is the same, just lower resolution than the HD. (i.e. the same icon takes up the same physical space on your Home screen, just isn't rendered with as many physical pixels on the screen).

The only problem? HD is BIG. It takes up space. Even with H.264 compression, the size quickly adds up and the storage space rapidly disappears. The solution to this is one many people expect to see anyway: 32GB. The iPod Touch already has this option by virtue of having twice the NAND chip slots as the iPhone (since the iPod Touch doesn't need to save space for cellular or Blue Tooth radios). Double capacity NAND chips exist, however, and Apple will switch to them as soon as pricing and availability make it reasonable to do so. (Yes, that would also mean a 64GB iPod Touch -- more capacity than the original Apple TV shipped with!)

Add to this a better spatial speaker system and some form of virtualized surround sound out, combined with 720p video out through the already existing component cables available from Apple, and you have a compelling, and amazingly portable, HD offering as well. Scratch that. Add 802.11n WiFi and streaming to and from iTunes and the Apple TV, and you have a KILLER HD offering. (One that wouldn't even be bound by on-device storage any more.)

Along with the necessary 3.0 firmware update to enable all this HD goodness, 2009 could be another spectacular -- if evolutionary -- year for the iPhone.

It makes sense technological, and it's becoming increasingly important competitively. Just imagine, 802.11n streaming, 32GB iPhone HD, running firmware 3.0, in 2009.