Final Macworld predictions?
By Peter Rojas 
posted January 8th 2007 2:55PM
posted January 8th 2007 2:55PM
posted January 8th 2007 2:55PM
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It's going to be an iTablet thingy.
Jobs will announce that he is stepping down as CEO and The Woz will be taking over...
Let the REAL innovation start!!!!!
Man all this talk of new stuff gets me excited but I would like to see a new ipod I own all of the previous ones minus the video...which I have refused to buy until the bigger screen and I want a mac mini but waiting for Core 2 Duo version. But if the Iphone appears my money theirs wheres my credit card.
Steve Jobs resigns, replaced by Ballmer who bounds on stage, licks jobs face and stares at the camera. Then three large vexed sheep come onstage and play Table Tennis with a perplexed horse. That or a new Mac line, updated iPod, details on the top secret bits of Leopard and "woooo... Watch this space.....2007...Apple....wooooooooo" kinda comment. I get the sinking feeling that in 24 hours I'll be disapointed, and not just because of my girlfriends frigidness....
This is completely out of left field, but I think that iTV will be announced and have the Virtual Console from Nintendo's Wii built in, it will also ship with a modified Wiimote.
From my blog at http://blog.stewtopia.com
Twas the Night Before Macworld
Twas the night before Macworld when all through the town
No MacBook was mooing nor turning brown
At Moscone, nerds were queuing with care
in hopes that Saint Steve would soon be there.
The new products and banners were nestled from view
while the Engadget and Gizmodo speculation grew.
And with Dvorak grumbling and Laporte poetically waxing,
Both were in town for credit card maxing.
When out from Las Vegas there arose such a clatter,
Macworld and CES at the same time? Too much data’r!
Off to the blogs, people covered the bash,
With videos and podcasts, served up by Flash.
Bloggers insight and intuition on the oft-wrong rumors,
Give analysts and traders new found tumors.
More at http://blog.stewtopia.com/2007/01/08/twas-the-night-before-macworld/
I think they'll pair with microsoft, dissolve all of their assetts and go into the Leiderhosen market. Naturally.
No phone
Some sort of home server
I predict that all the Apple fanboys, teenage girls and bored housewives will expect Apple to deliver "x", "y" and "z": e.g. amazingly innovative products that will blow your mind!
Apple will then launch some rather uninspired, generic products still made of cheap, crappy white plastic and all of the above will either post about how Apple have 'invented' something that is years old and already available elsewhere* or will claim "what I predicted IS coming...soon!!".
* see internet and news talk after the Apple iPod Video was launched, for example.
My previous comment was a reply. This is not.
I must preface by saying I'm not a Mac fan. But that doesn't mean I don;t give them a fair chance. I use them on occasion with an open mind. The OS I have some problems with, but it's no worse than Windows. The hardware is excellent. My real problem is their methods. Making a big deal of very little, misconstruing things, and generally being huge snobs (but often you need that for success), especially when it comes to Linux. Why?
-Steve Jobs says Linux is "not a threat", and "can't survive", yet Apple provides NO support for Linux. No quicktime, no fairplay, not even an iPod client. And Linux with boot camp can't be done. (I know you can with other unsupported bootloaders.)
-Steve Jobs tried to abduct Linux. Read Just For Fun by Linux Torvalds. Steve was SO convinced that OS X was so great, that Linux could never survive (WRONG!) and the only thing they could do is convert Linux users to mac developers. Also, much of OS X is open source, and their proud of it! But the OS is not open at all, and charging for a product developed open is STEALING in my opinion. There's no open version of OS X for developers, like there is for Red Hat or SuSe.
On to the predictions.
-iTV will not have been finished. It may be on display, however.
-Minor upgrades to the iMac, MacBook, and maybe Mac Pro. Not expecting much for the mini, as the focus is on iTV.
Lots of Vista/MS bashing, but no acknowledgment of the fact that plenty of OS X is a rip-off. (The freaking kernel! And spaces too.)
