Preparing for MWSF 2006
Due to earlier events, I haven't had a chance to blog about this until now, but I bought a pass for
MacWorld San Francisco in January of 2006, so I will be attending the keynote and the show floor. I plan to
blog the conference again (
like I did last year), so all of my non-nerd friends will want to tune this blog out on January 10th.
My primary motivations for going are:
- because I can,
- because I didn't get into the live keynote area last year, and I want to try harder to do so this year,
- and, I need to take advantage of the "benefits" of living in California -- including living close to the Moscone center. I probably won't always live in Cali, so I have to get my mac nerdery on while I can.
And now, for my pre-show predictions. The rumor-mill has been running rampant with speculation, and while I have been reading every rumor that I can, I don't think that all of them are true. Here is the list of things that I think are "a lock" to see at MWSF 2006:
- BIG numbers from Apple's sales over the Christmas season. Lots and lots of Macs, iPods, songs, and videos sold. There will be much rejoicing among the faithful.
- New iPod Shuffles - The iPod Shuffle hasn't been updated in a year, and it is due. While there is an outside chance that Apple could simply phase-out the Shuffle in favor of a 1Gb Nano, I don't think that they will. Instead, I think that they will improve upon the shuffle. This isn't going to be easy -- because they can't fall into their usual pattern of making it "hold more storage and/or be smaller". I think that the Shuffle is already as small as it is going to get (barring some huge advance in battery technology), and if they give it more storage it will start to intrude on the Nano. Plus, having to shuffle through more that 1Gb is somewhat insane.
Instead, I think that the Shuffle might receive minor physical tweaks (improved rear switch), color choices, and possibly some sort of display. I'm thinking something like the OLED displays that Sony is using on some of their MP3 players.
- New iLife and iWork - iWork was introduced at MWSF last year, and iLife seems to be on an every January upgrade cycle. I'm not sure what sorts of specific upgrades these application suites will receive. The only application out of the whole bunch that I really use is iPhoto, so I can only speak to that. What I would like to see:
- Robust tagging support - like what Flickr has. Also, it should be super fast to apply tags and ratings to pictures -- all keyboard driven, as fast as I can see a picture, recognize it, and type.
- Apple-supplied integration with other web sharing services like Ofoto, Flickr, Gallery, etc.
- Sorting based on arbitrary image properties in the EXIF data. Also based on image size.
- Integrate with iSync to automatically suck pictures from my camera phone into iPhoto.
- Automatic facial recognition, like what Riya is doing.
- Upgrades to .Mac - I really like the idea behind .Mac, especially back from when it was announced. But it has really stagnated -- I think that there is a lot of room to innovate here, but Apple hasn't been doing it. Instead, .Mac is rapidly being overtaken by Web 2.0 services (Gmail, Flickr, etc.). Apple needs to move fast if they want to save .Mac. I think that there is still some room to do something great -- the current state of browser technology is crappy enough, that having real client software, integrated into the OS, to drive different web services will be way better than what anybody else can offer.
So, get to it Apple! Bring on the blogs, wikis, automatic RSS notifications for website changes, robust picture tagging and sharing, collaboration, etc. Make it Web 2.5.
- A sneak-peak at Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - This is pretty iffy, but I think that Jobs might shed some more light on the next release of Mac OS X. It will probably be a teaser, with the technical "meat" being saved for WWDC '06.
Now, regarding the possibility of seeing new Mac hardware (i.e.
Intel-based macs), I think the odds of that are kindof low. While it would be a nice surprise, I'm not banking on it. I don't doubt that Apple is working on Intel-based macs even as I type, but whether or not they will be ready in time for MWSF is anybody's guess. Especially since they won't be ready until Steve says they are ready, and he can make that decision right up until the last minute.
But still, even without Intel-based Macs, I expect that this keynote is going to be a lot of fun. :)
-Andy.
Technorati Tags:
.Mac,
Apple,
MWSF,
Riya,
Flickr,
Macintosh,
iPod Shuffle,
iLife,
iWork
Posted by andyr at December 27, 2005 11:03 PM