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This rumor has been spawned by music industry insiders, which is an interesting twist especially given that Apple and the major labels are said to be working on competing digital album formats for Fall delivery. What exactly is going on here?

AllThingsD is reporting comments by unnamed music industry wonks that say Apple’s planning a media event for the week of September 7. Of course, that date falls on a Monday and the company generally runs its analyst and reporter new product dog and pony shows early in the week.

Another bone chew is what new or revised products the event will announce. The obvious implication given the sources is that music—iTunes 9, the new iPod touch and iPod nano with cameras and perhaps Apple’s new Cocktail digital album format—will be the focus of the event. There is also a great deal of wishful thinking that the company will also announce the Mac touch (aka iPod touch on steroids), though most serious analysts discount the possibility.

There’s also a possibility that Apple’s next-gen, Intel only operating system Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard could factor in the event because it brings a complete rewrite of the company’s QuickTime multimedia layer to the table with obvious implications for iTunes, specifically music, TV and movie content delivery.

Another Snow Leopard tie in is the arrival of full H.264 codec acceleration for movie playback, which could provide a watershed moment for digital (ie download) delivery of movies via iTunes and the internet.

In terms of product, I personally believe that iPod and iTunes refreshes are givens. More than that doesn’t seem likely, especially not the Mac touch.

Whatever and whenever Apple ultimately decides to share with us, here’s hoping Steve Jobs is center stage making the announcements—we need to see that he’s alright…

What’s your take?

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Filed under: Mac, Movies, TV, video, Music, Steve Jobs, iPhone, iPod