what's gonna be left for macworld in jan? - Page 5

join the club...

I am in the same boat...

I need a notebook now...but I think I can wait the less than 2 months...

I would jump out the window if I bought a new 17" PB now, and in Jan. Apple releases a new form factor 17" DP PB with updated screen with a better overall specs (i.e. greater rez & nit brightness)

I know, I know...the focus is portables, and greater mobility...this is why I am holding out right now...

lates...

I hope all my typing errors did not detract to much from the content. It does seem like a good time ot wait if you can afford to. Between now and the first of the year time flys at a very fast rate so the importance of your current hardware is a bit less than say thre emonths from now.

That is probally a key concept for anybody that want to upgrade their Mac. For personal items why bother now when there are so many distractions. Wiat until after the January intros and the ugliness of the TAX season.

thanks
Dave

My goals/predictions for macworld

1. new iLife: iphoto more responsive, better support for large photo collections and better slideshow controls. imovie: more transitions, more options to burn to vcd or dvd, faster photo rendering. itunes: better tools for mixing (well basic ones at least: iDJ fade in and out control and save playlists as custom mixes) iDVD: more themes, support for DVD+R burning or external drives. ipage: basic web page creation integrated with the rest of iLife to upload to .mac or other homepage

2. iwork: the apple office. Hopefully preloaded on all of the machines. (powerbooks have no word processing?????)But I don't think it will make a huge dent in office for mac. People want office even if the alternatives are better. (everyone uses office and the student teacher version's low price of entry ensures it will stay that way.

3. the new cube: lowers the cost of entry for small business and education market. Uses vga/dvi monitors and other stuff sitting in the closet or just purchased because they bought pcs. small footprint. Replaceable graphics card, hard drive, more dimm slots should cover most peoples needs, pci not so necessary.

4. Superdrives across all product lines (even ibooks, but leaving a sub-$1000 model with combo). And perhaps +/- drives in all desktops. Economy of scale could work out pretty good. (combo drives can be custom built-to order). Don't most people need it for their ilives anyway. And since PC laptops can be found with DVD burning for $1300 it only makes sense (rare but possible). ibooks have 2x, and powerbooks have 4x. ibook super: 12 built to order, 14 $1499 (most consumers want 14....the people who want 12 can do powerbooks or BTO 12")


5. 20th anniversary mac: 20" imac with g5 and more RAM and hard drive: maybe for $2500. (1.6 g5, 512 1 dimm, 160 hard drive, airport and bluetooth built -in, ship w/ wireless keyboard and mouse.) Or a revamped design with 2.0 g5, USB and firwire on the front. Maybe even a card reader.

6. keynote update

7. g5 xserves

8. emac funeral (the only product not availible with USB 2.0, it must be end of lifed or it would have been upgraded when shipped with panther)

9. ichat and isight pc (so we have more people to talk to, but ichat will not necessarily be full screen video on all machines). ichat will be a free client trojan horse for isights. (ichat enterprise to be released later in the year with more options. Bundled on pro machines and sold with xserves, maybe for $69-99 or so. Cheap and high quality and more features like whiteboard and multiuser support)


"Apple brings the award winning superdrive to the masses. Now standard in all products

"Apple offers video conferencing for the rest of us..... cheap solution for small business video conferencing."


A little busy for one week but wonders never cease.

my five euro-cents:

i'm not interested in specs, GHz, busses etc. i do have a more marketing/consumer/buyer point of view.

what correctly was said above: imac was/is a good start to get connected to the iNet, to have "a computer" at home. it's a all-in-one machine, no fuzz with "what else hardware do i need? can i connect such am monitor to this plug?? what plug????" - a friend of machine unpacked her new imac and within 3 (three) minutes she was online, everything was running...-

emac is very us-cenctric - we don't have colleges, computer-rooms, we still use ink and paper in old europe no idea, wether there is any need for such a prodcut.

G5 is for pros - expandable, fast, reliable, state-of-the-art, a good 4 years investment.

iPod is - well, just great!

ahh, the year of laptop - very good idea! the all-in-one for the pros again, no probs with "does it fit, what else do i need etc"

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so, question 1) is the annual keynote of importance for the consumer?

