“These things go from being very powerful computers to frankly what we think of today as a super computer,” Bradley said Monday at the Mobile Future Forward conference in Seattle. Speaking on a panel about what the wireless industry will look like in year 2020, Bradley laid out what forthcoming advances in device and network technology will mean for the consumer.

While today’s state-of-the art devices have some impressive specs — 1.5 GHz quad-core processors, gigs of storage and multi-megabit connections – one only has to look back at the devices of 2004 to see how much in the industry can innovate in the space of eight years, Bradley said. In 2004, the BlackBerry 700 and the Treo 650 were little more than glorified PDAs, and the hottest mobile data service was email.

Just as we couldn’t envision eight years ago the apps and services we would use in 2012, it’s difficult to predict the mobile data use cases of 2020, but Bradley took a crack at it anyway.

The smartphone has already replaced clocks and cameras today, but in the future it will replace wallets and even ATMs as mobile payment and banking services become more sophisticated. Beyond financial transactions, mobile phones will allow consumers to bring their identities to any context. They’ll replace the keys in your pocket, they’ll allow you to interact with your connected home and become immediately recognized by any public digital interface in between, Bradley said.

Through augmented reality technology like Nokia’s City Lens, consumers will begin viewing the world through their phone cameras, and through flexible display technology’s like Corning’s Willow glass, consumers will be able to convert a small-screened phone into a tablet, a news reader or whatever form factor they desire, Bradley said.

There will be challenges achieving that vision, Bradley said, primary among them building the huge security apparatus that will protect this increasingly exposed personal data. The other big factor will be spectrum, which carriers will need by the dump truck load in order keep adding capacity and bandwidth to their networks, Bradley said.

There is one other consideration that wasn’t really mentioned at the panel: cost. If the price point for mobile data remains at around $10-$15 a gigabyte, then lightning fast connections and powerful phone and cloud-based app won’t get used.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user 3Dstock

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It’s a question the BBC has been asking experts throughout the month, turning to Tom Austin, vice president at research firm Gartner for their latest article looking into the future of work. We’re only just getting started with this century, but already the tech revolution has radically altered how many of us earn our livings, and bigger changes may yet be on their way. So when the BBC asked Austin what he imagines for the future of work, he outlined systems and tendencies far different from those that prevailed for much of the last hundred years.

Some aspects of Gartner’s vision will be familiar to regular GigaOM readers, including a shifting of focus from work as a place to work as an activity we can do almost anywhere. “The workplace is becoming increasingly virtual: with meetings occurring across time zones and between organizations,” Austin tells the BBC. Nor is his prediction of a highly connected future exactly a bolt from the blue. “Hyper-connectedness will lead to more work crossing company boundaries in both formal and informal relationships,” he says. But some of his predictions are surprising and thought-provoking. These includes:

De-routinization of work. The core value that people add does not lie in processes that can be automated. It lies in the non-routine, uniquely human, analytical or interactive contributions that people make, which often relate to discovery, innovation, teaming, leading, selling and learning.

Sketch-ups. Most non-routine processes will also be highly informal. It’s important to try to capture the criteria used in making decisions but, at least for now, Gartner does not expect most non-routine processes to follow meaningful standard patterns, and the process models will remain simple sketch-ups created as needed.

Spontaneous work. Spontaneity will trump reactivity. This implies growth in proactive work, such as seeking out new opportunities and creating new designs and models.

Check out the complete article for full details on all ten of Austin’s predictions. In the industrial age the obvious metaphor for human workers was parts in a machine, as factory workers and office workers engaged in routine tasks creating standardized products at a fixed place and time and as part of a larger process. Like some futurists, Austin foresees a new way of working that seems far more human as business runs not on an arbitrary schedule according to pre-fab rules but instead is governed by the inspiration and unsteady pace of creativity and relies on human relationships rather than bureaucratic systems to get things done.

Does the future of work outlined by Austin seem plausible to you?

Image courtesy of Flickr user krupp.

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It isn’t just the nature of work that is changing thanks to the web and a generation of increasingly mobile and inter-connected workers, says John Hagel of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge — it’s the entire way in which many companies operate. Hagel, who is co-chairman of the center along with former Xerox PARC director John Seely Brown, says businesses of all kinds are coming under increasing pressure to increase their performance and become more competitive, and one of the ways to do that is by embracing the kind of change they see all around them.

