Tag Archives: Pointless Apple Speculation

Are the new iMacs sending a signal?

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Today, Apple unveiled its new 24 inch iMac. It’s a great sized display with some power behind it. After seeing the new machine online, I thought that this may signal a start of Apple’s entry into something bigger than just computers.

Apple is a hardware company regardless of what anyone else wants. They’ve been slowly creeping into the living room with the mac mini. The iMac can act as an entertainment hub; I believe that it was the first Mac with Front Row. However, people have complained that it lacks television inputs. Now that Apple has made a 24 inch iMac, what is stopping them from going bigger?

I’d imagine that with the larger displays, the iMac may have some extra hardware space inside the case. Maybe a television tuner isn’t that far off. Additionally, Apple could always be working on new deals with the iTunes Store. iTunes could become a television distribution system. Many televison shows are available on iTunes, so why couldn’t Apple become a distributor of media? They’ve already tinkered with the multi-pass for things like the Daily Show – why not go ahead and have a monthly pass for certain channels? iTunes could offer true a la carte television. Apple could dabble in the subscription system – people are already used to the idea of subscribing to cable or satellite.

Maybe Apple could build a larger display with a computer behind it. A 30 inch iMac would probably have room for an inbuilt TV Tuner or maybe an Apple built break out box where you can hook up a multitude of inputs. Apple could bring a Media Center type experience into the home by sneaking it into the slick iMac packaging. When people see the iMac, they aren’t intimidated by hooking up anything up to anything else. It is similar to people’s television experiences. Simply sneak a computer into the living room by putting it behind the display.

I’m aware that there are PCs built into larger displays. I just think that Apple’s move to a larger iMac signals the beginning of larger, Apple-built living room computers with true Media Center capabilities.

AppleTalk Conspiracy

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I am under the belief that there is a conspiracy by Apple. They have a technology they call “AppleTalk” which helps the Macs find each other and network. I have two Macs in my living room. The day I got my new snazzy Intel iMac, my old venerable mac mini (about 7 months old at the time) started to crash more. It became sluggish.

I wondered why this was happening. My theory – AppleTalk is telling my older Mac to slow down. By slowing down the mac mini I would want a new Intel mac mini. This is my AppleTalk Conspiracy theory.

Do I have any real proof? Nah.

I then bought a MacBook Pro and my wife’s iBook was becoming glitchy some time after the MacBooks were released. Coincidence? Maybe.

Maybe Apple’s got a plan that’s a bit sinister. Then again, I like to speculate wildly sometimes.

** Update **
After reading the comments, I thought I should clear something up: I was only half-serious when I wrote this post.

Steve Jobs and the WWDC Keynote

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I’ve been reading on other sites that Steve Jobs may have lost his magic because of his keynote speech yesterday at the WWDC. I have two alternate theories for his keynote performance.

By the way, I thought that his performance was fine and allowing other people to discuss the new features of OS X and the Mac Pros was fine. Steve Jobs is smart enough not to do a keynote where there aren’t enough announcements to justify the use of Reality Distortion Field (“RDF”).

Theory 1: Steve Jobs did not have his Reality Distortion Field in full effect because he was angry with his Mac OS X team.

Why do I think this? In January, Apple hyped the Leopard preview at WWDC 2006. The Leopard preview yesterday was a bit underwhelming – it had some cool features, but nothing that captured the attention of the tech world. Steve Jobs discussed that there are a lot of “Top Secret” things that they didn’t want Redmond to copy just yet.

Apple is usually unafraid to show off their new OS technologies because their technologies are difficult to copy on short notice. Vista is not completed and any new feature shown off at WWDC 2006 would never make it into the first release of Vista. Microsoft couldn’t even implement its own WinFS file system.

Steve Jobs could have easily been so frustrated with the delay of Leopard from pre-Vista to post-Vista that he could not get his RDF up in full effect. He did not believe in the product and could not show off buggy new features and have a Microsoft-like experience during a keynote speech.

Frustration could have led to the underwhelming keynote.

Theory 2: Leopard is actually a lame duck and OS 11 is coming sooner than we think.

I’m aware that OS X is only up to 10.5, and a jump to OS 11 seems premature. Banners around WWDC had messages such as “Hasta la vista, Vista” and “Introducing Vista 2.0.” A totally new Mac OS would knock Redmond for a loop.