-Much ado about Leopard that means nothing. Leopard should have been a free upgrade, not a $125 chunk of polyurethane (DVD).
-Maybe an iPod 6, or perhaps 5.9 . No significant upgrades, just hard drive storage increases, and a form change, but not touchscreen. Of course there'll be NO support for OGG vorbis/speex, or FLAC, because open standards are "not popular". (Read: not profitable for Apple).
-The phone will make the "one more thing". It won't be anything special, especially since they don't want a phone to replace the iPod.
-The Mac lovers will buy all the bullshit hype.
My insane predictions:
http://thedreamersjournal.blogspot.com/2007/01/macworld-wild-guesses.html
I'm surprised no one (or not many) predicted for wifi dongle for iPod to counter Zune (without releasing new iPod because of the holiday season sales). It's totally possible just like Nike+ dongle and FM transmitters. Milking some more money from new iPod owners.
My finger crossed for Bono appearance (even via satellite). New PRODUCT (RED) stuff could be anticipated. I'm not a big fan of him, but that's just some educated guess.
Wireless will be the theme: Wireless iPod docks, wireless headphones, wireless iPod HiFi etc.
Additionally, iWork and iLife updates are givens.
Please god let it be a 13" mbpro. I WILL NOT buy an integrated gpu!!!
apple introduces the 13" GrannySmithBook, the iCortland, the GoldenDeliciousPro, and the product (Red)Delicious vPod.
MacBook Nano or something - an apple PDA
leopard available today, coming on all new apple computers starting (looks at watch)....now.
itv
fone
--neg
no iTV
iPhone released or officially announced
new iPod Accessory, possibly firmware upgrade
upgrade to macbooks and MBP and mini
iLife upgraded, of course, new app?
OSX 10.5 info
sales figures blah blah
that said, i can hardly wait :)
****
UMPC, Mac style: mix the "fake" iPod Video with the news Engadget has been spreading about a Mac tablet... put a chicklet keyboard, support for EDGE and WiFi - and of course, a phone. Call it the "Treo Killer"
I've got a bunch on my site:
http://homepage.mac.com/ikim1213/macority/files/pre-stevenote-macworld-2007.html
My crazy prediction? Apple makes a tunnel that goes through the center of the earth from NYC to Tokyo.
I think it would be appropo is the SEC police came to the big roll0ut tomorrow and handcuffed CEO Jobs while he was on stage. it seems to me CEO J0bs has earned the perp walk this time w/ the options games he has been playing...treating apple like it was his personal fiefdom.
$1/yr salary doesn't sound so "cheap" anymore, eh ? Jobs and crew pulled the wool over the boards eyes this time by getting them to gift him a Gulfstream jet worth 8 figures...allthewhile playing games w/ options...allthewhile claiming to take $1 per yr salary and laughing all the waqy to the bank. Unimpressed this shareholder.
SJ announces run for 2008 Presidential race ;-)
I believe that in addition to announcing the iTV, Apple will announce a new advertising supported model for television shows. Here's the kicker: Google will monetize the service by serving targeted video advertisements. Due to the targeted nature of the ads only a few ads will be required to watch before the video begins.
macPhone & macPhone Pro (that's right, I'm daring to venture a name)
each sporting both WiFi and Bluetooth, 2MP camera, macChat videoconferencing, macSync software to keep everything organized and macFlow to push media back and forth between devices. Both will come with the full raft of macLife mobile apps -iCal, Address Book, Mail. The macPhone Pro will feature GPS, more sophisticated email and filesharing options, tighter encryption and security, and a supremely
innovative new means of inputting information on the fly.
MacTV with a larger hard drive than predicted and a wholly Apple derived
interface (no Tivo or el gato partnerships)
macLife A streamlining of the separate iLife components (along with Mail and the iTunes store) into a single sleek interface with user-defined automatic syncing and
one button streaming of non-copy protected files between Windows and Mac devices, plus a plethora of devices to come. One program to rulethem all, there will be some version of it on virtually every device Apple sells.
