News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

January 8, 2007

events

Another batch of predictions

Posted Jan. 8, ’07, 2:38 PM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Apple » Events

Crystal Ball Everybody and their brother has posted their list of predictions for tomorrow morning’s keynote. The single most disappointing thing about these lists is that the most unexciting are usually the most likely, at least for the bulk of the predictions. The one place you totally go out on a limb is the “one more thing” if it happens.

I keep my predictions fairly bland, especially compared to the poor keynote-less Dan. My personal working theory is that he is using humor to deflect his pain and frustration about missing out. Don’t mention it to him or the pain might be too much and he’ll be reduced to your momma jokes.

We of course have our given topics of conversations and announcements. Steve will definitely talk about Leopard (along with availability), the iTV, iLife ‘07, and iWork ‘07. The latter two are likely to be pretty unexciting if iWork ‘07 doesn’t suddenly include a spreadsheet app (which I’m still not feeling at this point). After all how many times can you tout “even faster!” as an iPhoto feature?

I have high hopes for the “top secret” features of Leopard. Time Machine is cool and extremely useful, but I want a little more razzle dazzle, even of the geeky kind. If the rumors pan out, there might be ZFS in my future. The idea of being able throw a bunch of disks together into a pseudo RAID and at the same time be able to arbitrarily add and remove storage is a geek dream. Heck, done right, it’s a consumer’s dream. No more worrying about where to save your data on any of your half dozen drives. No more worrying about running out of space (just add another disk!).

iTV is the splashiest product that we know exists right now. The big thing we need is more detail. How about some draft 802.11n hardware? Will we be able to attach hard drives and use it as a NAS drive? What video formats will it support (DivX being the big question)?

On the hardware front, I fully expect quad core processors to be put into the Mac Pro and quite possibly an iMac model. There’s not too much more one can say about that.

Like I said, all that is fairly bland. The big question on everyone’s minds is: will there be an iPhone? I’m sure you’ve read the entire speculated feature set. Even the big media outlets are reporting on the rumors. The question people should be asking is: is there something to this or are people just willing to believe? Have we all whipped ourselves into a complete frenzy over a non-existent product simply because we want to believe or is this frenzy happening because something really is going to be released? This is one occasion when I can’t decide. I’d like to see it happen because I’m looking to get a new cell phone soon, but that’s just wishful thinking, not rational in any way.


2 Comments

Peter said:

iMac Quad? Interesting...

January 8, 2007 5:49 PM
Dave said:

In all this frenzy over an "iPhone" I haven't heard any leaks. Seems to me that Apple would have to partner with at least one carrier, and something usually leaks in such situations. I'm expecting something else. I don't know what, but it wouldn't be hard for Apple to come up with something more exciting (to me) than an "iPhone."

January 8, 2007 10:57 PM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: