International Mac Podcast

It’s that time of year again where every blogger and their grandma’s dog’s cousin blogs about their predictions for Macworld. This year, as always, they all seemed to have reached the exact same conclusions, this year being details on Snow Leopard, a new Mac Mini, and maybe a new iMac or iLife. The problem here is that every one of them is attempting to be correct, guessing only the most predictable, plausible, and likely announcements.

That’s great, Mr. Future-NY-Times-Columnist, unfortunately, it’s boring to read the same boring things over and over again. Here is my list of new products apple could (but most likely won’t) be released in 2009, and why they might be good ideas.

A Mac App Store

As a developer, the prospect of having my app immediately available to millions of customers, let alone customers with billing information at the ready for 1-click purchasing, makes my greedy capitalistic mouth water. This dream has been fulfilled by Apple in the form of the iPhone app store. Sure, it’s not a free-for-all money-fest, you have to comply to rather strict guidelines to get in, but as long as you do what the virtual bouncers at Apple tell you to, you’re in. I love it, and I’m obviously not the only developer to feel that way, the app store has caused thousands of developers to make the iPhone the most successful mobile platform in a matter of months.

Somebody at Apple has to have realized “Wait a minute, don’t we have another computer platform too? Couldn’t we do the same for it?”. Of course, a Mac app store would have to be non-exclusive or risk mass revolt from developers making open-source or non-apple-approved apps, but for developers who are willing to play by Apples rules, a Mac app store would stimulate the iEconomy (sorry) and possibly give OS X the boost it needs to finally give Windows a run for it’s [gigantic amount of] money.

An oversized iPod Touch

This is a rumor that has been floating around the internets for awhile now, but the first time I heard a pitch for a product like this was from my dad. He loves his iPhone, but thinks that it would be far more helpful if the screen where just a few times bigger. A 7 inch screen is not just twice as big as a 3.5 inch screen, it’s 4 times as big. Four times the screen size means 4 times the usability for apps such as safari which deal with things designed for screens much larger than that of the iPhone. Throw in the conveniences of a normal mac (USB ports, full-featured bluetooth, A front-facing webcam, maybe even a display port) and dad may never use his Macbook ever again.

So, why wouldn’t Apple just put OS X on it? Because, Apple won’t make the mistake Microsoft did with the UMPCs (aka. The over-hyped and under-sold Origami Project). Full on Mac OS X was not designed to work on 7-inch screens, or, as Steve Jobs himself admits, $500 computers, but the iPhone OS was. The only real problem I see with this is that the main feature of the iPhone OS to me is the burgeoning app store, and unless apple can make developers create new copies of all 10,000+ apps, this thing is gonna have to be a third platform, and especially in These Troubled Economic Times drink that really isn’t something they should do.

An undersized Mac

If you ask any Apple store employee “Hey, do you guys have a netbook I could buy?” they will most likely direct you to the show-off-y section in the front of the store containing rows of Macbook Airs. Your first reaction would probably be, “Wow, perfect”, followed almost immediately by “You want me to pay WHAT?” As beautiful of a machine as the Air is, it is not what most people would consider a netbook, it is a style-book that just happens to be rather limited computer-wise. A netbook is a small, cheap, and (preferably) fast-booting machine. The question is, would Apple ever make a computer that fits those standards? Well, maybe. Yes, I know about Steve Jobs’ quote about OS X on $500 machines, I referred to it just last paragraph, actually, this prediction is entirely contradictory to my last one, but I’m a blogger, I’ve gotta argue with somebody and it might as well be myself. On one hand, I was right last paragraph, OS X is currently a rather heavy-weight operating system (though not quite the Sumo-wrestler of an OS that is Vista).

On the other hand, Snow Leopard’s whole point is to make OS X lighter, and Apple has proven that even as it is now OS X is light enough to incredibly smoothly on the iPhone, which is many times slower processor-wise than almost all modern netbooks. Isn’t it quite convenient for Apple that they’re making their OS lighter just as machines that require light OS’s are becoming a huge part of the computer market? I mean, if you think about it, Snow Leopard can’t possibly be that much of a financial success by itself, it requires a lot of hard-core development work, and they can’t sell it for much or nobody will buy it, there has to be a financial reason behind doing it, and one would think it would be more than just saving some customer support calls and making developers happy.

Plus, really, what’s Steve gonna say when asked about a netbook? “Aww, you caught us, yeah, we’re totally gonna announce that at macworld, don’t tell anybody I said that though, it’ll totally kill our hype. While I’m at it, why don’t I just tell you everything else that’s gonna happen next year.”

An iPhone Nano

My first reaction to the rumor of an iPhone nano was “How could anybody be so gullible, of course that’s not gonna happen”, then came the “Yes, but”s, and I eventually had a mini war in my head over whether or not this was plausible or not. On one hand, the iPhone is only $200, any cheaper and it would REALLY undermine the iPod line, plus the technical difficulty of porting the iPhone OS to yet another platform, this one probably using a smaller screen and a weaker system just to complicate things even more.

On the other hand, the iPhone is very much seen as a smartphone, both in it’s functionality and it’s monthly price, but Apple is kind of a lifestyle brand, a style icon, being in the “That phone is hot” market (that is currently occupied predominantly by flip phones such as the RAZR and slider phones like the Chocolate) would make sense for them. People don’t buy iPods for the features, they buy it because that’s the thing to have. The same is true for the mostly true for the iPhone, but a large part of apple’s market isn’t in the market for a smartphone.

An iPhone nano would have limited data access, lacking programs like Mail and maybe even Safari, and would probably not work with the iPhone SDK. What it would have is the iconic look and feel of an Apple product, probably very similar to the full-size iPhone. It would be totally or mostly subsidized by the carrier though, and would cost only 20 or 30 bucks per month. I admit that this still seems unlikely, but on the other hand, I said the same thing about the original iPhone the weekend before Macworld 2007, so who knows.

One More Thing: General Apple Predictions

• Steve Jobs won’t leave this year, but he will start to give up some control, he may leave next year
• There will be no Copy and Paste on the iPhone (I agree with Molly Wood on that one)
• At least 1 new product line will be announced
• Both Macs and iPhones will gain significant market share
• New versions of iLife, iWork, and maybe Final Cut will be released
• No current product lines will be overhauled and re-designed except maybe the Mac Mini or the Mac Pro
• The “I’m a Mac” ads will (unfortunately) die after 3 years of hilarity

Chances are that looking back on this next year, or maybe even next week, I’ll realize how totally wrong I was about everything, but hey, that’s half the fun of it, after all, a guy can dream, can’t he?