Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times technology and computer columnist, makes an interesting prediction over at Macworld.com:
A sophisticated, gesture-based user interface. OS X running on nontraditional devices. A new developer environment and API for iDevices that was so tricky that Apple couldn’t release it or even hint at it until three months after the iPhone was released… and even then, only under duress. Features embedded in Mac OS that help you invisibly tether two OS X devices’ resources together, whether they’re in the same room or merely on the same planet. A movement from Apple to put the bulk of its energy into consumer products and not computer products.
I’m fairly sure that 2008 will see an entire new platform. The iPhone is a phone, and the iPod touch is an iPhone without the phone stuff. The next i-Suffix will be a totally new thing. Not a Mac… not really. An iPhone, kind of, but sort of not. Take the screen off a MacBook and slice it in two vertically. That’s the device. It’ll play media—including Office documents, PDFs, and e-books—from its 16GB of flash storage. It’ll have Wi-Fi and the Safari browser… maybe even 3G or EDGE, as with an iPhone. It will secure-tunnel back to your home Mac or PC, and you’ll be able to use this thing to access any resources you might have left behind. It will put every digital resource you have at your fingertips, in one compact black slate.
It will run native software, too. Curious, isn’t it, that in October Steve Jobs announced that Apple wouldn’t be taking the wrapper off the iPhone developers’ kit until February? It’s almost as if the resources that are plainly available in the SDK would have spilled the beans on the device Steve intends to unveil during his Macworld Expo keynote in January.
Much more in the full article, including predictions from Dan Frakes, Macworld senior editor, Dan Moren, Macworld associate editor and MacUser co-editor, and John Moltz, Crazy Apple Rumors Site editor in chief, here.
MacDailyNews Take: This article’s prescience gets scarier with each passing day: Is Apple building ‘The Device?’ – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, December 10, 2002
Meanwhile, Apple stock tanked nearly $15!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Glad I brought the Porsche instead of stock.
time to buy more apple stock?
That just means it’s on sale.
Get on board now… .$180 is a bargain!
“It’s almost as if the resources that are plainly available in the SDK would have spilled the beans on the device Steve intends to unveil during his Macworld Expo keynote in January.”
It’s all about timing.
One thing is for sure. It won’t be a butt ugly Modbook that has a MacBook guts and a screen laid flat. When SJ unveils it the whole tortured Modbook design will be seen for what it is a reverse engineered heap.
So, it’s a small ass table?
(j/k)
Just about every stock took a beating today, mostly on job data.
I’ve dreamed about a HalfBook (mac book cut in half) for sometime now.
“So, it’s a small ass table?”
ok, one of the rare times i actually really did laugh out loud….
Look at it this way… The stock is down nearly $15 in a single day but Macworld Expo is coming in less than two weeks…
Could this be a buying opp? No, I am no analyst, just a thought…
Or is Ihnatko speaking in another language of some sort using English words?
Huh?
@Ampar
Comedic timing is everything_ROTFLOL!!!! Well said…
The Dow is off over $256 and the Nasdaq is off over $98 on poor American employment data and the threat of a recession …. this has nothing to do with Apple as a company …
Grrrr. Overhyped stuff like this is really annoying.
I’m looking forward to the device that Apple will likely introduce, and I’m sure it will be truly exciting. But it is NOT a new ‘platform’. Maybe you want to refer to it as a new product line, but not a new platform. The platform is OS X.
Apple is being very smart in leveraging the OS X platform across as many product lines as they possibly can. Creating a whole new platform would be a huge disaster. Growing the OS X platform across new product lines is brilliant.
Where do I get one? (waving fistful of cash furiously)
I liked the article they had last year from these same people. In it John Moltz predicted that Apple would release the iPhone and it would only have one button. I’m sure at the time he thought of the most ridiculous thing he could thing of for a phone and just said that… then he turned out to be the only one to get it right. Classic.
That SteveJack article really is scary!
He got it basically right SIX YEARS AGO!
It makes sense to me. The timing of the SDK release for February also makes some sense, if there is to be a big related announcement at MacWorld, although why wouldn’t Apple make the SDK available at MacWorld for more impact. I totally agree that any new type of computing device (that does not use a keyboard and mouse equivalent for input) will NOT be marketed as a Mac. The name “iPod” was always broader than a device that plays music and other media. So my amazing guess is that the new “iDevice” will be called an iPod, unless it has mobile phone parts, in which case it will be called an iPhone.
