NVinNYC

MWSF is in only a few hours from now since I’m doing this in the middle of the night so most of you won’t see this first but I present my bets here for posterity’s sake. Look for more through analysis elsewhere. In any case, here are my thoughts:

Update: Now with correct-o-meter.

The Yes

• New Small Form Factor Notebook: external optical drive, regular (non-flash) hard drive (though it may use flash memory on the motherboard to cache the hard drive & improve speed/battery life). Correct.
• iTunes Movie Rentals: DRMed? Very. HD? Maybe a few titles. Correct (number of HD titles remains to be seen).
• Managed iTunes DRM Movies on DVDs: Although few discs will have this feature. Correct, it slipped through the Keynote cracks though.  Unfortunately only on select Fox discs (what, no Disney?), see details here.
• Time Machine Supports Wireless Backup: Expect to hear lots about Time Machine during the keynote, but I wouldn’t expect new hardware. Correct, but wrong about new hardware (Apple couldn’t help themselves with Time Capsule).
• AppleTV Upgrade: Software only (no new hardware). Correct, free update for existing users, cheaper entry price.
• iPhone 16 GB: Easy yes. Wrong, look for this in a February Media Event with the iPhone Dev Kit release.
• Mac OS 10.5.2, iTunes 7.6, & iPhone 1.1.3: With demos (especially for iPhone), see above for reasons. Correct.

The No

• iPhone 3G: See you in Q3 (AT&T doesn’t have the HSPDA backbone for this yet). Correct.
• New Cinema Displays: Still in the pipe. WWDC perhaps. Apple wouldn’t have dropped the new Mac Pro models last week without them. Correct.
• More DRM Free Labels: Not the big ones. They want to leverage that power to Amazon. The indies are all in though. Correct.
• Tablets or Newtons: If it’s not an iPhone or iPod touch, you wont hear a peep. Correct.
• iPhone SDK Demo or Details: Sadly nothing firm on the SDK. Correct.
• New iWork/iLife: Obviously still too soon. Latest versions are 2008 anyway. Maybe next year. Correct.

The Maybe

• The Beatles on iTunes: If not now then certainly soon (perhaps an iTunes/iPhone media event in February for the iPhone SDK). Not yet.
• iPhone Third Party Developer Demo: I’m thinking they’ll demo with Sling or Google (Gears or Docs perhaps?) if anything. (Note this is different than SDK details.) Didn’t happen.

Overall, a pretty good batting average.

Feist stars in the new iPod Nano Ads.

Some people are not pleased with this.

I am, so far, conflicted. Don’t fuck with my Feist.

This morning Engadget published some pictures of a new Apple keyboard. It takes more than a few design queues from the MacBook keyboard and is extremely thin.

I’m inclined to believe that the shots are of a prototype keyboard as discussed by Erik Barzeski and DF. I will say that it looks fantastic and I would love to have one even in it’s current unperfected state. I recently ordered myself a USB (full-size) keyboard of laptop style keys and, though I’ve yet to use it, my experience using a MacBook has converted me to prefer well made scissor keys over the plunger keys found on most keyboards.

In any case it will be interesting to see how the final keyboard revision turns out. This might be the first Apple peripheral that I have to pick up…

The iPhone hits Friday, June 29th!

Check the new TV ads.

Woot.

Here we go again.

The ‘Choose a Vista’ ad is spot on… even I don’t know what version of Vista to get. Though Apple does technically offer two versions of Mac OS X, the second being Server, the differences between the regular and Server version are clear (and all the versions of Windows they were counting don’t include the sever version).

‘Party is Over’ seems a bit of a low blow for Apple: Sure, you might have to upgrade your computer to run Vista, but the same is true for Mac OS X upgrades sometimes (though perhaps not to the same degree). The bit about software and peripherals not working is hypocritical too, since there are many examples of this on the Mac side. I’m thinking of particularly of the OS 9 to OS X transition and the PowerPC to Intel transition (though the later has been handled quite well considering it’s magnitude).

The ‘Genius’ spot is the best of the new bunch. The Genius Bar is a great resource for Mac owners and there’s not something comparable on the PC side unless you have a ‘PC Genius’ friend with lots of time to hep you. If only there were more cute female genii like the one in the ad!