It's lunchtime and I have to admit that through today's trudge of producing marketing documentation for work, one thing has been occupying my mind; today, Steve Jobs gives the keynote at Macworld. I love Macs, and I realize that now more clearly than ever, since I've sold all my Macs ready for the move to the US. That was a mistake. You see, to me, Macs are "get it done" machines. If I want to write a script to produce a custom RSS feed from a site that doesn't support it, my first instinct is to reach for my Mac. When writing, I feel more creative on a Mac, so I always reach out for Mac Office Word when the creative inkling starts to surface. If I'm on the road and need to hook up somewhere, I always wish I have a Mac with me, just becuase it "just works". I know that I won't have any hassles hooking my Mac up to a wifi hotspot, but I've got graphic experiences of just how painful Windows can make it at times.
In short, I just love Macs. I work with Windows. I play with Macs. Or at least I used to.
Anyway, Heather and I decided to hell with it - we're going to get Macs again as soon as is feasibly possible (which means as soon as the bank manager stops being a complete doo doo head). Waiting is painful, but with Macworld's big announcements happening today it makes sense; I don't want to go and buy a new Powerbook only to find that a better one costs less in a weeks time. I had that the last time I bought a powerbook. I've been trawling the web looking for glimpses, rumours of what just might be happening today, but as always Apple play these things close to their chest. I think I've figured it out though - and here's my set of predictions.
1. New Powerbooks. The powerbooks haven't been updated for about a year now, and the iBook range are now close in spec to the Powerbooks making them less "must have" than perhaps they once were. I know for a fact that we aren't going to see the long awaited G5 Powerbook today (the 90 nanosecond fabrication technology that IBM are now using just doesn't get rid of as much of the heat problem as everyone hoped, and a speed crippled G5 would just be silly). So, for the powerbooks I'm expecting bigger, faster hard disks (they currently top out at 80 gig with a 4200rpm speed), across the board. I also expect to see all the POwerbooks get a speed bump, perhaps even as far as 1.8ghz on the top of the line 17 inch G4 powerbook. I don't expect this, but it would be nice, if Apple could also squeeze the backlit keyboard and auto-sensing screen controls into the 12 inch Powerbook. These new Powerbooks will also all have bluetooth built in, along with USB 2 and uprated video cards (Radeon 9700, 256 meg I reckon)
2. A screenless, flash based iPod. This is a no brainer - the posters are already up around San Francisco and security guards are going to great lengths to stop people taking pictures and sticking them on the web. The device will hold about 256 songs on a flash card, and won't have a screen because really, with that few songs, you don't need one.
3. A screenless desktop macintosh in the same styling as the current XServe machine, for about 499 dollars. It will be a G4 based machine and an ideal entry point for Windows users looking to see what all the fuss is about. Again this guestimation is brainless - various websites have already been sued for leaking that one.
4. A new integrated Office suite, with an awesome word processor that's fully compatible with Word, but which comes with all new Macs. It's the one area where Apple are a little weak right now, and it certianly makes sense if you are going to release a headless mac in order that new users get everything they need out of the box.
5. A really off the wall one, but again I think it makes sense - a quad processor G5. OOOOo that would be nice
So there's my predictitions - guess we'll see how we do when Steve takes the mic at 6pm GMT.
2:07:14 PM 
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