@Ampar…
seriously bro, it’s WAY too early in the year for you to be getting a spit take on my computer screen. Holy crap man, you got three last year.
NEWTON LIVES!!
Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, in an e-mail (dated July 23, 2001) that I sent to the head honcho at another forum. Here is a selection of what I had to say back then:
***
The most valid point is that a lot of us need the functionality of our mobile phones and our laptops, and we will continue to carry at least those two devices (maybe in addition to a PDA) until somebody makes a single device that can replace the 2 or 3 that we are currently using.
Put together a list of the things that you really need and use on a daily and weekly basis. Now consider how the PDH (personal digital hub) of tomorrow might be configured to meet the needs that you will have. I see the guts of a TiBook (everything except the optical drive, keyboard, mega-wide screen and second speaker) built around a small nearly rimless touchscreen. Yes, it is a tablet, but it has all of the I/O ports that one might need, runs the latest version of OS X, and by using VPC for OS X it runs just about anything else that you might want it to as well.
The combination of voice recognition and handwriting recognition along with a full-sized touchscreen would make such a device at least as easy to use as the PDA’s of today. Add a wireless LAN, keyboard, Wacom tablet and just about any screen that you happen to run across and you have a full-fledged workstation.
There should be a choice of snap-on FireWire optical drive modules, each of which contains its own battery. Any USB keyboard, mouse or pointing device will work, but portable folding Bluetooth keyboards (also with their own batteries) will make on-the-fly data entry a lot easier.
The aforementioned Bluetooth technology allows the user to make voice activated calls using a cordless headset that interfaces with a wafer-thin mobile phone module. Sure, the whole package is not as small as your Ericsson phone, but since you almost always have your PDH in your briefcase, backpack or immediate vicinity anyway it works out pretty well. You can always use the headset with any other Bluetooth phone if you do happen to be traveling light.
Battery life is still a toughie. Ditch the big screen and optical drive and you save a bit. Switch to a lithium polymer battery integrated with the casing and you get a bit more. Start plugging in Microdrives and USB and FireWire devices and using the Bluetooth stuff like crazy and your battery life goes down the drain. All of the external modules having self-contained batteries helps, but it will probably need to handle 8-10 hours of normal use on a single charge to achieve world domination. (Oops, wrong company!)
Can the basic device be built and sold profitably for less than 4 figures (including the folding keyboard)? I don’t know. Would tons of people want one? I don’t know that either, but making it pretty useful at a low price point and building in such a large degree of expandability and compatibility from the very beginning could make the potential market very large indeed.
What if there was a portable VGA 15.2″ TiBook sized screen with a VGA connector, protective cover/stand and its own battery? With the screen on the tray table, the cordless keyboard on the lap and some Bluetooth cordless headphones Apple could make one heck of a follow-up to the middle seat commercial. No sir, that is not my Walkman, it’s the DVD-burning, conference-call making, wireless networking, voice and handwriting recognizing digital extension of my brain. More useful than any laptop, more powerful than any PDA, it is my digital creative enabler, the node through which all of my electronic communication, relaxation and creativity flows.
I want it now.
***
Remember, this was written a year and a half before SteveJack’s piece, almost 2 years before the first G5 Power Macs and 4 and a half years before the move to Intel processors. I was coming from the WallStreet/Lombard/Pismo series and my first TiBook was a few months away, so modularity was still a good thing. Nobody had anything close to HSDPA, 3G, or even EDGE throughput, and 801.11b was as fast as wireless got.
Bring it on!
holy crap man, you have emails from 5 years ago?
Oh yeah, it was also 2 months before the first iPod, years before “Centrino”, and way before anybody was using USB memory sticks or SSHD’s.
@Jim:
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I’ve got just about everything from my personal accounts since January 1999. (Before that I ran webmail, so I don’t have anything from the early 90’s.) It has been simple to import everything from Outlook for Mac to Entourage and on to Mail. Comes in handy sometimes, as you can see.
My work accounts don’t let me keep that much, but I do glean out the keepers, partly to cover my ass, and partly to help with research before meetings. Being able to detail a chain of somebody else’s mistakes over a period of years as documented in mail messages may put me on the wrong side of certain coworkers, but it helps me to convince management to pay attention to new thinking from time to time.
Ihnatko has hit on one of two items to debut this year.
The other is still the smaller, thinner Mac notebook.