Last Minute Apple Predictions, March 2011
• ∞
March 2nd - iPad2 & iOS 4.3
iPad2 is announced
- faster & more ram & at least 1 camera, but not higher resolution (maybe anti-glare)
- single core, but actually uses OpenCL to harness its graphics chip for computing
New “MediaStream” app
- will tell you what your friends are installing/watching/doing. add virality to the AppStore.
- May tie into facebook/twitter.
- Hopefully better than Ping, which i hope was just a data-gathering precursory experiment to mediastream.
Will run on all iOS devices, *including* AppleTV (perhaps as the default screen saver)
“One More Thing” is a cheaper iPhone
it will not have fewer features. Part of the reason iPhone is great (for developers) is that in contrast to android & wp7, all iphones have the same features.
- Apple will make it cheaper by not including a retina display, by including less RAM, and less storage (perhaps very little storage — just enough for apps, not music, videos, etc. All the content will be streamed as with the AppleTV)
- May result in iPhones with retina displays being re-branded to “iPhone Pro”, which will be odd, since up until now, nothing “pro” has had the “i” prefix. I could be wrong, but I don’t see apple calling it a “nano” or “mini” because it’ll be the same size screen as existing iPhones. I also don’t see them calling it “lite” because that sounds cheap/low-quality.
Summer - Lion & iPhone5 & iOS5- Lion, iPhone5 & iOS5 will all come at the same time, because AirDrop is integrated in all 3
Finder- Finder replaces iTunes (saved searches by media type = music library, video library, documents, etc). - You can define which “saved searches” (aka smart playlists) to sync to which Devices. Works for documents the same way it does for music & video.
iOS5- iOS 4.4 will never exist. Just for nice numbering, iOS5 will come out with iPhone5. - heavily integrated voice search & navigation - new unlock screen (gestures) - new notifications - NFC - wireless sync, using variation of lion’s “airdrop” and the Finder stuff mentioned above - Home Button gets re-defined. Double-tap to multi-task goes away. You only single-tap it now, and single-tapping does NOT close the app; it brings up “Mission Control”. - iOS 5 gets built-in “back to my mac” multi-user sharing
Macs
- Apple will start shipping all desktop macs with a magic touchpad, standard. Cannot order without trackpad. Magic mouse optional add-on.
- A new variation of screen sharing will allow the iPad to run apps on the Mac Mini, full-screen, as if they were locally running on the iPad (similar to Unity mode in VMware, but the host machine is remote). Consequently, the Mac Mini + iPad is only Mac you need. They will replace Macbooks for non-pro consumers. Macbook laptop discontinued. Might even sell mini+ipad as bundle. Can use iPad as dockable screen for mini, via thunderbolt.
Lion
- all the stuff you’ve already seen (versions, mission control, launchpad, etc)
- eye tracking
- voice control
Future
- iOS 6 gains mechanism for cell carriers to bid for your minutes (lowest bid wins). No more contracts. This is based on a recent Apple patent filing. Apple could sell the phone for cheaper if it got a cut of your minutes. Cell carriers bid $0.05/min for your call, and apple gets $0.01 of that? Great for consumers & Apple, but sucky for carriers. Sounds exactly like Apple’s favourite strategy.
- Superdrives become external-only for all laptops (except perhaps the 17”)
- New keyboard with e-ink keys, or at least e-ink function keys, so they can be re-mapped by the OS as updates are available (common issue is the icons on F-keys being outdated)
Comments from my old blog:
Ian said: Yeah, people with as much non-iTunes purchased music as you make for a weird case they are going to have to deal with. If you bought it from them, then perhaps legally they will be allowed to just use their own copy for your cloud “backup”. But almost certainly they won’t be able to do that for music you bought on CD or obtained from other sources. If I were to make a guess, I’d speculate that music you buy from them will be “auto-backed-up”, and it will be accessible from all your devices, and syncing will be possible in the cloud. And for music you buy elsewhere, you’ll need to sync it the old way, using iTunes (they could make that wireless though on the same LAN).
They need to make it possible eventually to have an iOS device without having a computer. Having iTunes store purchased contents “backed up” in the cloud automatically takes care of that problem. And for people like you with lots of other music… They don’t need to worry about you as much because they know you have to have a computer, or you wouldn’t have that music. at 2011-03-02 16:40:27
(Zaid Rasid)[http://www.zaidrasid.com] said: I use MobileMe! A revamp? I’m hearing the iPad2 will have two cameras so you can take a picture of yourself and one of someone else simultaneously:)
I have a feelin Stevie aint comin back, god forbid. at 2011-03-02 14:54:46
(Derek)[http://www.derekmartin.ca] said: I forgot about MobileMe — ya, there is a lot of buzz about a huge revamp today. AppleTV app store had some too, directed toward the AppleTV becoming a gaming console. I guess I could see Apple selling a custom controller for it, or letting you use iPhone/iPod Touch to control it, or both. The controller would need to be inexpensive though, since the ATV itself is just $99. My “cheaper iPhone” thought for today was based on the fact that Apple stores received huge palettes of some secret thing, not to be opened until after the keynote. Either it’s the iPad2 available today (most likely) or a super-secret project they want to be available ASAP, so I was just putting that out there :) You’re dead-right about iTunes/Finder due to the whole “no way to drop iTunes on Windows”, which I always forget about. Music in the cloud is likely due to the LaLa acquisition… but I think it will be problematic for me, having 220GB of music. I’d have to use 3 months of bandwidth just to upload it all :( Also, I heard a rumour that the cloud will only host content you’ve purchased from iTunes… but that is tempered by the fact that that’s not how LaLa worked; it allowed you to upload your own files to the cloud. So, we’ll see. That data centre’s for something. Could be Apple’s going to become a telephony provider ;) at 2011-03-02 14:47:01
Ian said: I’m kind of hoping for a revamped MobileMe today, but who knows when that is in the cards. I’d also love to see an Apple TV app store, but who knows when that will happen. A cheaper iPhone (as in, a prepaid iPhone, or something like that) also sounds likely at some point. Not sure about today.
I always go back and forth regarding iTunes. I suspect iTunes isn’t going anywhere. It is obviously bloated, but I think the plan to reduce it’s complexity is to make much more cloud based, reducing your reliance on iTunes. The are rumblings about your music etc being stored in the cloud. It even seems possible that we’ll be able to make sync and backup of iOS devices completely in the cloud as well (keeping in mind that they are already storing most apps and music, and just need to store the parts that are different for each person). But I still think that the current iTunes and syncing will live on as is for non-iOS iPods (and out of date iOS devices), which are still an important part of their business. Plus, they won’t give up having an app already installed on many windows machines. As for the Finder, I think they are trying to gradually get rid of it, a la iOS. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 10.8, it ends up in the Utilities folder and off the dock by default, just like Terminal. at 2011-03-02 14:16:18