San Francisco prepares for Saint Steve's September sermon

AS THE ALTAR is polished in preparation for religious cult leader and part time Apple CEO Steve Jobs to address the multitudes later today, it seems that the rabbit is already out of the hat.

One of Apple's media darlings, the Wall Street Journal, is reporting that the fruit themed toymaker has struck a deal with American television networks ABC and Fox to flog their shows for 99 cents apiece. While the notion of shelling out for episodes of Futurama or something a little less inspired isn't particularly new, the price is significantly lower than before.

This brings up the matter of whether Apple will be announcing an updated Apple TV today, a product that has been an unmitigated sales disaster for the firm. It has already been reported that Apple will launch something using its ITV brand, though whether it will really get away with calling it that is another matter.

Given that Google is launching pay-per-view Youtube channels, it won't be a great surprise if Apple does something similar. The only difference is that Youtube's software, unlike Apple's overpriced, underpowered lunchbox, can be built directly into televisions, not requiring a donation to Jobs' church of the technologically dim.

If Apple does announce a streaming TV service, the race will be on for Google, Apple and others to outbid each other for television shows and movies, hopefully resulting in consumers getting a good deal. The question is, what will Apple do to ensure that it can flog enough hardware? Will the studios get a cut of hardware sales or perhaps even subsidise the cost, offering branded programming? Either way, the television and film studios must be licking their chops at another opportunity to make boatloads of cash.

As this is Saint Steve's September sermon, promoted with a musically themed invitation, it is likely that updated Ipods will be announced. There have been several case designs doing the rounds suggesting that finally the Ipod Touch will be adorned with a camera. There have also been rumours that Apple will come out with a 320GB Ipod Classic.

Whatever Jobs does, it seems our readers are above the smoke and mirrors tricks, with over 70 per cent saying in our poll that they won't be making a donation this time around. We're sure Jobs won't worry too much, since after all, the blindly loyal Apple fanbois would throw cash down the loo if they thought Jobs would receive it.

What's much less likely is that Jobs will reveal that a version 2.0 of the Iphone 4 will be released to address the numerous faults in the original. After all, you aren't expecting something useful to be shown, are you? µ