No Leopard at MWSF beyond a preview.
1. Apple will not announce the shipping date for Leopard at MWSF. Anybody who thinks that is kidding themselves.
Apple will announce the shipping date of Leopard ~2 weeks before it ships, as in the past, Macs purchased within this 2 week period will come under Apple's OSX upgrade policy which will allow users to send away for a free drop-in copy of Leopard.
There is no way Apple would extend this policy to the ~3 months till Leopard's March/April release date.
We will see a really big preview of the more consumer-focussed aspects of Leopard including all the big "Top Secret" features that have been held back from the developer builds.
Steve will simply commit to a release in the early part of the year, I still reckon very late March.
2. I think Apple may release a mobile phone at MWSF but I really hope it's not going to cow-tow to the US mobile phone industry where, from what I can gather on these forums, is behind in technology and the service providers rule on the features of the phones even to the extent of modifying the UI and access to phone hardware. That would suck.
3. iLife '07 will make it's debut with the usual raft of new features, hopefully there's no price increase a la iLife '06 - mind you, '06 did bring a whole new "i-App" so that price rise wasn't too bad.
4. I think we'll see a new, high-end iPod with a 640x368 widescreen with a fingerprint/scratch resistant screen and touch controls. This may or may not bear the iPod name and would be positioned above the current iPod in terms of price and abilities. Eventually it will become the regular iPod in much the same way the iPod photo did.
5. iWork will get the typical upgrades, new themes, new features, hopefully a performance update and possibly a spreadsheet application.
6. The "iTV" will either be formally named and released or nothing will be said about it - no middle ground there, Apple did something very un-Apple-like yet very smart in pre-announcing it but from then on it's all by the Apple rule book.
Random other things:
- iLife will get a long, drawn-out demo from Steve and Phil.
- A bunch of people from Adobe and MS will come onto stage and awkwardly declare their love of the Mac platform and the new Intel processors and that their products are on time for shipping later that year. They will both make jokes that die to the sound of an audience silently wishing Steve would just come on stage and get to the good stuff.
- The time taken for the first post after MWSF asking where they can buy Leopard and will iLife '07 come with Leopard will be 0.17 seconds. Beaten slightly by the first post whinging about the price/features/specs of whatever hardware was released.