Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

This afternoon at 2:00 CST Chris Goforth and I will be kicking off a new syndicated radio show called Living Digital.

Many of you know that I currently do a 1 hour show every Saturday at 10 AM CST called Compute This.  Living Digital will be similar in concept to Compute This, but will differ in some important ways.

Compute This is designed to be live and local.  It is specifically designed to service the people of Lincoln and the current and future customers of Schrock Innovations.

Living Digital is designed to have a more widespread focus and cover areas that are influenced by technology, but are not necessarily computers.

For example, Living Digital will cover televisions, cell phones, gaming systems, digital cameras and more.  With all of the new technologies coming out it is easy to become overwhelmed.  The Living Digital Show is designed to make your technology work for you and be more of a help than a headache.

You can listen to Living Digital every Saturday afternoon in Lincoln, NE on http://kfor1240.com (KFOR 1240 AM).  This week the show will be slightly shorter in Lincoln because of Nebraska Weslyean Basketball coverage, but I promise it will be a blast!

There has been a lot of chatter all over the web regarding Apple’s expected announcement of the iSlate tablet device on or around January 26, 2010.

There are a lot of people with a lot of ideas about what the iSlate tablet is, what product niche it is designed to fill in Apple’s product line, what its features will be, and how much it will cost.  While no one knows the specifics yet, I believe a lot of the rumors are slightly off-base.

Everyone is wrapped up in what Apple has ordered from suppliers, what the iPhone can do, Apple’s supposed need to compete with netbooks, and pure desire for something new from Steve Jobs.

Many of the people turning the crank on the rumor machine are fogetting some of the known Apple quantities:

1. Steve Jobs doesn’t chase market niches – he redefines them
2. Steve jobs has publicly stated that netbooks are substandard hardware
3. Apple risks cheapening its brand by selling a sub-$1000 computing device
4. This is a lifestyle device – people will not buy it because the need it.  People will need it because they want it

Rather than getting all caught up in the expected specifications, whether or not it has an OLED screen, or attempting to decode vague requests to iPhone application developers for more high-resolution apps, I am going to make three general Thorstradamus predictions:

1. There is a distinct possibility that the late January announcement is about an improvement in the iPhone.  I peg this at a 60% chance.  Apple is about the software & apps, and they’re just not there yet.
2. If the announcement is about an Apple tablet, it will cost more than $1200.  It may be re-released later at a lower cost as Apple did with the iPhone
3. I do not think Apple will launch a device designed to compete with $400 netbooks EVER

What do you think?  Post a comment below to go on the record.  Let’s see who is right on this one!