Quick predictions for MacWorld
written by Stuart on January 9th, 2007
Just wanted to note down my guesses/thoughts before tomorrows keynote. Don't take any stock in these, I'm as clueless as everyone else is.
iTV
It will get a proper name and be available for purchase right after the keynote. I foresee a couple of different configurations, one with a hard-drive, one fully dependent on streaming content from any iTunes machine. It has to be cross platform, doesn't it? Hopefully along with this there will be an announcement on some sort of iTS-HD, with a selection of High Def content available (the iTV remember has HDMI-out).
The iTV remote will be iPod like in it's operation, possibly even with a click-wheel, though I doubt we'll see a device with any sort of screen. The TV interface will most likely be a re-vamped Frontrow, with integration of the Coverflow view acquired and included in iTunes 7 for album artwork.
I'd like to think apple would cater for multiple users on one iTV machine, or multiple content libraries at least. A killer feature would be being able to get a few friends round with their apple notebooks, and being able to stream content from each device. DRM constraints will impede the ability to save content from connected devices locally, which is a shame.
A Smaller Macbook Pro
Listening to the Hivelogic podcasts with John Gruber, I was delighted to hear John and Dan speculate over the possibility of a new enclosure for the Macbook Pro, and even the possibility of a sub-15 inch machine. I'm going to be in the market fro an MBP in a couple of months, and one the same size as my 12 inch iBook would suit me fine.
The limitations apple endured with it's PPC chips stopped them from releasing a small form high-end laptop, these new intel chips should be good to go in a smaller device, which would no doubt sell well with those people who require a capable machine on the road.
I don't see there being a new enclosure, as much as I'd like one, I think apple will wait until Q4 before pushing out anything drastically different to the current line.
iPhone
God, where do you start. I have no idea, maybe it will launch, maybe it will pre-launch, maybe it will never launch. Whichever way it goes, here is what apple has to do:
1. Don't brand your own 'apple mobile' network. People hate mobile service providers, all of them.
2. Don't make it an iPod phone. Device convergence is all well and good, but as I've written before, I don't think you can do DAP and phone well enough in one combined device.
3. Don't release it on single carriers. If you're doing it, do it so we can stroll into the apple store, buy the phone and slap our existing network SIM card in it. Customer experience is vitally important, and mobile networks are rubbish at it, don't let them put your customers off.
Anything else
The obvious stuff, iLife and iWork upgrades. iWork is widely reported to now include a spreadsheet application. I don't think we'll see any new iPods or desktop machines. We could see some more small spec bumps for both desktop and notebook lines. People would love to see changes to the .mac service, I can't see it myself.
So that's about it, come back tomorrow and mock me for getting everything completely wrong, that's half of the fun of it.
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