| Home > Of things Mac > Why the iPhone won't make its first official appearance in two weeks at Macworld |
| Why the iPhone won't make its first official appearance in two weeks at Macworld | | Date Created: 27 Dec, 2006, 12:44 PM |
 In the face of almost unprecedented wishin' and a'hopin', I'm about to rain on someone's parade when I say I'll be surprised to see an iPhone released in a few weeks time at Macworld in San Francisco.
There are several lines of reasoning which cause me to come to this conclusion, notwithstanding what will soon build it into a huge cacophany of bleating and moaning and rumour-mongering and "I've seen it - it's alive!" blog-posting.
Of course, it could also be a defense mechanism kicking in helping me maintain my equilibrium because, believe me, I really want to see Apple enter the cellphone market, for both my own sake, that of Apple's itself and to advance technology incrementally (ie, give the cellphone service operators a real kick you know where).
Let me explain some of my rationale for saying we won't see it at Macworld.
1. Apple rarely introduces a new hardware product range at Macworld. I'm not talking new models of familiar lines, e.g. new Powerbooks, MacBooks or Mac Pros. I'm talking not yet seen product lines from Apple.
These products may exist elsewhere, manufactured by competitors, but they don't have the Apple touch which will make them eventual winners.
Two products immediately come to mind which received their own stand-alone media events: the iPod and iTunes Music Store.
Each product type had been seen before: hard drive mp3 players had been round more than a year before the iPod, and there were a smattering of legal download sites before iTMS came along.
But Apple busted through some kind of artificial ceiling preventing these two item types achieving much public awareness. Through a combination of great design and ease of use, together with brilliant marketing, both eventually became their market leaders, and others have been desperate to emulate their success ever since.
2. What's the hurry? Steve will have so much to show already at Macworld to fill his two hours that the hour needed to really play billion dollar show-and-tell will be wasted at Macworld. Yes, there are cellphones, and yes, there are music players, but judging by all the hype and hope, when Apple releases a product of this nature into the market place, there is a stand back and hold your breath pause in proceedings in the techworld while all try and make sense of what Apple's doing.
Let's come back to how Steve will fill his Keynote, and why the iPhone won't be present to compete with all the other Apple goodies.
First, we'll get a retail update, on MacBooks and their stupendous market growth in 2006. This will allow Steve to discuss the smoothest of transitions to Intel chips. We might hear about desktop Macs, and perhaps we'll see a new octo-Xeon chip MacPro slated for release. Especially nice with the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta out - hey, we may even get Phil Schiller reprising his Apple vs. Dell speed contest!
Maybe they'll be news of a very thin 12" MacBook - that'd be sweet - or a get-your-hopes up tablet, but I think not. Perhaps the also-rumoured true video iPod 6G?
We'll then of course hear about Leopard and maybe Steve will take the wraps off some of those Top Secret features he hinted at during WWDC in August. Especially important since Vista is now shipping. I expect we'll see a demo again of Time Machine, iChat 3, and perhaps Safari 3.
iLife'07 and iWork '07 will be shown, and I'm hoping each will get one new application to round out these free software packages each purchaser of a new Mac gets in their goodie bag. For sure, Keynote 4 will be released as well as Pages 3. This time, compared to Keynote 3's release, Steve will give a longer, more detailed demo because Keynote 4 needs to compete with Powerpoint 12 over on Vista.
We'll hear about how Apple has integrated some Motion 2 elements into Keynote 4, as well as the addition of some podcast-centric features, especially useful in placing Keynote 4 firmly in the education sphere, where academic communities are dying under the weight of bloated and overused Powerpoint stacks.
iWeb in iLife '07 will get a major boost and improved feature set, and Garageband will further move ahead of the other podcasting apps out there with more free loops and functionality thrown in. iMovie 7 will also have podcasting abilities I think, especially with the rise of videoblogging, and Apple's release of its yet to be named iTV set-top box.
Uncharacteristically revealed before it's a finished product at WWDC, iTV will get its official release at Macworld (as well as its official name) and Apple's "in your living room" philosophy will at last become obvious, rather than rumoured. Be prepared for Steve to invite someone from Mainstream Media on stage to further expound on the iTV proposition.
I think almost two hours will go by at this stage, and then Steve will do his "One more thing" thing. A pin will drop in Moscone for the all the world to hear as we await the iPhone announcement, which won't come.
What will, instead? I don't know - new hardware, new software, new media deals. And lots of sighs if not boos.
3. Macworld in 2007 will be on at the same time as CES in Las Vegas. It would be an extremely calculated risk to release the iPhone at this time. The chances of it getting lost in the traffic are very high, although my guess is ironically the cellphone business will be going great guns while tech-journos at CES have their ears pinned to their phones listening to colleagues give a blow-by-blow account of the Jobs' Keynote.
4. Steve doesn't care if Apple shares get punished with the absence of news about an iPhone. He's now into playing games with rumours and rumour sites, and not releasing the iPhone after all the "for sure" blogging would really amuse him.
Instead, there'll be something utterly unknown and unexpected released, in keeping with Steve's magician-like ability to misdirect. While we've all been looking to the metaphoric left hand of Jobs for the iPhone, Steve will magically show us something "oh my gosh" in the right when we all look away from that empty left hand.
He also knows that when all the CES hoopla dies down (my prediction - those same tech journos will collectively say "we're over CES - it's overblown, overwrought, and more of the same" each year) that a month or two later, when Steve calls a special media conference to announce a breakthrough communication device, those punished share prices will break through $100 and we'll see yet another stocksplit.
Watch the hype really climb through the roof when that happens.
So, curb your disappointment folks, an iPhone at MacWorld isn't going to happen. Now I'm not saying I'll ride through the streets of Melbourne buck-naked on the back of a horse if I'm wrong (my only commonality with Godiva is my liking of so-named chocolates), but on the basis of past performances, I'd rate my chances of being correct well-beyond 50-50.
Waddya think? |
|
|
|