No.

just for the press, the guys from the stock exchange

q2) is the keynote of any importance for the apple afficionado?
YES!

q3) is the 20th anni of any importance?
well, from a PR/marketing pov it is, or it should be...- but ol' steve said allready, for the superbowl itms is the main theme.

q4) does the market needs new products?
what is a NEW product? more GHz, front busses, ram chips...? no.- this is just for nerds, and as we could see in the last months, all the iBook updates etc are done very calm, unexited, "hey, buy the way, the iBook has a G4 instead of a G3 or whatever...."

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so, i think, there will be some updates, we will see new software (but this is of no importance for a journalist "apple has is own "office" - so what?? - the allways had their own stuff..."/it will be a revolution for the rest fo us, but not for public...-

a renaissance of the Cube? - "apple gives flop a second try"... no, i own a Cube, the best home-computer/digital hub ever!! - a headless mac maybe is the follow up of an emac...

no, IF 20th anni is important for apple, and IF itms is getting a little out of focus and IF we don't see the überG5 with 4x4GHz...- we will see a device, small & beautiful, easy to handle, plug-n-play. i'm sure, it has to do with pictures! mms/foto mobiles is a big trend over here...-

have you heard about the concept of a "life recorder", a storage device, so small and so big, to record literarly everything of your life? from sound to pics to moving images...? when i go to my clients, i like to "wear" a little usb-stick with all the files i need for working - just plug in, start working (windows/apple/anyhow)... imagine a much mightier solution, including my personalized system... no, no iPod, a little bigger (in Gigs), connectable to monitor, tv sets, stereos, whatever...-

so, in less words:
iWrite and the überiPod

Another idea is the cPod for your Car.
Rather than connecting the iPod to your current system through cupholders, cable connectors and the cigarette lighter a 1din unit which fits the car and can sync with an ipod or laptop.

Off the wall maybe but I think Apple is going to continue to innovate and surprise.

Or its just a product I want!

Well I always thought it would be nice to have a monitor with a built in TV tuner doing picture in a desktop so to speak. The problem is that the existing offerings from the monitor manufactures has been far to expensive. So If Apple could show leader ship here then that would be great. Otherwise yes a s-video or better input, still doing picture in a desktop would be great.

Beyond that, with monitors anyways, I hate to see them overloaded with alot of ports, speakers and such. The KISS pricipal really does apply to this item, much as with a mouse and a bikini, less is often better.

Being a technician, one thing I'd love to see is a combination Fluke Multimeter / iPOD / Newton / Data Recorder handheld. Such a device may never have the volumns to make Apple happy, but it would be nice to have all that functionality in one little handheld device. Especially if everything could be cleanly implemented on one interface. Not likely to happen I know, but a guy can dream.

Dave

i would think not to alienate all those that bought one, some kind of adapter or head unit so the new and the old can use it.

you want a Startrek TriCorder!

Now that was worth a good laugh.

On the other hand some of those capabilities would be nice in a handheld device For the present though I would be satisfied with something similar to that described. That is a small handheld device that functions as a multimeter, has an integrated user interface, handles and stores music and maybe a bit of data processing capabilities. Almost as if you took one of those Palm or HP handhelds and slapped it on the face of a multimeter.

Admit it you want one too

Dave

Me wants:

MacOffice-Marry Keynote with a word processor and watch sales of Quark Express and InDesign fall. I've been very disappointed with the fact that Word X won't accept PDF documents. Keynote is great, however. Make a graphic in any app, print as a pdf and drop it in keynote. Voilá. Words handeling of graphics hasn't improved in ages, but has actually declined in my opinion. Back in Word 5, I was using frames to place graphics in the top right corner for instance. Then they came out with some dumb other manner of handeling graphics which didn't even let me automatically place graphics aligned to margins etc. The frame option has now been buried deeper in the interface, but I still use it. I can't tell you how much time I spend with graphics jumping pages and big white gaps without text (hours and hours-change a period and do it all over again). I'm sure Apple could work its magic with guidelines etc and make a page layout a breeze.

MacOffice also needs a better charting app to go along with a spreadsheet program. Keynote's output looks very nice, but it doesn't offer much choice.