Hand in hand along with macLife will be Flow which willrefer to both the wireless flow of information via Bluetooth and WiFi, and the 1 or 2 click process to send everything back and forth between devices, depending on whether or not the exchange is between public devices or devices within a users self-defined network. WiFi will be used for larger files like movies and music, Bluetooth for
everything else. Flow will decide which protocol to use automatically
then shut it off automatically to conserve battery life.
The death of the i (as in iTunes,iMovie, iDVD, iCal, iPod, iLife) and the
ascension of the mac (as in macTunes, macPod, macLife.) That's right,
I said they're renaming the iPod macPod. Both to reiterate that there's more to the phenomenon than marketing and buzz and give Windows users one more tiny push toward the rest of the product line. But mostly because they can. I don't think they'll bother renaming all the components because like I said I think they'll be folding those into the simplified macLife interface. Plus macMovie and MacContacts don't exactly trip off the tongue in a way that suits my theory.
The iTunes Store will become the macMedia Store and will reside smack in the middle of macLife along with the new improved .mac. The Apple Store will stay in the mall, hopefully to sell all those unlocked macPhones. I'm not really sure about the iMac. It could either windkeeping it's i out of respect for the fact that it was the first, or it could simply become the mac, which is what it's always seemed like
it wanted to be anyway.
The big surprise will be the announcement of a new standard of DRM that will enable/require every content producer, from major media studio mogul down to first time computer users, to assign their own specific level of protection for any shareable content, ranging from unrestricted freeware to single user within a
finite time period, and everything in between.
It will be different than current DRM only in the sense that it will be inserted in media
to define it's use, rather than curtail it's misuse. Devices using the protocol will look for it automatically and if they don't detect it, will refuse to accept the stream. Studios will like it because it makes them less easy for them to be pigeonholed as bad guys if everybody has to do it, it will eventually be more secure than existing DRM, and because of the likelihood that consumers, by the mere act of having to choose a level of protection for their own media will be more likely to respect that of others, ie. theirs. Google and a bunch of studios heads will be on hand to offer their
support for it. Microsoft will not.
All the other stuff- flat screen TV's, flash-memory macBooks, OLED backlit screens, touchscreen video iPods (I mean macPods) just isn't that interesting to me. The nano won't change much other than the macLife software. The iPod will finally get the full-sized touchscreen that's been rumored for over year.
A limited partnership with Google to enable youTube content into macLife and
possibly GoogleMaps into a GPS device makes sense, but anything beyond
that, not so much.
It wouldn't surprise me to see a closer relationship develop between Apple and Nintendo over the next year for obvious reasons but nothing special tomorrow.Any partnerships that require Apple to relinquish control of sizeable portions of the user
experience to another company is highly unlikely. I was hoping that they'd choose to sell only unlocked macPhones in the Apple Store for that very reason, but the recent story in the WSJ makes that seem unlikely. I'll try to have a more in-depth on my webpage but only if I can manage to get it up prior to macworld. I'll drop a link if it happens.
Digital Intermediate Solution for Feature Film production running on 4k Real Time
I'm hoping for a new macbook, hopefully a little smaller than the current one.
What we're waiting for at my institution is a single-socket Mac Pro that the rest of us can afford.
and I'd also love to hear that they're abandoning the fully buffered RAM, but that will probably have to wait another year for Intel to give up on it's latest propriatary memory grab and revert to DDR3, etc.
The talk about ZFS is exciting, I hope it's more than just talk.
And, as always, Fix the F'n Finder.... The Windows Explorer is one item that Jobs should just go ahead and copy.
Oh, and hey! How about a RAID chip on the Mac Pro motherboard, just like the rest of the known universe...
Leopard compatibility for all x86 64-bit systems