MWSF - Apple sets expectations high

Originally posted by AlanCE
A base station with keyboard, mouse, power supply, gigawire, and new Airport-II wireless networking at speeds up around 5 times the current 11mbps. The screen is LCD but it is removable and can be written on like a tablet. The screen unit has a 20GB drive built in and maybe the CD/DVD but that's all, it has to dock with the base station to get other functionality. So you end up with a tablet you can walk around the house with which you can write on (Apple's handwriting recognition was so good 5 years ago it was spooky), you can talk to it (MacInTalk is on its way back) or plug in and type to it. You can use your iPod to pull play lists off this thing, and there will be some sort of MPEG-4 hardware device to go along but I'm not sure of the details.
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Keep it realistic here, please. Stick to the current product line -- new PowerMacs (G4 or G5) and new iMacs (probably flat-panel) are a shoo-in, and now it's looking like the iBooks and maybe even the PBG4 will be updated (looks like I might lose the bet :( ). Maybe AppleWorks 7 will come out. Beyond that, there might be a new digital hub device, but I don't think we should speculate on that.
 
"Keep it realistic here, please. Stick to the current product line" and "I don't think we should speculate on that."

How about you wake up and smell the ozone, as this entire thread is a speculative excercise. I'm uncertain why you want to censor speculation, care to explain yourself?

In my defense (which is entirely unnecessary), Apple is making an unusually big deal out of this upcoming Macworld. They've also pushed the digital hub/lifestyle idea. If the keynote is merely touting updates to the current products, why the big freakin hooha?
You feel free to under-guess this upcoming announcement so you can be pleasantly surprised when it is more than you thought; I'll post what I feel is realistic considering:
a) the current devices and technologies available
b) current news surrounding Apple's business partners
c) a "big" event/announcement by apple's standards

If BIG is merely incremental updates to the current lines, Apple is a bunch of @ssholes for hyping it so much.
 
I'm not limiting speculation, I'm being realistic. If that "base station tablet" or whatever you're talking about comes out, I'll seriously give you $1000, because it's not going to come out. What you've described is basically a laptop, and Apple already has two of those in its product line. It would be pointless to make one of those because iBooks are pretty cheap already.
 
Originally posted by simX
What you've described is basically a laptop,
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Well not really. I've described something that can be portable around the house, but you can't take it out on the road and do any serious work with it because:
1) it doesn't have a lid to close, it is just a display with a stylus.
2) it doesn't have input jacks for mice and keyboards, although headphones and mic might be there.
3) networking and communication with the base station (where the bulk of the machine's hardware is) is via airport which is allowing you to take it and read web pages while on the crapper, but not letting you take it to work.

I didn't explain it well enough i guess, and i mispoke about the CD/DVD and the hard drive. If you have the screen with you on the couch or in bed or whatever, you still have access (via airport-2) to the base station and all peripherals attached to it. It's not meant to be a laptop you can write on, it's a detachable display with stylus and voice input which is wirelessly networked to the rest of the device. Streaming mp3 and movies from your base station to any room in the house, surfing the same way, fun.

I'm not married to this idea, but apple seems to think they're on the verge of changing the computing world as we know it. 1.6GHz and flat panel imacs don't cut it. They'd be welcome for sure but they wouldn't live up to the hype.
 
AlanCE, shut the hell up. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

SimX, i agree with you on an extraordinarily high level. I remember back at MWNY01 this year, everyone was like "whoa G5's will be there and the new iMac will be so cool! They are also going to have G6's and G7's!" and it turned out to be a really boring expo where Steve threw a camera.:p
 
All this talk of all this new hardware is awesome... too bad I am too stink'n poor to buy any of it. :) I'd settle for an iPod... no can do.

Unemployment sucks... I might start taking up donations of food & clothing. :)

Shall we have the first CAN DRIVE to support a website. Wonder if PayPal allows you to donate cans through their service?