I’ll be talking with Hagel and Seely Brown about these and other aspects of the changing nature of work and what we call the “human cloud” next week, at GigaOM’s Net:Work conference — at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco on Dec. 9  – along with a host of other great speakers. You can register here.

Hagel said the two factors increasing pressure on companies to be more competitive are “the deployment of digital technology infrastructure” — such as cloud computing, mobile, social software and so on — and economic liberalization, which has lowered barriers to entry in many countries around the world. The combination of these two things, he says, “have made it easier to enter new markets and move within markets, and that tends to intensify competition.” If they aren’t continually improving their overall performance, he said, companies run the risk of being marginalized and possibly even going out of business completely.

So how do companies increase their performance? Hagel said that the most effective way to do it is to improve the skills and efficiency of the employees within your company, using the same digital collaboration tools and services that are transforming many of our lives. Increasingly, however, doing this requires companies to rewire the way they operate internally, he says. “On a fundamental level, they have to rethink their entire work environment and start thinking about how they can make it as rich an environment as possible in terms of skill development, and how they can connect the people within their company with each other, and also with others outside the company.”

The problem, says Hagel, is that many companies are not configured to do this, because it requires experimentation and risk-taking and in many cases failure — and most companies value things like predictability too much to be comfortable with that kind of approach.

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Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Louis

Apple appears to be encouraging MobileMe subscribers to connect their accounts with their Apple ID.

It looks like Apple is making it possible for iOS-device owners to use MobileMe by signing-in with their Apple IDs – and perhaps, tie together their existing accounts. In this one small step lies the key to an amazing array of functionality.

The Apple ID is used in many places: on the desktop for authorising a Mac/PC with an iTunes account, in the iTunes Store for making purchases, setting-up and using a Ping (and perhaps, one day soon, Facebook) account, storing and sharing documents on iWork.com, and using FaceTime on the Mac as a core account (with MobileMe or other email addresses added afterward). It’s also used when making purchases from the Apple online store. In time, it’s safe to assume it’ll be used on the upcoming Mac App Store, too.

MobileMe, on the other hand, is used primarily to synchronise email, contacts and calendars, along with bookmarks and, if you like, System Preferences and even Keychains across Macs.

So, to echo Steve Jobs, What if an Apple ID and a MobileMe account got together? I think the offspring would be nothing less than revolutionary.

Next Steps

An AppleID/MobileMe hybrid brings the Apple universe together, both on the Mac and on iOS devices. I suspect next summer’s release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion may prove to be the final leap from today’s sort-of-connected world, to an always-connected world, where the simple rule is: Wherever you can use your Apple ID, you have access to your Email, Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, Music, Movies, Pictures, Ping, all your iWork documents and all the software you ever bought in both the iOS and Mac App Stores. All of it ready to be streamed or downloaded, some of it automatically, most of it on-demand.

If the new MacBook Air truly is the future of MacBooks, it’s a much more likely future. If we want our notebooks to be thin, light and go for days on a single charge, we must be prepared to ditch today’s optical and hard drives. Flash storage can fill the gap, but it’s too expensive to store all the media users want access to. Streaming data, therefore, presents the best next step, practically and economically, in personal computing.

If you’ve ever bought a Mac and enjoyed the experience of seeing your MobileMe data populate your Address Book, iCal and Mail apps, imagine being able to take the process much further, and watch all your software, multimedia and personal documents also become available… all because you signed-in with a single username and password. Authentication could even be handled by your iPhone, if rumors prove true.

There’s nothing really comparable to this on other platforms and for ordinary consumers. Windows Live connects Microsoft’s Hotmail, Photo Gallery, Skydrive and a few other services in a loose manner, but it’s pretty fragmented and doesn’t show signs of becoming a cohesive solution any time soon. Google’s ecosystem is a strong contender but remains devoid of the spit-and-polish and ease-of-use for which Apple’s products are famous.

