No more Macworld 2007 Predictions
posted in Strategy, Software, User Interface, Hardware, iPods, Macintosh |Okay. I’ve made my own predictions (here and here), and I’ve reported on those of others here, here and here. Now, Sunday morning before Tuesday’s Macworld 2007 Keynote, I’m done with predictions. But I’m not done dreaming. Besides, Apple is being even more proactive and obvious with their hype machine, given that the Keynote is now 2 hours instead of 1-1.5, and the Apple homepage dramatically promotes what is to come in 2007. Here’s what I’d like to see, which is all within easy reach of the fruity one and it’s mercurial leader, though far from likely, at least in the near future.
Mac OS X Embedded: A lite version of the OS for embedded applications. The new OS would be made available only through Apple’s own products and carefully selected strategic relationships. For example, Mac OS X Embedded would be bundled on future generations of the iPod, the iTV, and an Apple mobile phone, as well as in certain car-based systems (dockable iPod, iTunes head-end, music through stereo, video through rear-seat displays, etc.).
Apple Wireless: A new sub-brand that pulls together all of Apple’s existing wireless products (Airport cards and base stations, keyboards, mice) with new products and services like the Apple mobile phone and wireless service (Apple as an mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO), an iPod with wi-fi capabilities, and more.
Front Row: No longer just the software, but the hardware otherwise known as iTV, which will feature an instant-on flash drive with Mac OS X Embedded and the same Front Row software previously demoed. In addition to Quicktime Movie Trailers, Front Row will stream Internet content like YouTube based on settings in your .Mac account, and will support high definition content.
iSync: A significantly improved sync capability between a Mac and all its devices, truly making the Mac the digital hub of the years-old strategy. iSync will disappear as a standalone application, and become one of the big surprises left for Leopard. Preferences in side applications, files, and folders will allow you to decide whether to sync the file or not, and if so, to what: .mac (see below), iPod, phone (Apple’s or otherwise), or PDA.
Numbers: The spreadsheet companion to Pages and Keynote will finally be revealed, allowing iWork 2007 to become the Appleworks replacement it was intended to be.
.mac/iLife/iWork: Dramatic improvements to .mac driven by a strategic alliance with Google, wherein Apple privately brands Google Applications for Your Domain so that .mac users have gMail, Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, Picasa, etc. as their online version, as well as much more iDisk storage for all their files. But the real news will be deep integration between these new .mac applications and Mac OS X desktop software. Within a Pages document (a checkbox on the document inspector panel), for example, you can choose to share it publicly or privately via .mac (similarly Mail -> Webmail, iWeb -> Blogger, Numbers -> .mac Spreadsheet, iPhoto -> Picasa, iMovie -> YouTube, etc.). The desktop versions of each application will have more powerful features than the online versions, but the online versions can be accessed anytime, from anywhere, including Windows machines.
Leopard: In addition to the new iSync capability described above, Leopard will support a new Finder interface that makes organizing, navigating and finding files much easier, including through a much-improved Spotlight. Significant attention will be placed on standardizing user interface elements across the OS and its included applications, and the interface may see some dramatic changes as well. Time Machine will be configured by default to use the much-larger iDisk referenced above.
Of course I could go on dreaming. But all of these things do truly seem to be within the realm of possibility, don’t they? Even if these kinds of things aren’t announced at Macworld, there seems to be enough evidence that they’ll happen eventually. What do you most want to see (as opposed to what do you think you’ll see)?
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