You think the new iMac is incredible looking? Heck, it’s nothing compared to the latest hairstyle of my MacCentral compadre, Peter Cohen. Peter has his ‘do specially done for every Macworld Expo. He’s become a veritable legend in the annals of hair stylings. Check out the photo that accompanies this article, and you can see why.
As I sit here, mind and fingers numb after a long day of reporting, I thought it would be interesting to look at the rumors and speculations of Macworld keynote announcements that didn’t happen today. So what didn’t we see? Well, we have (or rather don’t have):
Speed bumped G4 towers;
G5 systems;
iBooks in different colors;
An Apple branded PDA;
An iMac with a detachable flat-panel display that supports handwriting recognition;
An enhanced iPod;
A revamped AppleWorks;
An announcement that Apple would buy Palm.
Of course, I missed all my MWSF keynote predictions. Following absolutely no contact with secret sources and a total lack of insider info from Apple, I had predicted the following top 10 list of things that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would announce during this keynote (read with a grain of salt and tongue in cheek):
We’ll see the iMac II, which sports a 15-inch flat screen. The screen is detachable. Remove it and you can use one side as a drawing tablet/Internet appliance and the other side as a griddle for cooking pancakes.
New tower Macs will sport G6 chips that start at speeds of 10 GHz. And now that the iMacs have flat panel displays, the G6 desktops will have built-in holographic projectors. Instead of a screen, you’ll be project your desktop into sheer air. Think of the Princess Leia hologram in “Star Wars” (but with HDTV clarity), and you’ll have the right idea.
New iBooks will boast Apple’s new ColorTouch technology. You can touch the polycarbonate shell in various places and change its color after turning on the ColorTouch feature in the system preferences.
Jobs, after tearfully admitting that he always loved the Newton, will unveil the iNewton, a new handheld that runs Mac OS X lite. Amazingly, it won’t have a keyboard option or handwriting technology. Instead, you’ll beam your thoughts directly into its ESP port due to Apple’s new ThinkWell technology.
The CEO will also announce that Phil Schiller, Avie Tevanian, and Jon Rubenstein have captured Osama Bin Laden during a secret mission in which they used only Apple technology.
ALL the buyout/merger rumors of recent years are true. Apple has merged with Pixar and has bought Palm (getting Be in the process), Handspring, Sony, Disney, and Sun.
Apple has bought all rights to new, long-anticipated “Segway” human transportation device. They’ll market it under the name iWalk.
Apple will introduce its cloning technology. This will be done when Jobs introduces his own clone. For the foreseeable future, the cloning technology (nicknamed SteveDoubler) will only be used to make more Steves, as one Jobs can’t handle all the responsibilities of the drastically expanded Apple technology-entertainment complex.
Apple will drastically expand its retail store plan. By 2003, there’ll be more Apple stores than Starbucks, including, yes, some within a block of each other.
Apple will introduce Super AirPort, which will be accessible 150 miles from a base station.
