But all eyes will be on Apple in the next couple of weeks, especially as they have scheduled their expo to run almost simultaneously as the world famous CES expo held in Las Vegas, on almost the same set of days.

For Apple to do this, they likely have some major announcements which will easily cut through whatever amazing technologies are unleashed at CES. Indeed, we’ll have as much CES coverage as possible, and we expect some very cool announcements to be made.

But it’s MacWorld we’re wondering about. What can we reasonable expect to see?

Well, there’s quite a list. Of course, everyone is wondering about new iPods, with widescreens, Bluetooth, new control mechanisms and perhaps new iPod Nanos with even greater storage.

Then there’s the oft-rumored iPod Phone (which clearly won’t be called the iPhone thanks to Linksys and Cisco’s ownership of the iPhone brand name). Everyone questions Apple’s ability to make a phone as seductively simple as an iPod, and to sell the iPod Phone at full price in their stores just like iPods.

Few people buy iPods on any kind of plan – most people seem to just buy them outright. Few people do that with phones, and Apple may need to become an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) just so they don’t have to do any deals with existing mobile carriers, mostly thanks to the fact that Apple currently sells music via iTunes and a computer – not directly downloaded to a phone, something that carriers already do, at prices far more expensive than iTunes for a single track. Speculation has also been rampant that Apple will launch no iPod Phone at all at MacWorld, but will launch in later in 2007. We’ll know within a week!

There’s also the rumor of a 12-inch MacBook for students and professional photographers who don’t want to lug around a larger laptop with all of their heavy cameras and lenses. Rumors of a Mac Tablet PC won’t go away either, and with any luck, we’ll see both – perhaps a 12-inch MacBook that’s also a convertible Tablet! A new Mac Mini might also emerge.

We should expect to see a new preview of Mac OS X 10.5 and to learn about more of the planned features to counter the launch of Windows Vista. Windows Vista presents much more of a threat to Mac OS X than ever before, and 10.5 is a great opportunity for Apple to strike back.

Apple’s iTV service might actually get a real name at MacWorld, as iTV is just a code name and is a brand already own by others. But with iTV Apple’s way of staking a real claim in the home entertainment/PVR/watching video on a TV from your Mac arena, we should expect to learn more about Apple’s plans in this area.

Apple are also expected to launch the new iLife ’07 and iWork ’07 suites. Apple has released a new iLife every year for the past few years, adding all kinds of cool functionality to the iLife suite. And with iWork Apple’s alternative to Microsoft Office, we can only imagine that Apple have been very busy turning iWork into an even more formidable competitor, especially with Microsoft dragging their heels with a ‘Universal’ version of the Mac Microsoft Office suite.

There are bound to be other surprises, too, that Steve Jobs has up his sleeve. After all, it wouldn’t be an Apple event without ‘one more thing’ to surprise us all!
{moscomment}

Tags See All Tags

Alex Zaharov-Reutt  Apple  Gadgets  Hardware  IPTV  Microsoft  Television  Video  Vista  iPod  iTunes