I want to be as positive as possible, but let's look at the facts...
* The asian market.
The asian market, esp. Japan, is a place where the design and products of Apple should be a made success, but that just isn't happening right now. Apple (Jobs) is trying to show people that Apple is present there, and they do value him showing up in person more than any other market.
* Jobs doesn't show up emptyhanded.
Ok, we do know he'll bring something, and doing some guessing we can get some of it right:
First of all, new computers isn't happening, at least not desktops. Apple took a major(ish) step not long ago, and the best they could do would be a new top model.
Such a model could be a dual 1.2 GHz, but the supply would be somewhat limited; and since they'd have to move all machines up a level the limited supply would do more harm than good... 1.1 GHz could happen; but I dobut it.
Quads? Naaaah... unless pure G5's will be seriously delayed I doubt we'll see quads with G4's; and all the other improvements (RAM-type, busses and so on) will most likely not happen either. By waiting with all that the G5's will look, and be, a lot more impressive... besides, all that is a major step that doesn't really fit right now.
iPod 2? Hmmm... this is a though one, at the same time as it is possible to include a larger HD for the same price, well, at the same time as we have that the cost of the iPods needs to come down somewhat to really reach a large market. On top of that we have the advertising talking about 5 Gig as all that you'll ever need... AirPort-card? Nice idea, and the thing needed for me to get one; but I doubt it.
So what will he show? Not a new gadget; a camera would just be someone elses product with an Apple on it, which isn't really his kind of thing, and a PDA ("iWalk") doesn't really fit either...
To begin with there will be lots of numbers showing how great they are (last time it was the iPod, now it will be the new iMacs), and then there will be Photoshop... Palm-software is close enough to be released "for real", but I doubt it will leave beta before late spring.
AirPort moving to 802.11a? Nope, won't happen; at least not for a long time. 802.11a requires new hardware, and isn't compatible with 802.11b; they could switch to a new compatible standard though, but I don't think they have the software ready yet.
Updated TiBook? Yes; PowerBook G4 is the powerline of their portables, but it's way behind compared with the rest of their products; it's also the product that the asian market would love the most... it's portable, stylish and powerfull... I'm about 85% sure that we'll see a new PowerBook.
