Monday, January 09, 2006
MWSF
The bi-annual MacWorld conference will be held tomorrow at the Moscone Center in San Francisco tomorrow. There will, unfortunately, be no live webcast, but a rebroadcast of the event will be shown from the usual place (quicktime.com somewhere).
There are a few things people have been predicting, and I think I'm ready to comment on a few of them.
There are a few things people have been predicting, and I think I'm ready to comment on a few of them.
- Intel Machines
This is a full 6 months earlier than the first Intel machines were promised, (at a MacWorld keynote) but I think this one has a pretty good chance of being unveiled at this event. I think it's the perfect time, due to all the news of fantastic iPod sales over Christmas (I'm sure we'll hear more about that during the keynote as well), for Apple to keep the press ball rolling, and keep their name in the spotlight. However, I think that it's very early to be talking about actually shipping these machines. I won't be surprised to hear a new Intel machine announced, with an expected ship date around Valentine's Day. If it comes, it'll be a laptop model. - Low Cost Laptop
I feel pretty good about this one too. Apple's been doing the 'laptops in schools' thing for a while now, but it's been going in fits - a school will sign on, go for the term of the contract, then switch to Dell. I think they want a machine that is cheap to buy, cheap to build, cheap to replace, with ultra low margins (ie: they basically sell for what it costs to make them) so they can make money on the services associated with these school deals, and (for regular consumer sales) iPods and Airports and all o' that. I could see these machines being bascially a 'made with cheaper plastics' version of the existing iBook, (maybe with only one screen size) or as an Intel model. Less likely that it'd be an intel model though, because I think the new Intel machines will probably use the new DuoCore stuff, and Apple will try to position it as 'The Best', not 'The Cheapest'. - Media Center
I don't like this one that much. We'll all see I guess, but I just don't see Apple going after the Media Center machine - at least not the way MSFT and Co. have been. If we see something along these lines it'll be drastically different from what's currently available. I don't know what that would be. - Low Cost iPod
Not a bad a idea - it would let them capitalize on the brand identity and break into the lower-margin, lower-revenue markets. I sort of expect them to either redo (double the memory, same price?) or dump (replace with a small nano?) the shuffle line - though I still love it. It wouldn't surprise me it any replacement for the shuffle has a screen, though I couldn't be less enthused about that. - iLife '06
I think this one's almost definitely going to happen. iPhoto needs an update to make it capable of handling the really large photo libraries many people are amassing, and better sorting/searching, and better sharing features like "move these photos to this folder for me". iMovie is still okay, though speed improvements and bug fixes are always welcome. iDVD is due for some more themes if nothing else, and Garageband hasn't been touched in a while. - Productivity Suite
I'm not sure - I think the idea of an Apple spreadsheet application is rather weak, given the popularity of Excel (I still don't like it - though it's good for working with databases). I would expecct updates to the iWork stuff - new themes for Keynote, new templates for Pages. Personally, I think they should make Pages the best it can be, and the cheapest it can be, and leave it at that for now. - New Monitors
Maybe. I don't really care, though the possibility of something 'insanely huge' sounds fun. 40-inch studio display, anyone? - FrontRow for everyone?
Probably.
