Monday, January 14, 2008

Macworld 2008 Predictions

Having only had time to glance at the rumor and speculation sites, I shall now boldly tell you EXACTLY what to expect from Steve Jobs’ Macworld Keynote. I also got some advanced copies of the Keynote and some of the choice quotes Steve will be tossing out.


  1. New iPhone. Because I’m cursed and just got one so naturally a new one is destined to come out tomorrow. No doubt, it will also be cheaper and come with a pony. The best new feature of this iPhone? Exclusive Apple Call Screening Technology. Basically, this advanced Apple technology renders the iPhone unable to take or make any calls until you have finished all your work. Now you have no excuses and have to get back to slaving away on that idiotic Power Point presentation.

  2. Apple buys Adobe. But only because Steve tried to use Adobe Acrobat Professional to edit a PDF Jonathon Ivie sent him and the program crashed on him incessantly, kept nagging him to update EVERY SINGLE TIME HE LAUNCHED THE PROGRAM, then Steve would go ahead and run the updater, but the bowel cleansing software updater would crash mid-update and he’d have to re-install the entire Creative Suite 3. Twice. In a fit of pique, Steve told his financial minions to buy up all available Adobe stock and he’s killing the product. “It’s a hateful, hateful piece of software that seems intent on making you went to strangle puppies and not create incredible and beautiful documents. The world is better off without it. Oh, and one more thing about the takeover of Adobe? We will also make it easy to choose which version of Adobe Creative Suite you want to purchase: There’s only ONE version now!”

  3. New Apple TV 2.0 “I had one in my home office, but had forgotten about it. I called the hardware guys and they came over and sure enough, we make these little guys! Who knew?! They are kind of cool! We are also doing some licensing so you can download HiDef movies (Pixar only for now) right into the cutie-pie. Cool, huh?”

  4. Ultra-portable 13” laptop. ”Merlin Mann has been bugging the crap out of me for one of these. Man, does that guy know how to PESTER! It doesn’t have an optical drive, it only works when you insert 50¢ into the slot beside the chic-let sized keyboard and the screens is about the size of a postage stamp, but here it is. Enjoy, suckas!

  5. iPhone/iPod Touch Tablet Thing-a-majiggy. “We don’t know what to do with it either. But let me tell you, it’s WAY better than those Microsoft tablets. See, watch how cool it is to zoom in and out of your iPhoto library! Boom! Neat, huh?”

  6. iTunes 8. This new release will monitor your blood alcohol levels. Prevents drunken iTunes Music Store Shopping.™ Will not allow you to purchase Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” unless you are stone cold sober.

  7. iLife 08 and a half. “We know, we know, we kind screwed up iMovie in the latest release. So fine, here’s an update. NOW GET OFF MY BACK, YOU SMELLY, SMELLY DORKS!”

  8. iTunes After Dark. A special “red light district” of the iTunes store. Apple Pr0n has a whole new meaning.

  9. The Beatles on iTunes. Not just the music, but the actual Beatles. You can now buy a day with Paul McCartney who will come over to your house, sing the entirety of Sgt. Peppers’ to you, make you a vegan omelette for breakfast and never stop complaining about Michael Jackson ever owning the publishing rights to his music and keep telling you over and over, “Don’t ever get married, mate. And if you do, for the Queen’s sake, GET A PRE-NUP!”

  10. Apple Gaming Division. “Oh who am I trying to kid? We suck at games! Buy a frickin’ Wii if you want to play stupid video games.”

OK, in reality I have no clue what’s going to be announced. I really haven’t kept up on any of the rumor stuff this go around. I’d like to see a fairly extensive discussion/introduction to the iPhone SDK that’s set to be released in February. My guess about the SDK? All iPhone/iPod touch apps MUST be released/sold and blessed by Apple and will be downloaded through iTunes to the iPhone. Software developers will have to pay or be “blessed” in order to get into the Store. Apple will take a cut of the software’s price. I suspect that you will hear MANY loud howls from the small independent Mac software development community who will object to this plan. But I think devs will have to jump through some hoops to get their software onto the iPhones.

The reason why I think Apple will do it this way? (Besides getting a cut of the price, of course). Because they want your iPhone to keep running. The last thing Apple wants is for users to have a bad experience with the phone. You start putting goofy apps from who knows where on the phone, and eventually, the little guy isn’t going to run anymore. (I’m looking at you, Windows Mobile (any version). Remember, for some reason the iPhone runs as the “root” (admin) user. Which means that all those programs running on the thing have access to all the data on the device, including the modem (the data network) and WiFi. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want any “rogue” apps getting anywhere near my data. And certainly AT&T is going to want to know what kind of “stuff” is running on their pokey network. AT&T has a vested interest in what kind of apps run on the iPhone as well, i.e., “Please, everyone, SHHHH! No one tell the Skype people about the iPhone! Please! K, Thanks! ‘Bye!”

Plus, they want to cement in user’s minds this fact: ALL iPhone software comes from Apple and iTunes. There is NO SUCH THING as iPhone software (even free/open source software) from someone’s web site. So when you inevitably get an email on your iPhone that says, “Free iPhone Softwarez! Please to be clicking here!” and like a moron, you click on the link and you get re-directed to some server in Bulgaria that installs a program that eats your cat and drains your bank account, as a user you’ll have been trained to avoid that particular problem.

Anyway, it’s a Steve-note. Those are always fun. At the very least, it’s fun to think of a zillion Apple Nerds, sitting blankly in front of their iMacs with spittle running down their chins and all hitting “refresh” on the Apple Store page to see if it’s back up yet.

(I may be one of them, but at least I’ll know to bring a bib to work tomorrow.)

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/14/08 at 08:57 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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