Macworld 2007: Apple Predictions
posted in Strategy, Software, Hardware, iPods, Macintosh |Ah, the aroma of fresh cut evergreens and baked goodies. The twinkle of tree-topping stars and children’s eyes. Parties with eggnog and gifts exchanged. It’s that time of year again, alright. Time for predictions about what Apple will do at Macworld 2007.
Like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Macworld is held in Las Vegas in early January every year. It seems as though the post holiday shopping season is the perfect time to announce new electronics gear. Product lineups for Christmas are usually set by September or October, so as to allow time for inventory to fill the stores and marketing to take effect.
January comes along at a time when people want to spend on their own to buy the gifts they didn’t get, and these major shows fill the new product introduction void that has existed for a couple of months. The media eats it up, and so do consumers. The Mac news sites and rumor mills will go mostly radio-silent during the last week of the year as well. Together with Steve Jobs’ keynote flair (aka, reality distortion field), and some truly innovative and memorable product introductions, Macworld is an explosive event.
Reader Karin wants to know what Apple has in store for the upcoming Macworld. Only Jobs’ knows for sure, but here are my predictions.
When previewing Leopard during the World Wide Developers’ Conference this past summer–highlighting several new interesting features like Time Machine, Spaces, updates to iChat (screen sharing and backdrops), Mail (ToDos and notes) and iCal (better groups/sharing), Dashboard (dashcode), Spotlight (quicklook, boolean logic) and some core OS features (accessibility, 64-bit support, core animation)–he said more surprises were in the works.
Subsequent builds of the OS show support for an iChat answering machine feature, but most other reports of these surprises appear to be pure speculation. I really don’t know what the major surprises might be, but I expect 2-3 of them. Because of the release of Vista and its aping of Mac OS X features, I think Jobs will really make a big deal of the cutting-edge differentiators in Leopard. The biggest surprise will be the announcement that Leopard will be released much earlier than anticipated, perhaps by the end of January or February, requiring developers to speed up release schedules for software specifically designed for Leopard.
Computers
The only Apple computer that doesn’t have the Core 2 Duo chip is the Mac Mini. Expect to see the diminutive Mac get an update with this new chip, so the entire family of Macs runs on the same set. The Mini will also get minor updates that move it incrementally toward the media center TV that Apple-watchers clamor for. But these changes will be designed specifically to interface with the iTV (see below), and not to actually become the media center itself.
iTV
It won’t be a major surprise, since it was already announced, but Jobs will provide additional details about the iTV, including the name they will use for marketing purposes (Airport AV?). I expect the iTV to support 802.11n protocols even though standards have not been finalized, and I think that we’ll learn that the iTV has a form of storage, either a large NAND flash memory drive (such as 8GB), or a larger hard drive in the range of 20 GB. The drive will be used for caching content being streamed from iTunes on a remote computer, so as to improve system responsiveness for play, pause and other functions.
Finally for the iTV, I think there will be some sort of capability to get Internet content beyond Apple’s already-announced film trailers, such as content from Google’s YouTube, personal channels created on .mac, flickr photo streams, or other examples. The storage device, whether flash or hard drive, will also be used to cache this content to improve the user experience.
LCD TV Monitors
With only minor updates to it’s Macintosh line of computers, Apple strategically needs to enhance it’s non-iPod hardware offerings. The long-anticipated LCD TV Monitors will be announced at Macworld and be available at the same time as the iTV, probably in February. In addition to serving as both televisions and monitors for Macs (or, gads, PCs!), the new monitors will also sport built-in iSight cameras. I think the refresh is likely, as are built-in iSight cameras (along with iSight drivers for Windows, which are already included with BootCamp, making the monitors more appealing to Windows users). The biggest stretch here is that the monitors will also be televisions, as this would likely require HDMI, cable card and optical audio connections. But none of this is rocket science, and such a move would fit very well with iTV, expected enhancements to iChat, and Apple’s speculated expansion in the consumer electronics industry.
iPod/iTunes
There is almost no doubt that Jobs will feature the iPod/iTunes juggernaut, if for no other reason than the stock market and media demand it. Outside of the much-rumored “true iPod video,” which would feature a full-screen display which can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode and innovative control designs (touchscreen or bezel controls), it’s hard to imagine what Apple might release other than upgrades to capacity, colors, and content. Though Microsoft’s Zune has largely been panned, I expect Apple to reassert it’s dominance by rolling out this next-gen iPod, or a mobile phone.
iLife/iWork/Front Row/.Mac
Apple typically uses Macworld to launch upgrades to it’s iSuite of software applications, or to introduce new members of the family. I don’t expect this year to be any different, but I don’t have a sense for what exciting new features may be in store. Perhaps iWeb will get a much-needed update to improve HTML syntax or incorporate true blogging. Perhaps Macworld 2007 will mark the debut of Charts, a spreadsheet application to accompany the Pages and Keynote word processing and presentation packages. Perhaps the new Front Row interface will permeate the OS and applications a bit more than it already does (iTV, Front Row, iTunes).
Less a prediction and more a wish, I’d like to see .Mac improved significantly. The update to .Mac’s webmail earlier this year was much needed. But what I’d really like to see is true blogging via an updated iWeb or a web-only interface, and very tight integration between desktop applications and .Mac, in the same fashion as Mail or as attempted by iWeb. The head-turning move here would be to launch .Mac-branded versions of Google Applications for Your Domain, and include really tight integration with desktop software.
Let the games begin. Happy New Year, and see you after Macworld, when I’ll tally my predictions against the real announcements.
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