Of course, for all of this to be a practical and reliable really would require a truly enormous state of the art data center. If only Apple had something like that…

The Work Does Itself

This is also, incidentally, why Apple will never buy Dropbox: They don’t need to. Dropbox is a service that depends on users manipulating data directly in the file system, and that’s a paradigm Apple wants ordinary users to abandon.

In this hypothetical (and, I can’t help think, inevitable) scenario, Apple will provide its customers with ample cloud-based storage as they need it. Users may well enjoy dozens of gigabytes of storage, but never know it. Nor would they ever need to know it. They’ll know only what matters: that they can stream their iTunes library to their devices quickly and in high quality, that their photos are available anywhere they have a connection to the Internet, that the Keynote presentation they started this morning on their MacBook can be finished this afternoon on their iPad without the painful export/import silliness they suffer today.

Connecting the Apple ID with MobileMe is, at least for consumers, the first step toward an exciting new future, one for which Apple has been building the foundations since .Mac was launched in 2002. The pieces are almost all in place, and with Apple’s massive new data center online and Lion available next summer, I think we’re about to experience the most transformative personal computing revolution since the Macintosh itself.

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Are you ready for that kind of responsibility? Preparedness is what will separate the simply competent web working manager from the excellent one. But if your company doesn’t have a program for grooming distributed managers, or if you’re working for yourself at this point, then how best to prepare?

Read Books

Read about management. There are plenty of books on the subject, and they’ll give you insight you might not be able to get just from lived experience. Books alone aren’t a substitute for experience, but they’ll help you evaluate your own approaches, and learn some new tricks.

• “What To Do When You Become The Boss” is a good primer for those who haven’t yet occupied a management role. It’s designed with entry-level readers in mind, so the pacing is good and it has a number of real case studies and interactive elements to keep things interesting.
• “The New Manager’s Tool Kit” is another good book for those just starting out. Special attention is paid to how to keep the human element a part of your management strategy, which is especially important when you’re dealing with people at a distance.

Ask for (or Take) Responsibility

If you’re already working as part of a distributed team and there’s no direct supervisor involved in the group, you have an opportunity. Either put in a request with a superior that you be given extra organizational responsibilities within the group, or, if others are amenable and there’s an obvious need, just step up and take a leadership role. Chances are that people will be appreciative of some direction if it seems to be lacking.

Taking on added responsibility will pay dividends in the long run, even if in the short term it doesn’t actually result in any extra cash compensation. Any experience you can cite later to differentiate yourself from your peers in management competitions will be hugely beneficial.

Get to Know the Tools

How do people even go about managing others online? Look at your field and find out what tools are being used to help distributed teams stay well-managed. Is Basecamp being used to organize projects and keep people on deadlines? Is there a Google Apps component? What tech is being employed to facilitate teleconferences and online meetings?

Find out what the standard is for your organization, and make a point of learning how to make those tools do what you want them to. Then, find out what the next up-and-comers on the horizon are. Do that by asking other companies you work with who their service providers of choice are. Pay special attention to the suggestions of IT professionals and startups. Those will be the ones to watch.

You may not think you’re in a management track at the moment, but if you’re an experienced web worker, or even a not-so-experienced one who’s intent on becoming more so, then you’ve already got a head start on the majority of tomorrow’s workforce. Take the initiative and capitalize on that advantage.

What tips do you have a for aspiring web working managers?

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Something sort of hit me in the head while reading the New York Times as Bob Marley played into my earphones: I have no visual or performance signs that a song is playing other than the music entering my head. Bob Marley is singing “No Woman, No Cry” and the iPad doesn’t signal to me that it’s actually doing that, which feels magical, but it made me think about the future and how Apple  is shaping it.

In 2001, my iBook G3′s 500Mhz CPU would be 50 percent utilized while playing high quality music through the speakers. That number has dropped to basically zero while playing the same song on my Core i7 iMac, but iTunes is still open, taking up screen space even if it’s minimized or hidden. I know iTunes is open but the way I interact with iTunes hasn’t changed since iTunes 1.0 was released 10 years ago. The way my Macintosh organizes folders, plays music, and manages windows is unchanged, and it still takes a certain technical proficiency to understand this even if it is an easy-to-use Mac.

