Macworld predictions for 2008

Danny Gorog
18 December 2007, 2:15 AM

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Will it be movie rentals or a new iPhone? We've put our heads together for you to work out what's going to be released at this years Macworld.

As the annual Macworld silly season approaches we here at APC thought it was a good time to put together our 'what's going to happen at Macworld' checklist.

If you follow the Mac-web you've no doubt read about the many different theories flying around about what Macworld will bring, and if we're lucky we might even get another Macworld Bingo from Ars Technica.

With that in mind two of my Mac-using colleagues, David Flynn and Dan Warne have helped pull this piece together. If you've got some ideas of your own please contribute in the comments. Also, we'll revisit this after the keynote which takes place on Jan 15th (16th local time) to see how right or wrong we were.

Could this be the new form MacBook Pro? (photo: Gizmodo)

or is this it? (photo: www.noheat.com)

Apple has a history of launching great products and then slowly improving them over time. This year we saw the announcement then launch of the iPhone, the Apple TV and Leopard, the fifth iteration of OS X.

For any tech company that's a lot of new 'stuff' and you just have to look around at the amount of competition against Apple to see how hard it actually is to develop products that customers really love.

Let's be clear. At this point, six months out from the launch of the iPhone you can see it's a revolutionary device.

In the smartphone segment, it has already captured more market share than all Symbian and Windows Mobile devices combined (and that's just in three months) and as the worldwide launch continues I expect to see that go higher.

Do we even need to mention the iPod? It's still the market leader in all digital music player categories and combined with iTunes is the only music player you'd seriously consider for yourself or your mother (unless of course you need a radio or WM support).

Most people I know have got more than one, and I'm talking about people who don't even like technology. They just want a music player that works and is easy to get music on to.

Despite Apple's shifted focus on music and gadgets, the Mac continues to gain momentum at a rate some say is three times higher than the market average. Even if you loathe the Mac platform you've got to admit that Macs are popping up in more and more places.

Look for the Mac to start infiltrating the corporate world in 2008 -- perhaps not as a standard corporate desktop, but at very least, as a way of giving some staff a more enjoyable workplace.

With the best bundle of native Windows support, good looks, standardised specs and competitive pricing Apple is a lot more appealing to hardline corporate IT departments than it was a few years ago.

While the release of Leopard revealed a few glitches it's fair to say it's been much better received than Vista. Leopard offers more of the same stability that users have come to expect from OS X and offers great features like Time Machine for silent, automated backup, and Quickview to easily view a document without opening the associated application.

Combine Leopard with iLife '08 and you've got the best platform for doing everything outside of the office (and some would argue in the office too). With Microsoft Office 2008 coming out in January Mac users will again be able to read and write to the new MS XML document formats as well.

Room for improvement?

So I think it's fair to say that Apple are firing on all cylinders. But still, like any business there is always room for improvement, and by focusing on this area I think we'll get a better sense of what's going to come out of Macworld.

The most obvious 'problem' product in Apple's portfolio, according to the pundits, is the Apple TV. Launched at Macworld 2007, the Apple TV has met with a whimper of apathy from the public and has yet to revolutionise the way we watch TV in an equivalent manner as the iPod and iPhone have changed their respective categories.

However the take I got from my brief encounter with Apple execs in November was that the Apple TV is tracking as they predicted, and in relative terms has sold more units than the iPod had ten months in to its own life cycle.

Will Apple TV lose its 'hobby' moniker?

Still, it's easy to see how Apple could improve the Apple TV. Add support for other codecs like DivX and the product might be an instant hit - possibly at the expense of people buying legitimate content from iTunes.

However, Apple isn't stupid -- it knows that part of the early success of the iPod was its ability to play MP3 files -- the format most commonly used for downloaded, pirated music. If Apple had forced people to convert their whole music collection to AAC before transferring it to an iPod, the iPod would have gone the same way as Sony's attempts at portable digital music players did.

There's talk that Apple will add movie rentals to iTunes, but even if that's the case, don't expect them to come to Australia any time soon.

iPhone generation 2?

Then there's the iPhone. Despite the relatively easy availability of hacked iPhones for use in Australia, lots of people are holding out on buying one until it's got 3G support and built-in GPS but I think those features are at least another six months away.

One things for sure, Microsoft Office 2008 will be out here on Jan 31.

Apple knows that the iPhone is better than anything out there at the moment so certainly won't be rushed in to releasing anything until the technology is mature and the feature set makes sense. With the imminent SDK just around the corner the iPhone as we know it is here to stay for the short term.

That said, it's obvious by how frequently iPod models are turned over that Apple is well aware that the consumer electro

nics market thrives on 'new' stuff, so it's entirely possible that Apple will surprise us with some sort of iPhone update -- even if it's a significant software refresh rather than hardware.

So, with all that in mind here's our list with a percentage score of how likely things are to actually happen. Comments are always appreciated, so let the speculation begin!