Anatomy of an Apple rumor: ‘The Brick’
Like nature, the Apple rumor mill abhors a vacuum, and for much of this month it has been filled with talk of “the Brick.”
What is the Brick? The question was first posed the day after Steve Jobs’ “Let’s Rock” keynote address by Cleve Nettles on the Apple blog 9 to 5 Mac. He wrote that a tipster with “a solid track record” told him that the mid-October introduction of a new line of MacBooks (see here) is “all about the Brick.”
“What does ‘The Brick’ mean?” Nettles asked his readers. “Can anyone out there help us out?” (link)
Readers were happy to oblige. Hundreds of messages, dozens of blog postings, and at least two reader polls later, no definitive answers have emerged. Speculation reached a fever pitch this weekend after The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) reported that Apple had e-mailed resellers with instructions to remove and destroy all Apple TV displays and literature by 5 p.m. Sept. 30, when a webcast “kick off” was supposedly scheduled. Could the Brick be the long-awaited arrival of Apple TV, Take 3?
The Sept. 30 deadline, it turns out, is the anniversary of the debut of those Apple TV store displays, which suggests that the company may simply be destroying some outdated print material containing screen shots whose permissions have run out. (link)
But that hasn’t slowed the flood of ideas about what Steve Jobs might have up his sleeve next. As is often the case with Apple watchers, the speculation says more about their needs and fantasies than Apple’s (AAPL) product plans.
So what’s on their wish list? A sampling of what some have suggested the Brick might be:
- An Apple TV with a built-in Blu-Ray disk, TV receiver, digital TV recorder and its own App store (link)
- A new Apple-branded gaming system (link)
- A Time Capsule with “smarts” that functions as an iTunes server (link)
- A redesigned and much more powerful Mac Mini (link)
- The announcement that Apple has aquired TiVo (TIVO) and is discontinuing the Apple TV (link)
- A tablet-sized Mac with a touch-screen keyboard (link)
- A low-cost MacBook to compete in the sub-notebook market (link)
- A wireless USB hub that that links keyboards, mice, DVD drives, networking, hard drives, new displays (link)
- Nothing brick-shaped, but rather a product or group of products sexy enough to “smash” Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows once and for all (link)
My favorite reader comment, posted by “cardiomac” on TUAW in response to a suggestion that the Apple TV was “not meant to be a computer,” borrows from the “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock“:
No! I am not a computer, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool. (link)
The thing that most people take for granted abot a brick is that there are no moving parts. I hope it is a laptop where the only moveing part is in the DVD drive.
fyi: my gf just got a new vista lappy. it works suprisingly well. i never actually tried vista, except for at the begining. I guess they improved it.
its quick, granted its got 3 gb ram.
(it was less $$ than my pro)
Well I stil use my iBook G4
and I’m pleased with it, so
I’ll prob be waiting before
I invest in something new
Ahhhh yes The Brick. The mythical home of all the hopes and dreams of applites everywhere.
The thing is, to SJ, “brick” is a BAD thing. It ain’t elegant, and it weighs you down. So “elminating the brick” (some “brick” candidate) makes more sense than brick as a form factor.
$499 for an Apple TV with all those geeky features? Don’t think so.
Wiki Answers says the average weight of a brick is 2.7kg.
The average weight of the 17″ (3.08kg) and 15″ (2.45kg) MacBook Pro is 2.765kg.
I think it is at least reasonable to speculate that “the brick” is nothing more than a reference to the laptop carried by every road warrior. I can envision Steve Jobs comparing the typical laptop to a brick before introducing new lighter weight MacBooks.
Here’s another idea. What does a brick do when you throw it into the water? It “syncs” :-)
Let’s add more… A device that syncs your whole account and contains the entire operating system. You can then plug it into any compatible computer (PC or Mac hardware) and use the hardware of that machine for your session. It’s just that the OS cannot be transferred or copied and you walk away with all your stuff until you reach the next machine to work on. No need to clone a Mac anymore, but it must be tied to a “home” Mac.
It is small, lightweight, and nothing but solid state.
This could pretty much be accomplished with any iPod or iPhone right now, but a few interfaces must be added and a whole MacOS to drive the host machine.
WDYT?
BRICK = Blu Ray Integrated Cloud Kit
Doesn’t make any sense, does it, but I know it’s an acronym!
“BRICK” or “BRIC”? BRIC refers to Brazil, Russia, India and China—the emerging markets of the digital tsunami. It may be that Jobs was referring to global markets…
A brick is that lump in the power cable that down converts AC power to DC for laptops and other devices without an internal power supply. Maybe someone at Apple said, “What could we do with this thing to make the overall system better?”
PED,
Great brick review compilation. I wonder what it is too, but it would be grand if it’s a whole new strategic advance of ’something or other’…
Microsoft’s doing a great job of self destructing Apple doesn’t need to do anything but continue to make great products and lead the tech world by example.
“sexy enough to “smash” Microsoft’s Windows once and for all”
*cough*
I think I speak for a great many mac users when I state that smashing Microsoft, or anything at all, is not our primary aim in life.
If they would make an OS that didn’t suck so hard it makes your teeth rattle when you use it, everything would be fine between microsoft and the market.
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
fyi: my gf just got a new vista lappy. it works suprisingly well. i never actually tried vista, except for at the begining. I guess they improved it.
its quick, granted its got 3 gb ram.
(it was less $$ than my pro)
Posted By chris, gainesville, florida : October 3, 2008 2:18 pm
Update this post in a couple of months and let us know if the shine wears off.