Today, while music played on my iPad and I was reading the news story, I thought about how there’s nothing showing a song is playing other than a play icon at the top of the screen. When I change the page or zoom in to a photo, nothing about the iPad’s performance is compromised, even if that song is heavily compressed. Music is playing, and my iPad doesn’t mind.

No other consumer electronics company has done this.

That’s a bold statement coming from a guy that uses Apple products almost exclusively, but I’ve been looking for a product like this for years. The iPod did this, but when you clicked a button on the device, it would show you the currently playing song. It was single-purpose, even if it did come with a way to view your calendars (only view, not change). Devices like my Palm Treo did this, but the music app would crash, and browsing the web would have a 50 percent cut in performance while playing music. Yes, it’s been four years, and the Treo was much slower with fewer resources, but Apple has set us on course to a point where our kids won’t have that feeling of, “I shouldn’t open my web browser because the music might skip.” For those of you who used the original iPhone extensively, music skipping was very common when hitting the phone with heavy tasks.

I didn’t see a huge change in how we interacted with technology until Apple came along with iOS and shook things up. The Mac and Windows experiences feel dated. There are power, usefulness and capabilities that iOS (and yes even Android devices) can’t do now, but it won’t be long before they can. In 2007, iPhone was cutting edge for having a tough screen that worked. These days, I can FaceTime with friends, download movies over the air, read the news as it happens, and always know the answer to what guy played in that movie within the time it would take to boot up the ole’ Mac and fire up Safari. Grab iPhone, slide to unlock, click Safari and search.

I don’t give Apple all of the credit, but this is TheAppleBlog, so it’s good to highlight everything Apple got right that set us in this direction. Who was going to change things and set us onto the next era of computing? Microsoft is still introducing product flops (ie. Microsoft Kin) and Google’s business model is to create and leverage technologies in order to target ads to you. I can’t think of another company other than Apple that’s continued to pioneer the technology experience. Cisco is a distant 4th, but it’s too busy powering the entire Internet to make consumer electronics. Sadly, Sony (c sne) has become more irrelevant as simply “expensive” and not as breakthrough as it was in the 90s. I still buy Sony TVs, but only because it’s Sony and not because it’s doing anything truly remarkable over Panasonic or Vizio.

Apple has set itself apart in the way it’s brought power to elegance — where the design of the software and form factor of the hardware fades away, and all you’re doing is sitting on a train, reading a news article while listening to a song. Of course, now that I think about it, that 3G connection to AT&T is ticking along as well. There was no application I had to pull up to initiate the connection (like on Mac OS or Windows 7), and there’s no thought to it. As soon as I leave the office, my Wi-Fi connection there drops and 3G starts. This kind of experience is something we all assume would be common in 2010 but you’d be surprised how many devices simply don’t do this in a way that the consumer can consume with no awareness of what’s going on behind the scenes.

I don’t know what it is but, with Apple technology, I feel the future. It’s not a stylus smartphone with a hardware keyboard; it’s not a 24″ tall tower with a big power button on the front; and it’s not a mouse with a cord attached and a floppy disk that makes this wretched click sound while reading and writing data. Apple doesn’t have any of that, and it’s chosen to integrated technologies into an experience that no other company has.

Historically, what you see in today’s high-end machines will eventually make its way to the low end models like Apple’s Airport Express getting 802.11n a year after the Extreme, or the MacBook getting glass multitouch trackpads 1-2 years after the MacBook Pro. These sort of hand me down improvements are normal, but what do these two principles tell us about what’s coming next? Does iPhone’s Retina Display give us a hint for the future of Apple’s product line?

[inline-ad]Currently, most of Apple’s displays, whether they are in a desktop, notebook or a standalone monitor like Apple’s 24″ and 30″ Cinema Displays have a standard PPI (pixels per inch) ratio that is equal with most other displays from computer companies. The average is between 113-130 for most of Apple’s displays. The iPhone 4′s retina display is a mind-boggling 326 PPI which produces clarity that no other display on any device from any manufacturer can match, at least in most of the consumer tech you’ll find at the local Best Buy. Apple has raised the bar so high that every iPhone 4 owner I meet says to me that going back to the MacBook Pro or iMac display or even an iPod nano is a total joke and they’ve been spoiled by the new screen.

