So tomorrow is MacExpo, and here I am writing up predictions for what’s going to be announced. I really need to get out more, but hell, I like this stuff!
Generally, despite Apple trying to get away from aligning product launches with the event, MacExpo has heavy expections of new kit announcements.
With 2006 being a classic Mac year, 2007 announcements are eagerly awaited. So what can we expect …
iWork – next gen of the ‘office’ suite of Wordproccessor and Presentation software will offer updates along with a new spreadsheet app. This is important news as iWork will now be a proper replacement for the old Appleworks suite. Although MS Office is the ‘market leader’ in terms of numbers, there are now a lot of options for Mac users for this kind of software which can only be good.
iLife – annual updates for the superb photo/music/movie suite.
OS X Leopard – I’m guessing lots more info and launch date for end of March.
Octo Core Powermacs – yep!
12” Powerbook – nope, but we will get lots of sales stats about how well the others are selling.
iPhone – tough call. Given the rumour mill overdrive it’s tempting to call this a dead cert but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is nothing. I’d expect them basically SIM free but with some kind of tie in with one particular favoured carrier if they are launched.
iTV – if they’ve got the movie companies on board it will be a launch. Otherwise a feature update and estimated March/April launch date. This could be a big one though in terms of real impact on peoples lives – depends on the TV show and movie deals intertwined with it. This is basically a ‘posh/faster’’ airport extreme with a TV friendly frontrow v2.
iTunes – as above, a possible massive expansion of the movie store with several, if not all, the big movie co’s.
iPod Video – nothing, unless possibly the movies co’s are on board. Personnally I don’t think this will happen – though I wouldn’t be surprised to see bigger iPods although given the other stuff that’s not really newsworthy (!).
If there is an iPhone launch I wouldn’t be surprised to have the iTune movie store, iTV and iPod Video bumped to a ‘special event’. And of course we shouldn’t dismiss a new shiny version of Frontrow for Leopard and iTV.
I’m predicting some Adobe ‘look at our shiny new apps on Leopard/Intel’ walk on role, maybe a charisma-challenged movie co exec to bore us with his ‘historic deal’ yak, but no MS guest appearance for Office.
There you go, was that vague enough – in 18 hours we’ll know how wrong I am!
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Have you not forgotten a whole new range of home-knitted iPhone socks?
All this iPod/iPhone talk is starting to drive me mad. At the end of the day, Apple’s big products as OS/hardware. There is so much talk on so many sites about the damn modern walky talkies and Walkmans
But I’m glad to see you put the iWork prediction first! The only reason I haven’t bought this otherwise excellent product is the lack of spreadsheet. Let’s hope it’s now almost complete (a DB would be good in the coming years).
But I await the Octo Mac!
Nick