You are hereBlogs / marv's blog / When Steve goes wacko...
When Steve goes wacko...
So it's that time of year again: The MacWorld San Francisco is coming up, and all Mac geeks are posessed by speculation of what their uber-lord Steve will present this year. It is, after all, the Mac-evangelist's most important holiday (christmas is just marks the beginning of the rumor season).
But things are different when even Steve Jobs himself goes crazy and starts inviting all of his buddies to the show. Steve-O only does that, if he knows he's not going to disappoint his friends (after all, he himself is somehow obsessed with being the loved-by-everyone messiah). Even more, some sources say, Steve hasn't been this excited since the introduction of the Macintosh. ...woah, quite some words. But let put this speculating aside: What do the official channels of Apple say?
They are hardly less promising. The current apple.com visitor is greeted with the slogan "The first 30 years were just the beginning. Welcome to 2007". And recent slogans included "Count the days. Count the minutes. Count on being blown away.", "It's like a backstage pass to the future", and my personal favorite: "Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond." Anyone who has read the rumor sites, knows that you can't grab much higher than that.
But let me speak a word of caution. I have seen many keynotes before (probably all of them, actually), and have experienced Apple hype before. Often enough, the result was rather disappointing. The last time the company made this much hype was when they introduced the iPod. They announced a "revolution" in the electronics industry the day before the keynote. In the end, they were of course right. However, when we first were presented with the clunky mp3 player, none of us could see the "revolution" in that.
So what could Apple have up their sleeve this time? Many speculate it will be the iPhone. However recent reports have shown that this is rather unlikely, since apparently Apple is still in the process of negotiating with the carriers. And if you read the Apple headlines carefully, none of them point to the MacWorld being the event that will blow us away, but rather the entire year 2007. Therefore I would keep my hopes rather restricted for the upcoming keynote. On the other hand, I am very excited about what Apple will give us during the course of the year, ...and can't wait to find out about what Mr. Jobs is going nuts.
- marv's blog
- Login to post comments
As you pointed out, Apple will probably launch a mobile phone. I do not see much use in it for me personally. But depends on it's features... If it is just like the iPod, good design, but no special capabilities, I won't think about buying it. (I have been living well without iPod so far ;-))
But I would be really excited, if they launched something like built-in-virtualization in their next OS.
And I think this is really necessary to increase market share. Just think about all those guys, loving Windows because of the excellent gaming capabilities. They would never be satisfied with something like parallels - without real OpenGL and dual core support.
And Bootcamp: Well, also no real alternative for people not used to dual booting. Therefore: A virtualization would be the next logical step in fighting against MS.
(I am not quite sure what you mean by "virtualization", but in the following I\ll assume you mean running two OS'es simultaneously, with the user being able to switch between them).
Built-in virtualization would definitely be a cool feature. Like you said, it would also be great for Apple to keep their trademark, the look-and-feel of the OS, upright. Currently with Boot-Camp, Apple is threatened to lose their status of being stable and beautiful, when all that covers the screen is pure blue XP.
That said, I still highly doubt we will be seeing virtualization at the Keynote for a number of reasons:
a) Apple announced Boot-Camp for Leopard. The current version is just the beta.
b) There has been no hint at virtualization so far. Such a project would be a massive undertaking. Even Boot-Camp is quite a bit from working flawlessly.
c) Apple is interested in keeping a good relationship to Microsoft. MS would no doubt be aggrevated by the fact that their software runs on Mac OS, but not vice-versa. Apple would risk Microsoft implementing something similar for Windows. Right now, maintaining the status quo is probably in the interest of both companies.
Of course, that does not keep any third-party company from doing such a thing.
Also to the iPhone: I am also not sure if it will be interesting for me, but that does not lower my excitement about it as it will probably be interesting for millions of others. Just compare the iPod success to it. Entering the phone market will most likely increase Apple's global market-share much more than any virtualization software ever could.
Again, I am also not an iPod owner, nor will I ever be one. This is simply due to the fact that I don't listen to music on the go. However, I follow the iPod development with great anticipation as it has become a cultural phenomenon that is worth following.