With Steve Jobs ditching the Big Apple and this week’s Macworld Creative Pro in New York city one has to wonder what Apple has up their sleeve for The (formerly) Big Dance. Could SJ actually pass up an Expo with new product announcements? Or is he only handing off tomorrow morning’s feature presentation to Greg “Joz” Joswiak because it will be nothing more than a re-hash of the G5 and iSight announcements from WWDC?
With Steve Jobs ditching the Big Apple and this week’s Macworld Creative Pro in New York city one has to wonder what Apple has up their sleeve for The (formerly) Big Dance. Could SJ actually pass up an Expo with new product announcements? Or is he only handing off tomorrow morning’s feature presentation to Greg “Joz” Joswiak because it will be nothing more than a re-hash of the G5 and iSight announcements from WWDC?
No one know for sure but the PowerPage is betting on a combination of the two. Joz is sure to re-cap many of the highlights of WWDC but also in his Keynote presentation file could be:
Bluetooth Input Devices. A Bluetooth tab has been spotted in the Keyboard and Mouse System Preference in the German build of Panther. But this does not guarantee Apple branded BT peripherals, this could instead point to better integration with third party Bluetooth input devices.
I hope that Apple releases a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard as they will undoubtedly be better than the current Microsoft offerings. I have been using the Microsoft BT mouse for over a month now and don’t like it much because it is ridiculously expensive (US$85), too large, not rechargeable, it loses its connection to my PB17 during most reboots, it is slow, and it doesn’t have an ON/OFF switch which means that it burns through batteries fast. If you carry it in your PowerBook bag something will invariably bump it, turn it on and drain your batteries. Just please make it multi-button with a scroll wheel, Apple – please!
Aluminum PowerBook 15-Inch. Joz could unveil the most anticipated PowerBook since the original Titanium design. The new PB15 will ship with a 1 GHz G4 processor, 15.4-inch LCD, built-in Bluetooth, Airport Extreme, FireWire 800 and possibly ambient keyboard lighting. If he does announce the PB15, it will only be to say that they will ship in “September” which means October to us mere mortals. PowerPage odds – 20 percent chance.
iPod Revisions. Apple just revved the iPods on 28 April 2003 so this one should be filed under “D” for dream on. Despite its advances, the iPod still has some glaring omissions. It needs to have pitch control so that mobile DJs can use it to change the BPM of songs for beat matching and mixing. It should also display the beats per minute (BPM) of the playing song. Songs should also be able to cross-fade into each other as this has been in iTunes for more than a year (or even auto-mix.) Add the ability to scratch with the control wheel and a pair of cool Bluetooth headphones and most DJs will buy two at announcement.
Well, it never hurts to dream, right?
If you are going to be in the Big Apple for this week’s event, be sure to stop by Peter Kirn’s conference session What if Beethoven had a Mac? on Friday morning at 9:00 am. Yours truly will be making a guest appearance and I’ll be giving away PowerPage T-Shirts to the first 50 attendees. See you there!
