Dan covers his Macworld predictions in great detail. Instead of predictions, since mine will probably be wrong, I’m going to list what I want to see:
Tablet. I tend to agree with Steven Frank’s analysis more than this former Apple exec but either way it remains pretty unlikely that a tablet is going to happen under Steve Job’s watch. At WWDC once Steve Jobs called the Newton a “little scribbly thing” or something similar, and it wasn’t long before he officially gave that division the axe.
Numbers. Some people still insist on sending me Excel documents. We need a simple application in the iWork suite that can natively read/write Excel documents and handle the basics.
Finder. I’m pretty sure Leopard will sport a new Finder, as well as user interface candy paint applied across the operating system. The only question is whether they’ve rewritten it from scratch and in the process introduced even more problems. I’m optimistic on this one, though, and expect an elegant UI evolution from the Finder team.
What I don’t care about:
iTV. See previous post about DRM If I want to watch a movie, I’ll put in a DVD. However, I do hope to draw some inspiration from whatever they do and apply it to Wii Transfer development.
iPod Phone. I have no doubt it will be well designed, but it will also be at least $299 (guess). I have only owned a couple mobile phones in my life, and they were free or nearly free. The iPod Phone will have to be something no one’s even thought of yet for me to consider it. It’s kind of like Nike + iPod a luxury that I don’t really need.
Anyway, should be a fun Macworld. I haven’t been in years and I’m a little jealous of those who are attending this year. (But not jealous enough to want to get on a plane next week.) Part of me misses the old days, having a booth and talking with users or seeing what was new on the show floor. I was at the first Macworld keynote after Steve Jobs came back to Apple, while Gil Amelio was still in charge, and I’ll always remember it as something pretty special.