Think about it. It’s one thing to show that Vista and OS X have many similarities. However, Apple could really mock Redmond with a major revision to its OS by jumping to 11. Perhaps the delay to OS 10.5 is because the OS team has been divided once again. An uninspired team is working on OS 10.5, while the other half is working on the next generation OS, OS 11.

With all the rumors surrounding OS 10.5 and its features, perhaps the features are true, but belong to another Apple OS. I’ll even name the new Apple OS after OS X. Welcome to OS neXt. It would keep the “X” and give Steve Jobs a chuckle throwing the Next name in there.

The OS team did port over OS X to intel almost seamlessly (I say almost because Classic does not function under the intel OS X). With the new intel architecture, the Mac OS team has the chance to create a new OS from scratch. This OS neXt would include virtualization of Windows and Linux programs. If it’s a program, it will run on OS neXt. There’s no reason to run anything else.

With Apple’s switch to intel they are able to say a Mac is the only computer you need. With a brand new OS, Apple could say that the Mac OS is the only OS you need because it runs everything under the sun.

Bring back the Cube

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The Mac Mini is a very nice piece of engineering. It’s a diminutive computer that takes up very little space, looks nice, and is very quiet. The only problem? It is limited by its size. It uses laptop hard drives which means you pay a premium for a small hard drive. Additionally, Apple stuck to its odd clip system to keep the case together. Four tiny screws on the bottom of the machine would have been nice for user upgrades.

While I think the form-factor is great, perhaps another Mac should exist. It already existed – and as you can tell by the title of this article – the PowerMac Cube should return. I guess with the new naming convention it would be the Mac Pro Cube or iMac Cube or Mac Cube. The cube was a user-serviceable machine. Maybe a larger form factor – maybe the size of two Mac Minis stacked on top of each other would be the right size. The motherboard could reside in the lower part of the new Cube. The hard drive could be mounted below the slot loading DVD burner. Use your imagination for the rest of the engineering. With a larger size comes full sized desktop hard drives that reach 750GB these days.

This poises the new Mac as a true media center. While I’m coming up with ideas, maybe with the purchase of your new Mac you get special software that allows you to LEGALLY rip your DVDs for your convenience. Apple must pay a royalty for their DVD player application. They could probably wrangle a deal with the movie studios and come up with an authorized DVD-Ripping application. Now that I think about it, a Hollywood-sanctioned DVD ripping application would allow the MPAA to track who is pirating and who is not (with P2P) by using a signature. But, I digress.

The Mac Cube could be a media center with a TV Tuner. Alternatively, the cube shape may look odd with video components. So perhaps a throwback to the pizza-box style desktop computers would benefit Apple. I had read this idea on someone else’s blog (I’d give them credit if I remembered where). That blog discussed the idea of the upcoming Mac Pro in the standard desktop form-factor in a move to differentiate the Apple product in a world of towers.

Since the Cube may not be the right shape, the component style format may work. If Apple felt wishy-washy they could go with a similar idea as the XBox 360 and have a machine that could lay on its side or as a tower and look snazzy.

In short, Apple needs to come out with a new mac that is a headless iMac. A mac in between the Mac Mini and the Power Mac or Mac Pro that can use standard desktop parts and allows users to easy access to upgrade their Mac. It could be in cube form or pizza-box with a TV Tuner with an official DVD-Ripping software. What should we call this mythical Mac? Let’s just call it Macintosh. Just “Mac.”

Steve Jobs to double click “.exe” file at WWDC.

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Get ready for this headline in a couple of months. Some are fearing that Apple’s endorsement of Parallels as a way to run Windows on their Mac shows that Apple will not have a product similar to it. However, just because Apple thinks something is a cool product, that does not mean that they will refuse to create their own product. I think I had seen Steve Jobs show off the iPod with Bose accessories and other boombox-style systems before the Apple Hi-Fi.

My wife had told me of the scenario she expects at WWDC. Steve Jobs goes online to show off either a built-in bit torrent system or a new version of Safari. He decides to download a file. The file appears on the desktop. Steve laments that the file is an “.exe” file. “Well, maybe I’ll just click it anyway,” he says. The audience erupts as the Mac OS 10.5 can run Windows programs without Windows.

Leopard would not compete with Parallels. Parallels allows you to run Windows on top of Mac OS X. Leopard would allow you to run Windows programs like X11 programs. I would expect this WINE-like functionality to be available only on the Intel version of OS X.