My crystal ball tells me the following:
1) Ample gushing regarding holiday sales of new the new iPod line-up (nano and video), music store downloads, video downloads, gift cards, etc. Probably more video content providers jumping onboard iTunes.
2) More gushing about sales of new iMac with highlights of worshipping reviews
3) And yet more gushing regarding Tiger adoption, including current installed base figures and Tiger only apps, with some puffery about Aperture at this point.
4) A comical look at Vista, and then...
5) Preview of at least some of the planned, stunning new features of OS X 10.5 "Leopard" showing that, even with Vista, Microsoft is still looking at Apple's tail lights OS-wise, with an affirmation for it's release to coincide with the release of Vista.
6) iLife 06 with iWeb, a "groundbreaking" easy to use web page building app that easily incorporates media from the rest of the iLife suite.
7) iWork with Numbers. Building even further on the successor to Appleworks, Numbers bows as a spreadsheet "for the rest of us;" template driven design revolutionizing ease of use for generating typical consumer uses such as home finance, databases for collections, and so on.
8) Back to gushing, this time about progress with the Intel switch. Things have gone amazing well both with Intel and developer acceptance for building dual binaries, far beyond expectations. Announcement that OS X Tiger and all of it's included apps such as Safari, Mail, etc., as well as iLife 06, and iWork are now all dual binaries.
7) So, anything available for the Intel binary half of the Apple's software suite of dual binaries to run on? Introduces new Intel-based Mac mini, and maybe...iBooks. If iBooks are introduced, the form factor goes HD ready wide-screen and small, not too small, but smaller than the present form factor and still be practical as an everyday notebook.
8) Keeping in the realm of cool and small, introduces successor to iPod Shuffle, something Apple had started working on since "the day the original Shuffle was introduced last year"
9) After faux end of keynote, there's one more thing...
And it's the all-new movie rental store. Designed as the first real-world alternative to renting DVD's, the Movie store will use newly enhanced iDisk technology already integrated into OS X to store high quality movies where they can be instantly viewed (but not downloaded). No waiting, no hours wasted on long downloads, no trips to the DVD rental store, no need to return anything. It will "revolutionize" the way we watch movies, as the Music store revolutionized the way we purchased and listen to music . Integrated, of course, into front row, which will now ship on all Macs. .Mac subscription not required (assuming it follows the al la carte approach of the Music store). Most folks prefer to buy their songs, but most folks prefer to rent movies. Maybe an option to purchase a movie as well, but the crystal ball is very fuzzy here.
Well, we'll see. Don't be surprised if you a see a slightly used crystal ball for sale on eBay this Wednesday.
