The Odds at Macworld

Moby Cock writes "Jason O'Grady has posted the odds on what is to be announced at the Macworld Expo beginning next week. Coming in at 100:1 is OS X 10.5 and even money on a new and sexy Intel Mac Minis and iBooks. Gentlemen, start your credit cards."

Comments

check with the lawyers

[User 956]

You can always tell which rumors are true by the rapid-fire Apple lawsuits to the websites responsible.

iLife '06 comes in at 10:1

[carou]

Personally I'd have said this was a dead certain - all the previous versions have come in at MacWorld with an annual release cycle. Surely the only question is what new features will be in it?

• Front Row?
  
• New program providing PVR functionality?
  
• Blogging tool? - actually no, that should go in .Mac instead.
  
• Backup moved from .Mac to iLife?
  
• Finance program or tax calculator?
  

Price increases for iTunes

[hsmith]

I have no problem paying $.99 for a song, but i will pay no more. This happens and I will be looking other places for my music for my iPod. They have to pay none of the traditional distribution costs of CD's, so they shouldn't even be the price they are now. you want to be greedy, i'll look elsewhere.

Re:Price increases for iTunes

[JWW]

I would have to agree with you. The music industry is looking INSANELY greedy with this move. I hope Apple holds out and holds their feet to the fire.

My prediction: If Apple goes to $ 1.99 for popular songs (read all but a small token number of the songs on the sight), allofmp3.com will begin to become an _enourmous_ hit (think Napster at its height). The RIAA is going to absolutely freak out and do everything in their power to shut them down. The funny thing is that that sight is bringing true market dynamics to selling music online (along with giving customers what they want, no DRM crap), but as much as they _say_ they are capitalists, the RIAA is just a price fixing oligarchy.

Stupid odds

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the hell are the odds for overblown hype?

Who cares about the pro users?

[SteeldrivingJon]

O'Grady writes :"Hopefully it'll be the PowerBook nano I've been dreaming of. Unfortunately, it's not likely as the pro software (Final Cut, Creative Suite, etc.) isn't universal binary yet. Rosetta emulation isn't fun folks. Odds: 50-1."

So, basically, he's saying that because a certain segment of the userbase will be waiting a little while, EVERYONE should wait?

If Apple doesn't ship Intel Powerbooks now, these users are going to be waiting, because they certainly aren't going to buy G4 powerbooks unless they absolutely have to. If Apple does ship Intel Powerbooks now, these users are going to be waiting for their apps to be shipped as Universal binaries.

So, given that these customers are ogoing to be waiting either way, why shouldn't Apple get hardware on the market to serve the customers who *can* buy now? Customers for whom XCode is their main app, not Photoshop or Final Cut.

They forgot the..

[majest!k]

Odds that Steve Jobs won't wear black:

999999999-1

My breakdown...

[csoto]

10. OS 10.5 - not gonna happen. Apple is focused on Rosetta/Xcode QA for Mac OS X86. Whatever works well gets ported to 10.5 (think of 10.4 as the beta for X86)

9. X86 Powerbook - Could be. I would bet on this one.

8. iWork '06 - Could be. Who cares? I really like iWork '05. Pages is a treat, and Keynote is indespensible for me. But if they are working on a spreadsheet, yeah, this is the time to release it.

7. iLive '06 - Unless it adds things similar to Front Row, I don't see that it needs anything more than bug fixes. I wouldn't bet on it.

6. BT remote - Definitely going to be some kind of Front Row remote. Bluetooth? Probably. All new Macs have it, for several months now.

5. iTunes price increases - Not gonna happen. Steve knows this market. The market will not ignore him, no matter how greedy they are. Too much money is being made.

4. AirPort Ultra - Neat idea, but I won't bet on it. I would buy one, though :)

3. 1GB iPod Nano - Don't think so. The shuffle fills this space, but that's not big enough for the Nano's market segment.

2. X86 Mac Mini - I'd bet on this. I might even buy one for my parents. Their old IBM suck ass.

1. Widescreen X86 iBook - This one is obviously going to happen, but probably not now. Apple will drop 4:3 format entirely, as will the rest of the world (showing they are, as always, technology leaders). They just won't cannibalize Powerbook sales with iBooks until they have milked it long enough.

Re:Jobs is the Anti Buddha

[SteeldrivingJon]

". I wonder if he tries to reconcile this in some consumerist branch of Buddhism."

Buddhism has a tenet known as "right livelihood", and for a layman selling consumer products doesn't violate it. Things like being a butcher, or selling intoxicants, or selling weapons would, but not the selling of computers, regardless of how pre-expo rumors can have a seemingly intoxicating effect on Mac fans.

Technically, it's the users doing it to themselves.

That sound you hear?

[TCQuad]

I don't buy the "hits" so the songs I'd purchase would probably come out cheaper than $.99.

That sound you hear in the background is thousands of executives worldwide laughing at your naiveté.

Re:Nah....

[theAtomicFireball]

Sad thing is, all Mac software assumes one button so those extra buttons will be doing pretty much nothing the next few... decades or so...

*Buzz* Thanks for playing.

OS X has supported multiple buttons and scroll wheels natively since its very first release, as the OS's event architecture was originally designed to accommodate Next's three-button mouse. Apple continued to develop the multi-button support under OS X despite shipping a single-button mouse. Most OS X applications (Cocoa, Carbon, and even Java) have always automatically taken advantage of the OS-level support for scroll wheels and right-clicking for basic tasks (e.g. copy, cut, paste) without doing anything, plus OS X developers routinely add additional contextual menus and other types of support for modern mice. I don't know a single OS X developer who routinely uses a single button mouse, and I've met a good number of them. On top of that, I believe that the Mighty Mouse's buttons are fully customizable in the System Preferences (not sure on that - I still use an old Logitech mouse on my Mac)

OS X applications never require a multi-button mouse, but they almost universally support them.