Admin
 
Thanks for the vote of confidence whitesaint. It's nice to know at least someone around here agrees with me (just poking fun, Ed :p). And your comment about MWNY '01 is soooo true. It did just turn out to be boring where Steve through a camera. ;) It seems Apple is making up for that boring expo with this one... and I'm glad, because I was actually thinking about going to MWNY to see the flat-panel iMacs. Suffice it to say, I'm glad I didn't spend all that money on air travel and for the expo, because I wouldn't have had much fun.

I'm glad I live 40 miles from MWSF, where I can go by train, and then catch the MWSF shuttle from the train stop. Very convenient... I wanna be in the front row for Monday's keynote!


As a margin note, I hope that people have really learned MWNY '01. I'd hate to see that Apple really does have a big expo, but everyone's disenchanted because they're hoping for some kind of tablet Mac that has no benefit over a laptop.


One comment I saw over at macnn.com about this MWSF banner on Apple's webpage seemed to be a pretty good idea, although I have a lot of doubt about it coming to be. What the suggestion was, was to have really cheap flat-panel iMacs rounding out the consumer line... all under $1000, or at least almost all. Then Apple should resurrect the cube, and have the middle of the product line be G4 cubes with Apollo processors, for between $1000-$2000. Apple would round out the high end of the product line with PowerMac G5 towers, that would start at $2000 and go up from there.

I dunno about you guys, but that seems to me like it would make sense, and it seems pretty realistic with what Apple has right now. Don't get me wrong, though -- I'm not expecting it at all. I'd really be surprised if that's what comes out at MWSF.


I really hope that AppleWorks 7 does come out, though, because AppleWorks 6.2.2 just doesn't cut it Mac OS X -- no 255 character filename support, no support for sheets, and a kind of clunky user interface in Aqua. It would be a welcome upgrade.

That's all I'll speculate about for now.
 
Originally posted by whitesaint
AlanCE, shut the hell up. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
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I'm afriad I won't be shutting up for you. Really whitesaint, there is no reason for your hostility, please pick up a primer on manners. Drop me an email if you want to talk about this at Macworld, or won't you be there?
 
Let Alan go, he is Thinking Different!:D Some of you people take these forms too seriously! I like what Alan thought up, you should incourage him to be creative and should be creative yourself! My predictions for the expo:

PowerMacs: low and mid-end G4-1 and 1.2 Ghz. high end G5 at 1.4 ghz.
iMac LCD and maybe G4- 15' starting at 650 mhz and up to 850 or 900
faster iBook with a 14.1' screen
no PowerBook bump!
Possibly and update to the iPod (unlikely tho)
and a new digital lifestyle project (not a PDA!):D

Take it or leave it! Let us think (especially AlanCE)!!!

Think Different, Act Different, Be Different; Put a dent in the universe!;)
 
AlanCE,

Say what you want. This thread is exactly the type of place where you can make wild predictions.

whitesaint,

Yeah, Steve bombed in MWNY01 but that's not our fault. Apple didn't get much done and *everybody* was underwhelmed. Apple needs to manage expectations better than they did. They bombed because they had nothing to show, not because sticking an LCD screen on a computer is too much to ask for.

Just to piss off people who hate day dreaming, I bet Apple comes out with a teleporter as seen on Star Trek. I'm not sure if it will come in brushed metal or fruity colors but it will definately help with my daily commute. Also, it will cure all the world's diseases with each transport.

And for his, "One more thing" annoucement, he'll bring cartoon characters to life. I can't wait, I'm going to meet Princess Fiona from Shrek.
 
Ah, and WHY shouldn't it be a PDA, eeh? ;)
And, that GigaWire think, that HAS to be FireWire @ 1 Gbps, don't you think so? (yes, 1 gigaBIT per second, not gigaBYTE of course ;)
 
Or, maybe it's iPid, a complete stereo/DVD player with an iPod dock, SmartMedia, SSD, MMC, and ComplactFlash slots, OS X Lite, a 512x384 pixel screen and a 160 GB HD for storing 40000 MP3's :D hah hah hah :p
 
I challenge you all to an accuracy contest. The winner gets bragging rights for a week. Seeing as how I never can guess who's getting voted off "Survivor", I doubt I'll get any of these right.