Second, iVideo-I want a solution from Apple to easily hook my portable up to the TV and use it as a digital video recorder. iVideo will be like iTunes and iPhoto so that I can quickly organize my recordings and easily set recording times etc.

duck shit,

everybody (99,9%) in dtp or graphic design uses quark xpress (4.1.1) or indesign.

word processing is something else than graphic design.

i am also working on a printservice/prepress and it doesn't matter what OS people use, everything made with word is bud ugly.
on the otherhand things made with xpress or indesign looks good or even, in graphic design perspective, perfect. (we have a lot of graphic design studio's as customers)
except for people who use quark xpress under windows. it's almost always ugly or at least bad designed.


no joke, serious

people who are using a wintel machine to design on have no taste.
(or at least no education in graphic design)


the problem the graphic industry is facing these days is that people are using the wrong tools for the wrong job.

read: amateur designers.

because of all these computerised wonders of easy to get tools (office. corel draw etc.) people overestimate their own capibilities.
(yes, it excist: out of the box craftsmanship. push one button and your design is ready)

I new I was sticking my neck out a bit too far on my MacOffice vs Quark & InDesign comment. Obviously, Quark and InDesign will continue to hold their own in the professional DTP field. However, I think there are a lot of small businesses, SOHO etc that make news letters, etc that do some basic DTP. These folks would probably love to have their projects made easier and better with the help of Apple, just as presentations with keynot just look better than most made with Powerpoint. I don't expect Apple to come out with a real competitor for Quark and InDesign. Maybe just 90% of what these apps do, but simpler and cheaper.

what part of old europe do you live in? a cave community in the black forest?

did you mean to say that primary schools (under 12 yrs old) in europe have few computers?

my mother-in-law heads an elementary school near by the black forrest NO KIDDING! - so, kids of <10.- no computers! even she got hers 2 years ago...- no advise, windows, quote "sis maschine stinks!"

to be very serious: computer training/usage at schools over here in germany is a mess! a computer is a tool as a telephone, a radio, a bike!! and we have here the wiseguys, thinking about concepts! i don't need no bloody concept to use a computer! - ok, i'm an apple user-

PS: no, we don't live in caves, 'cause our dino doesn't fit in.

don't think about what you want... think of what the industry needs, I think Ives said that once. However in the software I think there's going to be some drastic new stuff.

an App to that syncs files like briefcase for windows, and updates them accordingly for the newest version, but also backs up the old ones, kind of like microsoft's sourcesafe but with a consumer feel, for photos, imovies, and what not. I think hard-drives are getting big enough for some kind of backend almost like adobe's version que, which is an excellent idea poorly executed in my opinion.

I think they will do something drastic with .mac, hopefully increase our storage because of it too. something to the extent of iDiary? Like iBlog (didn't Apple snatch that guy up) but extremely beefed up that interfaces with all the other iApps

something in the way off of a charting app? and a beefed up sherlock called something entirely different.

hardware wise - ipod w/ a camera built in, something like the isight but a little more compact and you use the color lcd for preview.

Since Pepsi will likely be the advertiser doing the most with the iTunes Music Store give away, do you think Apple will use the SuperBowl as a venue to announce a new product (like they did 20 years ago)?

Jade, your no.9 suggestion is one of the more intelligent ideas.

Trojan horse for iSight sales. More computers for Apple users to iChat to. Bundled free with iSight. Available sep' for a modest fee.

Either way. Apple is going to increase revenue steams even further. As a shareholder, I like that.

An enterprise edition. Very sharp idea...as part of an Apple 21st Century Office suite? Even better... 'Word' is out...video conferencing is in!

As for the Superbowl Pepsi/Apple thing? Possible.

It would be the ideal time to launch a new product.

I'd like to see the 'CRT is DEAD!' eMac given a resting place in 'Marshmallow Heaven.' It could be replaced with a headless edition bundled with a 15 inch LCD thrown in. Pizza box/iCuboid Box with LCD on top or by side. The eMac is on borrowed time. Naff screen, fat arse with non-upgradeable graphics. Blurgh. Perhaps use the new VX chips from IBM, eh?

