The Swing Of Things

MacWorld is coming up at January 14. and what fun would it be without the rumors beforehand? Yep, my own take at what will take place:

The bragging
As always, there will be the usual bragging about how well Apple is doing. We will see sales figures for Leopard, Mac’s, iPod’s and probably the insanely 5 million mark of iPhones already passed. And of course the usual state of the iTunes Store.

iPhone
No new iPhone, but more features. The 1.1.3 update will be released with much fanfare, making ‘your iPhone a completely new phone’ (not so fun for us with hacks). Probably we’ll also see a memory increase. 16GB anyone? Maybe new countries announced?

iPod
No new iPods now, but most certainly memory increases to Nano and Touch (Creative increased their Zen in december remember). Also same update for Touch owners as for iPhones.

iTunes
This would be interesting. The rumors of movie rentals are quite beliveable, and I think they will happen at MacWorld. It is a funny thing that whenever the movie/music guys have trouble they seem to turn to Apple to fix their world, and when they see how successful Apple is, they turn their back on them afterwards. Apple will fix the movie world. And movie/music guys; there is no way you can take Apple’s power away. Just give it up already, and play as they say.
This might be the ‘one more thing’ of the year. Because the main event would be:

MacBook
Yes. And finally! The all new MacBook that will amaze the world. No, it won’t be a MacBook Pro, and it won’t be a new category. The new MacBook, sporting new (colored?) aluminum casing, touch functionality, lightweight, lots of batterypower, small, delicious. There’s no doubt that this will be the main release at MacWorld, the only question is if it will be a regular MacBook replacement with hard drive, fairly large screen, optical media - or if there will be a true sub-notebook as well. A MacBook nano.

Desktops Macs
Not a chance.

Software
I can’t see why. No reason to do anything now about neither OS, iLife or iWork - and everything else is Pro-software that don’t get headliners at this show.

AppleTV<
If the rumored iTunes update will happen, it will make sense to do a rerelease of this. It is a product just waiting for it's right time. Movie rentals through iTunes is very much that time.

Displays
This is most intriguing. A large Apple display - or even TV - has been rumored a long time. What could Apple do to your TV set? Quite a bit they should. They could include the whole mediacenter (AppleTV) functionality in it. For starters. I believe Apple is thinking about this, but am more doubtful if they have reached ready state. At least it would give a whole new meaning to AppleTV. Other than this, I don’t see any display updates now.

So, now we just wait in excitement to see how his Steveness will surprise us again.

This nutcase blogging on c-net is blessing the world with his competence on why Apple should NOT in fact release a sub-notebook kind of computer. He first goes on to rant about all the usual drawbacks of such devices currently in the market, and then he manages to end up with the presumption that Apple will make something like what’s already there - or as he himself puts it:

Now, after reading over the general design of a subnotebook, does that design sound anything like a product Apple would sell? Not a chance.

Not a chance indeed. He apparently fails to see exactly how Apple works. The one thing that is certain, is that if Apple will do a sub-notebook, it will NOT look like anything that is out there. Whenever Apple designs a new product, they start with what is today, then they look thoroughly into all areas where they can improve on the thing. If they can’t, they won’t release it till they can.

One of the most interesting things to observe when Apple enter a new category or release a new/redesigned product is how it is so far ahead of and/or differentiated from other products catering to the same market. In fact, so different that they at the very minimum expand the market category, and sometimes even creates completely new markets (even unintentionally).Look no further than the iPod and iPhone, but also iTunes, iLife software and so on. This is the Apple DNA, no less.

Not all products Apple releases are instant successes of course, but the past 5-7 years I would be hard pressed to find any product that has really flopped (last one I can think of was the Cube). Apple has grown a sense for not releasing a product until both they themselves and the world is ready for it. Which means it can be designed with excellence in mind, be very useful for the consumers and be manufactured for a reasonable price. When all these three aspects are met, the product will be successful (the Cube failed miserably, as we know, on the last one).

I think the consumers are more than ready for a sub-notebook that changes the ballgame, I also think it is now possible to manufacture. It remains to be seen if Apple is ready. I am rather convinced they are.

[EDIT] I have been pointed also to the  iPod HiFi thingie as a sort of lately flop. Could agree to that, and it also falls into same category as the Cube. However the HiFi was hardly a high profiled product.

Don’t even bother to link to this guys so called blog - a funny little site with clip-art spaceships from the ’80s and… buckets. Obviously it is exactly what he wants everyone to do. The retard is attacking IconFactories excellent Twitter app - Twitteriffic - claiming they owe him big time since they got him hooked on an early free version, and now suddenly demand you pay a wholesome 15 bucks, or accept that you are fed some nice looking ads from the Deck. Basically it sounds like the guy had this thing with a syringe, and his brain now is defunct because of the ads blocking the veines. Or something. Bottomline, he uses the same lame arguments as all other freeloaders uses (y’know; all those hairy, bad smelling people that’s always there when the beer is free, and goes home once it’s their round); “We don’t want to pay for this - it’s digital, no one gets hurt, no material is lost, we wouldn’t buy it anyway, it’s not worth anything….” yeah yeah, the list goes on. Most funny argument though;

Don’t worry, my friend. Twitterrific isn’t such a complex app that a half-decent (preferably open-source) coder with a few spare hours couldn’t whip up a decent clone.

So, instead of “whipping up” that decent clone in an hour or so, it’s - well - better to spend the time hacking the existing app instead. Either this Marc Fiszman and his “Odelbee” friends are totally crap at coding (rather obvious) or it actually does take quite a bit of time to make - and support - such an app (even more obvious).
I bet there are SO many people that will just love working with this Fiszman guy over the next years…