I vote that Apple will make Retina Display the buzz word of 2011 as every product receives this as the key feature and trust me when I say that users (myself included) will shell out the cash to get the same clarity and crystal clear display quality that we’ve become so accustomed to on our iPhones. I could be wrong, but Apple has already laid the ground work for Retina Display in every Mac. A look at Apple’s Dev Center docs reveals a technology known as Resolution Independence. Here’s the intro:

In the past, developers could assume that the resolution of screen displays was 72 dpi and that one unit in the application’s drawing space corresponded to one pixel. Specifying a 100 x 200 window in the application would result in a 100 x 200 pixel window onscreen. However, with the introduction of LCD displays with higher pixel densities (often well over 100 dpi), maintaining a one-to-one correspondence between drawing units and screen pixels can result in images that are too small for most users.

The solution is to make the drawing sizes specified by the application independent of the display’s pixel resolution and allow arbitrary scaling between the two. Depending on the type of application, the user interface, and the drawing technologies used, you may need to update your code to provide the best user experience on a resolution-independent system.

Of course, Apple added this to make things easier on developers as displays produced by Apple do fluctuate such as ordering a 15″ or 17″ Macbook Pro with the high-resolution display should yield a clearer experience for users and this is thanks to resolution independence. However, this minor technology can be leveraged and must be leveraged if Apple were to ever bump that spec from a measly 113 PPI to upwards of 326 PPI like we see on the iPhone 4.

I’ve been very vocal about Apple’s inability to keep up with resolutions that competitors like Dell provide on its notebooks. A 15″ notebook from Dell has had resolutions that triumph over Apple’s for the longest time. Of course, those insanely high specs generally lead to text that’s simply too small to read, but it’s an option that Dell offers which Apple does not and the only way to completely shut down one of the only advantages a Dell has over a Mac is to up the PPI to Retina Display levels.

Of course, there’s much more involved. Only a handful of Macintosh computers have the IPS (In-Plane Switching technology) that you see in the iPad, iPhone 4 and Apple’s flat-panel iMac. That’s something we’ll start seeing in Macs very soon and possibly before Retina Display makes its way to our computers. Apple has spent the last three years slowly moving each display to LED backlighting which reduces energy use but also offers a more accurate and complete back lighting and instant-on without the need for a warm up.

It’s an easy prediction to say that Apple will improve its displays, but it’s obvious that Retina Display is just the beginning and it’s a sign of things to come. When our eyes grow so used to the iPhone 4′s gorgeous display that we find ourselves preferring it over our Macs, Apple will release new computers that offer the same technology and we’ll be lining up to get them. Trust me.

I’ve been using an iPad as my sole computer at home for the past two weeks. For the most part, its been wonderful, but there are a few things that make it obvious that the iPad is not a complete replacement for a Mac, at least not for me. For my parents, neighbors, and most normal people who are not obsessed with technology, it just might be perfect. I’ve said before how simple the iPad is to use, so simple that my three-year old son has no problem launching Netflix and finding a Scooby-Doo movie to watch. For me, the friction starts when I visit a web page and want to upload a document, or when I want to organize my photo library, or, when I find something that I’d like to save. The iPad is a wonderful device, but some things are just hard to do on it. For some things, you still need a Mac.

Development is the obvious first thing that comes to mind. Xcode is not available for the iPad, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was never available for it. Xcode is one of the few applications that really eats up the screen real estate, especially when combined with Interface Builder. Compiling code is also taxing on the CPU, especially for projects with a large code base. It would be interesting to see Apple release “Xcode Lite”, a stripped down version of Xcode that only compiled iPhone OS apps, but I don’t think Apple has any desire or motivation to do that. There are a handful of web development apps available in the App Store, but none of them compete with their desktop equivalents. Even finding simple features like syntax highlighting is difficult.

College students might be a great target audience for the iPad, especially if textbooks can make their way into iBooks. However, many colleges have online components, and require the student to interact by posting their research or assignments, or participate in group chats. Using only the iPad, making it through such a course might be possible, but unlikely without falling back to a computer for certain tasks. For research, collaboration, and interaction, the iPad just isn’t enough on its own, but it’s be a great addition to a student’s backpack.

