As most of you no doubt already know, Apple is holding a media event in a few hours (10:00 AM PDT) to release new iPods, and possibly a whole lot more. Of note, the event, which Apple has dubbed "The Beat Goes On", seems to be a reference to the final press release issued by The Beatles in 1970:

Spring is here and Leeds play Chelsea tomorrow and Ringo and John
and George and Paul are alive and well and full of hope.
The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you.
When the spinning stops — that'll be the time to worry, not before.
Until then, the Beatles are alive and well and the beat goes on, the beat goes on.
- Final Beatles press release, April 10, 1970

You never give me your mooooney

This of course aligns perfectly with rumors of The Beatles finally making it to iTunes Store, after literally years of speculation. The road has been long and winding, but it looks like it'll only be a few hours until customers can download digitally remastered Beatles songs on iTunes.

For live coverage of the event, MacRumors provides a comprehensive list.

Update: Event has begun Of note:

* new iTunes tonight
* ringtones support in iTunes
* new iPod shuffles in new colors, (PRODUCT) RED version
* new iPod nano, with larger screen, cover flow, games (Vortex, Sudoku), new colors, refreshed design, 320*240 screen, more capacity, video support, etc. (photo)
* current iPods refreshed with more capacity, thinner designs, redubbed "iPod classic"
* iPod touch, basically iPhone without phone functionality, thinner, has wifi, Safari... is making me kinda regret picking up on iPhone. Hum. Too soon? Also interesting that what Steve called "iPhone apps" (aka, glorified web pages formatted to fit the iPhone UI) now by default, becomes iPod touch apps as well.
* iTunes Store on iPod touch (and iPhone?) via wifi, so scratch one off the list
* so, no Beatles? darn. Ars reports, "Steve is being a tease by listening to Lennon songs"
* wait, wait, "One more 'incredible' part of this..."
* oh great, a Starbucks button when you're browsing in Starbucks. Really?
* "Can now buy whatever song is playing at Starbucks with one tap of a finger" from Ars. Cool concept, but kind of a let down. Incredible my ass.
* Ars reports, "welcoming howard schultz, founder and chairman of starbucks to talk (played Paul McCartney in the middle there, Steve is such a tease)"
* motherfucker, my friend was right. iPhone 8 gig price drop, and if his source was correct, 16 gig to fill in the top tier will be announced momentarily. I hope not.
* yay, my month old, 8 gig iPhone still remains kinda cutting edge. for now. but Steve suddenly made it worth $200 less. people are going to be pissed. especially 4 gig owners.
* aaaand, no Beatles yet. burned.
* time to lick my wounds and buy more Apple products

Questions Raised
* how long until hackers open up the iPod touch / start adding native apps, including the iPhone mail app?
* with games on the iPod classics/nanos, when will the iPod touch/iPhone get them?
* since when does "one more thing" mean four more things?
* am I the only one who thinks the Starbucks announcement was far from 'incredible', and closer to 'huh?'
* how are early iPhone adopters (the hardcore Apple fans who waited in line) supposed to feel about their models being cut, prices slashed, and the exclusive, sleek look and much functionality mimicked on a new iPod, just two months after its release? that's a quick turnaround time to screw over early adopters, even for Apple.

On a more optimistic note, this holiday season is going to be massive for Apple with all these new iPods.

Updatea 2: And Steve offers all iPhone early adopters $100 back in an open letter... in Apple products, anyway. Nice gesture, and smart business move.

In case you hadn't heard, the executives at NBC think they're freaking geniuses. They've just figured out the secret to saving the company. It involves doing good business in a fantasy world that only exists in NBC head Jeff Zucker's mind. Inside sources tell me that Jeff privately calls this realm Zuckerland.

In Zuckerland, Apple is a big, bad, bully, demanding so much of the poor, defenseless television networks that working with them no longer makes sense.

In Zuckerland, Rupert Murdoch is the nice guy who's going to help NBC fight the bully, Hulu.com is the next YouTube, and NBC will once again become the premier purveyor of quality television broadcasting, on the backs of such promising hits in the making as "Bee Movie" inspired mini episodes that Entertainment Weekly calls "most promising" among NBC's 2007 fall lineup.

In Zuckerland, customers on iTunes pay $4.99 per episode for NBC shows, which, though it may sound ludicrous at first, actually makes perfect sense within this fantasy world, because in Jeff Zucker's mind, this is war with Apple, and wars cost a lot of money. So he'll need some funding from all those hardcore customers on iTunes for the effort.

Hooray, I am the best CEO in all of Zuckerland

Of course, unfortunately for NBC, Zuckerland is imaginary, and the real world tends to operate on different rules. Rules such as, if you call out Apple wrongly for being a bully, their PR department will bite back, and reveal you for what you are: a greedy son of a bitch. Or, that Rupert Murdoch is happy to 'partner' with NBC on Hulu, but is not pulling Fox shows out of iTunes Store, because iTunes is sending Murdoch nice, fat pay checks every month in exchange for selling his shows. Or, that if you try to gouge your own fans, things tend to get ugly.

Over the past year, I've personally spent over $300 on iTunes Store purchasing NBC shows, including dozens of episodes of The Office, Heroes, and My Name is Earl. $1.99 per episode has felt expensive at times, but on the expensive side of fair, which is a price point I'm not opposed to paying, especially during stretches of high quality television. But apparently that ain't enough for Jeff Zucker.

Part of me wants to write a nice letter to NBC to try to convince them to take this back. But the part of me with brains realizes that the letter would disappear into the Zuckerland post office, and never be seen again. So screw that. NBC has lost a customer here, and said customer has a feeling that things are only going to become uglier from here on out.

