Macworld San Francisco: What to expect from Lord Jobs
What should the Apple fan expect from this year's Macworld show? With only a few days to go, the Internet is pumped up to intolerable levels of speculation and delusion...
Some call him a god, others a visionary, but for all his charisma Apple high priest Steve Jobs is a human -- he does not have wings, and nor does he have a magic pony. With Macworld in San Francisco a hair's breadth away, it seems as though many on the Internet have forgotten these basic facts and let their imaginations run wild.
Luckily, here at Crave we totally endorse this kind of behaviour and are more than convinced that we'll see an 'iPhone' by this time next week (no, not the Cisco one). Yes, we know that pundits have been predicting this for every Macworld throughout recorded history, but this time it's for real: the Guardian says so. And it has never been wrong. Ever.
We also expect the iTV to make a full-scale debut, with its real name revealed. This device, previewed at Jobs' last Apple keynote, is a set-top box that streams video from your Mac to your TV and more besides. There's also likely to be some new displays on offer -- including a 50-inch giant, a new edition of iLife (presumably iLife '07) and possibly a more complete video iPod.
Finally, the Mac faithful hope that Jobs will launch the new version of Mac OS X (Leopard) early, delivering a definitive cuss to Microsoft's beleaguered Vista. Many critics have pointed out some rather suspicious similarities between Microsoft's new operating system and the Mac OS X of five years ago. With only a few days to go before Apple unveil its new operating systems, the traditional cry from many Mac users is, "Redmond, start your photocopiers!" -CS