Power users demand a lot from their machines, and while developers are finding new ways to push the iPad’s abilities, most of the people I know who fall into this category are not going to be willing to let go of their collection of custom scripts. Being a power user is about bending the machine to your will, finding ways to remove all the small obstacles between you and accomplishing your task. The iPad is super simple to use, but one of the costs of that simplicity is the loss of the ability to customize and tweak.

It’s important to keep in mind that the iPad is still a 1.0 product. This is Apple’s initial foray into the tablet space, and keeping with how it rolls, it’s starting with what it considers the bare minimum. What Apple has done with the iPad is create a solid base to build its next platform on. However, it doesn’t mean that the Mac is going away anytime soon, or at all. Less and less people have needed trucks over the years, but they are still selling trucks. When you need to get a job done, there’s no substitute.

January 2010 will mark the four-year anniversary of Apple’s first Intel-based Mac, the MacBook Pro. With Snow Leopard officially dropping support for PowerPC Macs and the next version of iLife and iWork likely to do the same, a perfect storm is brewing where Apple can begin to really push OS X to maximize the potential of the Intel hardware it supports. 2010 looks to be a big year in terms of hardware updates from Apple; here’s our roundup of predictions on what’s to come.

MacBook Pro

Just like where it started four years ago with the first Intel Mac, the biggest and most exciting updates will happen to the MacBook Pro. The good news? With the classic MacBook seeing updates recently that peg its specs a little too close for comfort with its older brother, the new MacBook Pro update should arrive sooner rather than later.

In terms of processors, I predict Apple will adopt the mobile variant of the Core i5 and Core i7 quad-core processors currently found in the latest iMacs. Though these mobile variants, also referred to by their codename Arrandale, only feature two cores, they also come laden with Intel’s better-than-previously-integrated-but-not-quite-as-good-as-a-standalone graphics chipset. Rumor has it that Apple isn’t a fan of this implementation (as right it shouldn’t be, desiring a dedicated professional graphics card for its high-end portable). How this will shake out is still a mystery.

For the past three years, Apple has followed a steady trend of doubling both the entry-level amount of RAM and the maximum RAM that its high end portables can support. It’s a great tactic on Apple’s part as it combats only incremental performance gains with every new processor release. 2010 should be no different, with standard models of MacBook Pros shipping with 8GB of RAM with a ceiling of 16GB.

The big news for the MacBook Pros will be the inclusion of the first Blu-ray drive. It’s been a long time coming but Apple is ready to go for it and ready to do it right. Blu-ray Superdrives will be available as an option (if not standard) on the 15” and 17” MacBook Pros.

Taking advantage of the brilliant resolution of Blu-ray, the 15” MacBook Pro will also feature a gorgeous 1920 x 1080 resolution display, packing the same number of pixels as the new 21.5-inch iMac and the current 17” MacBook Pro. Of course, this also means the 17” will get a display bump as well. 2560 x 1440 seems like a bit of a stretch, but one can always hope, right?

In regards to storage, I predict we’ll see MacBook Pros starting with 500GB hard drives on the low-end 13” model and maxing out at 1TB or 1.5TB hard drives on the high-end 17” model. Before the year is out, the high-end models might even have an option for a 2TB drive.

MacBook Air

The MacBook Air, due to it’s ultra slim and lightweight profile, will only see modest updates in 2010. Processors will be bumped to 2.26GHz and 2.53GHz (up from 1.86GHz and 2.13GHz). Hard drives on the portable will see modest size increases to 250GB SATA and 256GB solid-state drives. The next iteration of the MacBook Air will also ship with 4GB of RAM standard. Though it will be difficult for Apple to upgrade the processors, hard drives and RAM while still maintaining a profit, the price point of the MacBook Air is in a sweet spot at the moment that Apple doesn’t want to disrupt.

As a completely outlandish prediction, I predict that Apple will also release a standalone external USB Blu-ray drive for MacBook Air users and legacy users who wouldn’t mind the accessory. Price point? I’m betting $299.

