Apple announcements

With all of the press and hype of tomorrow’s event, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and make my own predictions. Here’s my official prediction of what is happening at Wednesday’s Apple announcement.

Tablet

It seems inevitable that the tablet is coming. My guess is that it is going to be essentially a large iPod Touch, with an emphasis on being an electronic book reader and multimedia device. But it won’t have an e-Ink screen; it will be a conventional LCD with multi-touch. Apple puts too much emphasis on color for e-Ink to be an option right now. And OLED is too expensive to be an option on a device this size. (We’ll see an iPhone with OLED first.)

The focus will be as a tool for students and avid readers, with contracts being announced with major book publishers, newspapers, and magazines. Some emphasis will be on it being a business tool, but it won’t really be very well focused for that. This is going to be Apple’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle.

It will have WiFi connectivity, and an optional radio for connecting to either Verizon’s or AT&T’s 3G network. It will even be offered at a discount with carrier subsidies for anyone willing to sign a contract for data services. It will run existing iPhone applications, but only at small size until developers make the necessary upgrades to run on the larger screen.

It will be priced between $700-900 (without subsidy), and will be available in the March-April timeframe. The name won’t include the “i” we’re so used to seeing from Apple at all (they have been using that for a decade; time to move on). Any name with the word Tablet is out, as that term has a negative connotation in the computer world. Something with “Slate” is a possibility, but I’d like to think that they’re more creative than that. (Though there is some doubt in my mind based on the names of the wholly uninventive iPod “Touch” or ludicrously-named MacBook “Air.”) But the most likely candidates are ones that imply creativity, color, or artwork of some sort.

I’m about 30% confident Apple will be forced to include a stylus. If it is pushed as an artist’s tool or a notetaking device a pen of some sort is going to be required (drawing or writing with just fingers is just too inefficient and clumsy). But Steve Jobs has made it pretty clear in the past that he hates styli. So I’m leaning toward it not being an artist’s tool with no pen/stylus. He’ll tout an amazing new touch keyboard, but people who use it will find that it doesn’t work very well without tactile feedback.

iPhone

No significant changes for the iPhone here. We’ll see an announcement of a 3.2 version of its software to bring software compatibility with the tablet, but no real new significant functionality. No version 4.0 for another few months (we’ll see that announcement quietly in April/May, without a large press event).

The hardware itself will remain unchanged. And we won’t be seeing any announcement of it coming to any other carriers. That won’t come until June or July, when we’ll receive an announcement that AT&T exclusivity is ending, and the phone will be opened up to the T-Mobile network at a minimum, but probably also Verizon, though that might take a little more time to become available. Sprint won’t come until much later.

Mac

No new iMacs, or Mac Mini. But we’ll hear about a small refresh on the 17” MacBook Pro, where the Core i5 and i7 processors will become available as options soon. The 15” will be eventually offered with an i5, but not yet. All MacBook Pro models will soon be offered with Solid State Disks. Other than that, the only changes will be minor bumps in processor speed.

The Mac Pro is due for an i7 update, but I doubt this event will be where that is announced.

iPod

There will be no iPod announcements.

Software

The iLife suite will be upgraded to version 2010. iPhoto will be given a few new tools for fixing photos. iMovie will be given a lot more functionality. The other applications will receive some minor tweaks, but nothing earthshattering.

iWork will also be updated to 2010, but we won’t hear much about it. The biggest change is going to be improved integration with MobileMe.

MobileMe, on the other hand, will receive significant upgrades to support the new tablet. As the tablet is going to be a primarily internet connected device, tight integration with MobileMe will be essential. MobileMe is going to be the primary means of accessing personal data on the tablet.

iTunes will receive a minor bump (9.1) to support some new features of the tablet. We’ll hear an announcement that soon we will be able to stream our iTunes content to any computer associated with our Apple IDs courtesy of the recent acquisition of LaLa. It won’t be a subscription service where you can play any music anywhere at any time (like Zune Pass), just a way to access your iTunes purchased music from any computer associated with your Apple account. This same capability, however, will be coming in iPhone OS 4.0 (but only when connected via WiFi; AT&T won’t allow real-time streaming of music over their 3G network).