MacWorld Rumor Round Up

January 4th, 2009

As should be expected, the rumors are increasing in both number and nuttiness as MacWorld approaches. Here’s a round up and some thoughts about each.

MacSoda: iWork 09, iLife “Magic” and iPhone 2.3 with copy and paste, push notification, and email search.

I’m going with iLife updates since those products seem more overdue for a refresh. I imagine they’ll get some of these “cloud” features, but I am very skeptical they’ll go full-on, online only. iPhone 2.3 sounds like a great possibility, but coming so close on the heels of 2.2 makes this less likely.

Apple “Home Server”: A home entertainment solution that would combine Time Capsule with an Apple TV – basically something storing all your iTunes compatible media (music, movies, TV shows) and serve it up to all your networked computers and TVs.

This makes a lot of sense, but adding a server to a home network is a very geeky thing to set up. There would have to be flawless use of iTunes to “push” content to the server, plus this has limited appeal to those with enough digital content to make setting it up worthwhile. And I also wonder what exactly the overlap with the Apple TV would be. I mark this as “possible.”

A Huge iPod Touch: Coming from TechCrunch, this rumor slates a big iPod Touch for later in the year, but Apple could pre-announce. Essentially it would be a larger form factor iPod Touch, leading to comparisons to a “web pad” or even a Tablet PC.

An intriguing idea, but I’ll only get excited if it runs full OS X instead of the iPhone version, making it more similar to a Mac tablet netbook as opposed to a big iPod Touch. That aside, a larger screen would be great for surfing the net and reading, providing some overlap with the Amazon Kindle. But all that said, I don’t think this product is likely to even be mentioned at MacWorld.

The Mac Mini gets a refresh and a new design, including support for dual monitors.

Solid bet to happen next week. The Mac Mini is much overdue for some serious beefing up.

A Pink iPhone appears on eBay, suggesting different colored iPhones.

No.

Beatles on iTunes: Now we have Paul McCartney saying he’d love to get the Beatles on iTunes and the hold up is in legal world.

Highly probable sometime this year, but at MacWorld? No.

MacBook Nano: The smaller form, Mac “netbook.”

I really want this to be true. It’s technically possible, and Apple has a lack of a sub-$1000 portable, which could be filled with a MacBook Mini or that aforementioned big iPod Touch. But at MacWorld? “Possible.”

Celebrity Music Lessons for GarageBand. Pay seven bucks and download famous people’s music tracks where they teach you how to play an instrument.

Uh. Sounds cool, but the more I think about it, not likely. For starters, I don’t think many of the celebrities would make good teachers. Second, the more logical route is to go with more raw tracks that allow for home remixes, like what Radiohead did with In Rainbows. So, no.

You may have noticed a lot of “nos” in the list above. What exactly do I think will be announced at MacWorld? Expect one last MacWorld prediction post later this weekend, to allow for a few more nut-tastic rumors to filter their way through.

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