Anyways, here's list:

NO FLAT PANEL iMACS!!!--That's right, I think this myth has been overhyped way too much. It will not happen (feel free to laugh in my face when they show up).

NO G5s!!! But...
New G4 lineup=
G4 800SP $1500
G4 1.1 SP $2500
G4 1.4 DP $3500
Gigawire, DDRAM, Airpot II and 400 MHZ bus in new G4s.

No new flat panels, but a price drop on the big ones.

iPod enhancement of some sort. Some kind of software interface thing. I can't tell exactly what, but I see it in my crystal ball. It will be mildly cool.

Some sort of new product entirely. It will end the show. Not a PDA, but maybe a Tivo sort of thing. How's that for specific? I'm a freakin' Nostradamus! I'm all, "Something will happen at some time in some way sort of." Wow, I'm a genius!

And what's with this Appleworks 7 crap? How can you people continue to use that amature suite? Just ribbing yaz. But seriously, I don't know how anyone can work in a professional environment without Office, like it or not.
 
Originally posted by mindbend
And what's with this Appleworks 7 crap? How can you people continue to use that amature suite? Just ribbing yaz. But seriously, I don't know how anyone can work in a professional environment without Office, like it or not.
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"Appleworks 7 crap?" Hahahahahahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAhahahahahaha...

*** simX wipes tears from his face.

Nice joke. Oh... that was pretty funny....

*** simX wipes more tears from his face.

Ohhh... geez.

Anyway, like I said -- I hope AW 7 comes out with sheet support and long filename support -- or at least a 6.5 that gives these two features.

By the way, I don't get you guys talking about "Airport II". IT'S ALREADY OUT. Remember when Apple released the new base stations that have the extra Ethernet support, AOL support, and 128-bit encryption support as well? Remember how Apple released the Airport 2.0 software over the Software Update control panel? That is Airport 2, guys. It's not going to be updated at MWSF.
 
Originally posted by mindbend
I challenge you all to an accuracy contest. The winner gets bragging rights for a week. Seeing as how I never can guess who's getting voted off "Survivor", I doubt I'll get any of these right.

Anyways, here's list:

NO FLAT PANEL iMACS!!!--That's right, I think this myth has been overhyped way too much. It will not happen (feel free to laugh in my face when they show up).

NO G5s!!! But...
New G4 lineup=
G4 800SP $1500
G4 1.1 SP $2500
G4 1.4 DP $3500
Gigawire, DDRAM, Airpot II and 400 MHZ bus in new G4s.

No new flat panels, but a price drop on the big ones.

iPod enhancement of some sort. Some kind of software interface thing. I can't tell exactly what, but I see it in my crystal ball. It will be mildly cool.

Some sort of new product entirely. It will end the show. Not a PDA, but maybe a Tivo sort of thing. How's that for specific? I'm a freakin' Nostradamus! I'm all, "Something will happen at some time in some way sort of." Wow, I'm a genius!

And what's with this Appleworks 7 crap? How can you people continue to use that amature suite? Just ribbing yaz. But seriously, I don't know how anyone can work in a professional environment without Office, like it or not.
Click to expand...

Ye, but I'll bet 1 GHz iMacs will show up, you know, the 1 GHz G3 processor was released a long time ago, so why shouldn't Apple se it? ;)
And, maybe GigaWire, "FireWire II"?...
And what about an entirely NEW computer, it's a long time since any new designs have appeared, maybe a new iMac or iBook, or PowerBook?... The Powerbook design hasn't been updated in a year! :rolleyes: :D
 
I'll try it.

- Flat Panel iMac
- G5 processor that's actually a slightly enhanced G4
- Faster clock speeds on every processor with the top speed being 1.2 ghtz
- New entertainment hub device that's actually a low end mac in a cool case (this is the "one more thing")
- iBook with higher clock speeds and more ram standard
- dates for a couple of software packages, including dreamweaver
 
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