Which is a pity, because NBC has some really good, struggling shows, and I doubt this will help. So sign here if you think Zuckerland is a joke.

Update: This one's almost too ludicrous to be true. But remember. In Zuckerland, even the seemingly mundane turns out to be almost depressingly misguided and unfortunate.

As my friend and fellow blogger, Gedeon Maheux, points out, it turns out that Hulu effectively translates to "cease and desist" in Swahili. The sad part is, it's obvious that this is far from a self-deprecating joke, and simply another stunning display of rash and misguided decision making, courtesy NBC. It's funny in the way The Office is funny, except these painfully awkward moments aren't scripted. This is real.

I'm still holding some hope to the theory that this is all a massive publicity stunt and intricately planned, leading towards a finale featuring Zucker comically dancing off stage hauled off by a giant hook, followed by a retraction of everything that NBC has done over the past few days along with a public apology for humor in bad taste. Then we can all clap and pretend that this never happened. But I think I'm being overly optimistic.

Update 2: This is the part where the wrecked car on the side of the road that you've been staring at with morbid fascination while driving slowly past it suddenly explodes, rather unnecessarily. Predictably, NBC is entering damage control mode, but it seems to be a case of too little too late, with some extra bullshit sprinkled in, because, you know, it's the Zuckerland national spice. Below, some key quotes, along with a personal translation that strips out the PR double talk. If you don't want to wade through the BS, what's left is the distinctive mix of paranoia, confusion and fear that is the mark of a corporation that doesn't understand its customers, is backed into a corner, and is too chicken to fess up and apologize.

We never asked to double the wholesale price for our TV shows. In fact, our negotiations were centered on our request for flexibility in wholesale pricing, including the ability to package shows together in ways that could make our content even more attractive for consumers.

We asked Apple nicely to triple the wholesale price, for us. Because, you know, our fans deserve it. Making our shows more expensive makes them feel more valuable you know. And we also wanted to spread the good word about our shows by providing our fans an easy way to download related shows together, because we feel that the whole à la carte model Apple built iTunes around doesn't serve our customers' needs. But the bullies in Cupertino refused. Can't you see?

It is clear that Apple's retail pricing strategy for its iTunes service is designed to drive sales of Apple devices, at the expense of those who create the content that make these devices worth buying.

Sure, we get more per purchase than we do with DVD sales, and sure, we get a bigger share than Apple, but how does that make sense? WE'RE the ones selling Apple's iPods. Can't you see?

In addition, we asked Apple to take concrete steps to protect content from piracy, since it is estimated that the typical iPod contains a significant amount of illegally downloaded material.

The iPod is like, used by everyone. And we're the ones who sold it to everyone, by like, making the TV shows that people watch on them. And most people who use iPods are pirates. And they're watching our shows for free. So all we asked Apple to do was to only allow DRM protected videos to play on iPods, and they refused. Can't you see?!

Recommended Reading
NBC Will Not Renew iTunes Contract (NYT)
Apple's Response (Press Release)
Biting the Hand that Feeds You (Gedeon Maheux)
What Did Apple’s Five Fingers Say to NBC’s Face? SLAP! (Cult of Mac)
NBC wants more DRM, higher prices from iTunes: report (Ars Technica)
Daring Fireball
Apple to stop selling NBC Television shows (TUAW)
An Open Letter to NBC re: Leaving Apple’s iTunes Store (iLounge)
NBC 'Disappointed' in Not Negotiating New iTunes Pact (Bloomberg)

And if you liked it, digg it!

So the Apple Design Awards were announced today, and the biggest news from it, of course, was Inventive / Widget Machine co-developed iClip lite taking home the award for Best Dashboard Widget.

But wait, going back a bit, this was the first ADA ceremony I had the opportunity to attend, and the whole thing was a pretty awesome experience. The event was held in a pretty atmospheric room, complete with a fog machine, purple lighting, and thumping music, and the second coolest part (besides accepting the award) was the opening video sequence, which featured all of the entered applications flying past the screen. Really, really cool.

After each of the winners were announced, runners up first, winners second, the winners were demoed by Apple User Experience Evangelist John Geleynse, who did a pretty good job showing off all of the winning apps. (I wouldn't have wanted to be in his shoes, demoing Scientific Solution winner, EnzymeX! (By the way, the developers of that application have a great article about the infamous ADA "cube" trophy which is a pretty interesting read.)

Accepting the award with John was unreal. That's about all I can say at this point, I'm still recovering. I really wish UI designer for iClip lite Piotr Gajos and programmer Chris Willis could've made it out here to experience it.

So anyway, more photos and more reactions to come soon, for now, a complete list of the winners, listed in chronological order of announcement:

Best Student Application:
Runner-Up: PhotoPresenter by Arizona Software
Winner: LineForm by Tribar Software

Best User Experience:
Runner-Up: Boinx FotoMagico by Boinx Software
Winner: iSale by equinux

Best Widget:
Runner-Up: WeatherBug Widget by WeatherBug
Winner: iClip lite by Inventive and Widget Machine

Best OS X Graphics:
Runner-Up: Unity by Unity
Winner: Modo by Luxology

Best Automator Workflow:
Runner-Up: Lecture Recording Workflow 1.2 by the University of Michigan School of Dentistry
Winner: Build Real Estate Catalog/Ultimate Productivity Action Pack

Best Developer Tool:
Runner-Up: F-Script by F-Script
Winner: TextMate by MacroMates

Best Game:
Runner-Up: Wingnuts 2 by Freeverse
Winner: Sims 2 ported Aspyr

Best Scientific Computing Solution:
Runner-Up: FuzzMeasurePro by Christopher Liscio
Winner: EnzymeX by Mekentosj

Again, more on this tomorrow, but wow, pretty amazing experience!