Type of Article: MacTech Blog

A new book listing on Amazon’s German web site appeared yesterday and offered some details off the next version of Apple’s iLife suite, which will reportedly arrive this month or next. And apparently iLife ’11 will continue to show Apple’s disdain of physical media by dropping iDVD.

Could it be that the giant server site that Apple is building in Maiden, North Carolina, will be the replacement for iDVD? Rather than burning DVDs Apple may want us to send movies to the cloud from which they can be accessed almost anywhere.

In what has to be great news for Apple’s iDevices (and, yes, also the Mac), PlayFirst, a publisher of interactive entertainment, and Frank N. Magid Associates, a market research and consulting firm, has released the results of the first comprehensive study of digital game play behavior across the three major platforms for casual gamers: social networks, mobile, and computer games.

While we’re waiting for the next rev of the iMac — which should be next spring or summer if Apple maintains its usual update schedule — I’m happy to speculate about what features I’d like. And, no, I’m not going to reiterate my plea for Blu-ray playback (well, okay, just briefly — please, Steve). Instead I’d like to call for improved speakers and an even better display.