Above that the new iMac3. With dockable/detachable tablet monitor? And G5. And better graphics. And then it will justify its lofty boutique price bracket.

I expect more software and a killer device. It's 2004 in Jan'. What a way to kickstart it.

Wireless firewire device? Dockable monitor that works of a 'pizza' client?

Hmmm. I'd be surprised if all Apple does at San Fran is announce iPod sales that have broken the half a million mark...

Lemon Bon Bon

http://www.miglia.com/products/video...ytv/index.html

http://www.elgato.com/eyeTV/index.html

It's always been my opinion that iChat AV for Windows will be next and it will be tightly integrated with iSight. In addition, I hope Apple will release an iChat AV Enterprise edition, hosted on OS X Server for Intranet/Extranet corporate conferencing. It will sell iSights, OS X Server and xServers.

In addition, Apple can release a consumer/SMB VOIP service for access the PTSN, faxing and Voicemail. That should be a hot business that Apple can legitimize like they did the Music Store. There are providers now, but not the volume and ease of use that Apple can bring to it.

Might they break out the USB 2.0 iSight for that purpose?

why not make ichat compatible with aol/netscape IM and port it to windows as well

Wow, I thought it was just me. I can't get graphics to coexist with text in Word no matter how hard I try. I've had to resort to copying from Powerpoint, pasting in Paint, copying from Paint and pasting back into Word. (This is on Windows!) I don't know how this got screwed up so badly. How can they have shipped it like this?

I believe that iChat is already compatible with AOL chat, what Apple needs to do is license the AV portion of the software to AOL so that it becomes part of the AOL service, and a trojan horse to get Quicktime on all computers running AOL. To develop a "Free" program for users of another OS does not make the best fiscal sense, but to have AOL "switch" their AV protocal to Quicktime in the deal does make a lot of sense for Apple, all of a sudden there is a lot larger install base for Quicktime, which means more pressure for web services such as the BBC, CNN, etc. to support Quicktime.

Shortest post EVER by Lemon Bon Bon!!

Buy. Powerbooks were just updated.

I wouldn't.

I think apple will have a G5 Xserve running RenderMan Server. For starters.

That's what keeps coming to mind for me anyway.

Sorry I didn't read the whole thread. Only about 3 posts.

Lemon Bon Bon

Regardless of what happens, Steve Jobs is a master showman/orator and the San Fran' show should be a great watch.

Apple has a fasincating and compelling CEO. His live performances make great viewing. I love getting sucked in by the RDF!

Steve Jobs vs Monkey Boy? No competition...

I think 2004 will be an even better year than 2003 was for Apple.

Lemon Bon Bon

Ditto ! ! !

Even shorter!!

Apple made all of iChat open sourced so people could implement the technology.

I agree it would be good to get AOL doing that. Having just gotten an iSight as a b-day gift its so fun. But I only have one person to talk with.

Aparently, this MW will be focused on
Final Cut Pro.

I just don't understand why everyone thinks an Apple Office suite will come out anytime soon. There's not a chance in hell they would do such a thing before the next version of Microsoft Office rolls out. My guess is that the Apple Office will be based on Open Office and will emerge after the Apple-Microsoft contracts expire.

As for Macworld, I think we'll see either updated PowerMacs or G5 iMacs. I am inclined to lean toward the G5 iMacs because Apple has wisely chosen to release products as they're available rather than wait for a big venue, except for major product revisions. We'll probably see new PowerMacs as soon as they're ready.

I also expect several software updates/releases.

How about this?

PowerMac G5 Cube = Single 2.0 Ghz
PowerMac G5 Tower = Dual 2.2 Ghz | Dual 2.4 Ghz | Dual 2.6 Ghz

It doesn't actually have to be a cube. It could just be a smaller Mini Me version of the PowerMac G5 towers. Or maybe they will introduce a 20th Anniversary Macintosh or an all new iMac using the 2.0 Ghz G5.

The fact that they are shipping Apple four chips just make me wonder!

There is lots of talk of hardware and software which IS the meat and potatoes of any Macworld, but what about apple.com?

I was just noticing that it is looking long in the tooth...and with new Panther 'tabs' and such...could use a total remake. Any word on this?