What’s really in the air at MacWorld?
On Friday, preparations for MacWorld became visible at Moscone West when signage from Apple with the phrase “2008: There’s something in the air” were hung. So what is in the air you may ask? If you check out all the forums on the Apple rumor sites you will get various beliefs and hopes, but if we take the evidence we have and apply it logically we can up with a few possible products that may be announced on Tuesday.
Three products have the opportunity to use air; the iPhone, the Apple TV and the Macbook and Macbook Pro notebook line. Let’s first take a look at the iPhone. Of course the iPhone has built in WiFi, Bluetooth and 2.5G cellular, both of which that use air. We could see a revolutionary way to sync your iPhone via WiFi or Bluetooth to iTunes. Or could we see AT&T join T-Mobile with WiFi phone calls from home? The iPhone has so many wireless possibilities we could speculate for hours and may never come up with the correct answer.
The product I believe this phrase is centered around is the Apple TV. Apple TV lacks the ability to connect to the iTunes store. Apple TV also lacks movie rentals and HD content. All three of these could be transmitted wirelessly from your Mac/PC to your Apple TV over WiFi. The popular guess is movie rentals. Many publications have documented the expectations of Apple to announce movie rental deals with Fox and Disney. iTunes purchases from your Apple TV can come in the way of a firmware upgrade or a new device. Even though many people believe the Apple TV to be a failure, some view it as an experiment. Maybe this year we will see the results of the experiment with a new redesigned Apple TV.
And then there is the Macbook. Will it be a ultra slim? Will it have a built in cellular wireless? With the alliance with AT&T, will Apple be able to allow cheap cellular wireless for notebook users. I believe these rumors to be stretch, but we will find out on Tuesday.
Cody Clark is a visiting writer for Mac News Online, Cody writes about all things Apple and the latest Tech News at http://www.codyclark.org. You can email your questions or comments to Cody at codyclark.org@mac.com.
