SPECULATION: 5 Predictions for Apple in 2007

2006 is coming to a close, and all anyone can think about (in regards to Apple, at least) is the upcoming Apple Phone…but what happens next? What are we going to be salivating over and speculating about after Macworld? What changes are in store for Apple in 2007? No one knows for sure…but it sure is fun to take a guess…

5 Predictions for Apple in 2007

1) Expanding the Mac Brand - 2007 is going to be the year of the “Mac”. Apple is going to expand upon the Mac branding to include the new Phone product (my guess is MacMobile), and possibly even the “i” software suites. MacLife anyone? The “i” branding is played out, and, with the exception of the iPod and possibly the iMac, the “i” is on the down hill slide. There will be a dramatic shift away from the lowercase “i” in 07.

2) The “true” Video iPod…Finally - After years of speculation, the full screen video iPod will make it’s debut just in time for the 07 holiday season sales push. The device will feature a beautiful screen and a new, clickwheel-free, design. My guess is it will not be touch screen, and will in no way live up to the 2+ year hype surrounding it…in spite of that, however, it will be a “must have” item for Christmas 07.

3) The Next Generation of iMac…featuring Blu-ray I hope I’m wrong about this, actually, since I do not think that Blu-ray has much of a chance of winning the format wars, but I predict that we’ll see the high end models of next year’s iMacs with built-in Blu-ray drives without a significant cost increase over the current high end iMacs. Disney is behind Blu-ray…to me that means Jobs is behind Blu-ray as well…and that means Blu-ray equipped Macs.

4) Palm CEO Ed Colligan will eat his words - “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone…PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.’’ This is one of the most asinine statements I’ve ever heard in my life, and I think Mr. Colligan is going to regret saying it when 07 comes to a close. Apple is gunning for Palm, Blackberry, and every other Smartphone manufacturer out there, and while I don’t think they will become a market leader next year, I do think Palm will be feeling Apple’s presence weighing heavily on their bottom line next year.

5) OSX and Windows, working together at last - I expect to see Parallels fully integrated into Leopard by the time the OS is released, giving us the first OS in history (to my knowledge anyway) that will allow us to seamlessly run our Windows, Mac, and even Linux programs from the same desktop. Finally, Mac Users can run those Windows only applications that seem to crop up from time to time. The new Parallels Beta already makes this possible, but if integrated into Leopard, you can officially say, “Vista…who?”