MacBook

Everyone’s favorite little portable recently saw an overhaul just a few months ago. For 2010, the MacBook specs will tend towards the current MacBook Pro offerings. Standard RAM will increase to 4GB (though this may remain the max for this model) and the portable will ship with either a 320GB or 500GB hard drive as standard.

Mac mini

The Mac mini will likely see modest processor increases (2.53GHz on the entry-level and 2.6GHz on the high-end) as well as 4GB RAM and 320GB hard drives standard. Build to order options will include 1TB drives and the Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server will ship with two 1TB drives. I also predict that Blu-ray drives will be a build-to-order option as Apple is starting to recognize the importance of the Mac mini in the living room as a more robust alternative to the Apple TV.

iMac

The iMac saw a nice update in 2009 that shifted the aspect ratio of the displays from the Apple-familiar 16:10 to the more HD-familiar 16:9. As such, the entry-level iMac is capable of displaying 1080p video, if only there were a source to play it. Similar to the MacBook Pros, I also predict the iMacs will receive built-in Blu-ray drives on the high-end models, if not standard across the entire line. The iMacs will also see a shift towards the quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 chips reaching clockspeeds similar to the current Core 2 Duo iMacs (a little over 3GHz). A subsequent update later in the year could bring about even faster processors in the neighborhood of 3.2GHz to 3.5GHz. 8GB of RAM will become standard on these Macs with the ability to upgrade to 16GB if desired.

Mac Pro & Xserve

There is still life left in the Nehalem architecture as the Core i9 “Gulftown” processor will make its debut in these high-end Macs at some point next year. Manufactured on a highly efficient 32nm die, this six core processor will boost a clock speed of around 2.8GHz and outfit the Mac in both single and dual processor varieties. This essential “12-core” MacPro or Xserve will feature 8-10GB of RAM as standard and a maximum ceiling of 64GB of RAM. You don’t have to take my word for it though, just start saving pennies now.

The Elusive iTablet

And saving the best for last, we arrive at the iTablet. While many constantly peg Apple’s unreleased tablet as occupying the space between the iPod touch and the MacBook, I predict it is between the iPod touch and MacBook of 2010, not 2009. As such, I predict the iTablet to function like a Mac and run OS X. I predict the tablet to utilize an Intel Core 2 Duo processor around the 2GHz mark. Personally, I feel Apple will disappoint many if the device functions more like an iPhone (in terms of hardware specs, besting out the 3GS 600MHz processor with 256MB of RAM). While I wouldn’t expect the tablet to function as a workstation for heavy video rendering, Apple has shown a history of utilizing hardware that can pack a punch and really maximize the OS. I predict the tablet will feature between a 7” and 10” screen (personally I’m leaning towards the latter, despite rumor sites). The iTablet will also feature support for 802.11n for fast streaming of content like iTunes Extras across your local network, support for Screen Sharing for remotely administering other Macs and the ability to connect to an external display through a micro-DisplayPort connector. I also feel the iTablet will ship in two versions, differentiated by storage size (like every other Apple product ever) and feature a solid state drive like the iPhone and iPod touch. Though the iTablet may not feature a screen with high enough resolution for HD, I do believe it will support playback of HD video through an appropriate video out connector.

What’s Left?

Rumors of Intel and Apple co-developing LightPeak technology are becoming more commonplace and I predict we’ll see some announcement related to this in 2010. This high-speed optical connection might be essential to products like the iTablet that would benefit from its singular connection for power, data transfer, and HD video output. Or perhaps the technology could become employed in MacBook Pros, allowing use of one LightPeak connection to an iMac that provides power to charge the laptop, video signal carried to the iMac’s display and audio carried to the iMac’s internal speakers.

The white elephant still remaining in the room is of course Apple’s Display lineup. With a 24” LED display and a 30” display that barely beats the resolution of Apple’s new 27” iMac, I predict Apple will definitely be refreshing its display lineup. In particular, I expect the price of the 24” LED Cinema Display to drop to $699 and a new 27” LED Cinema Display, matching the same resolution as the iMac (remember, it’s 16:9, not 16:10) to arrive at $1299. I also predict Apple will introduce a new, high-end 32” LED display at $1799, the price point of the current 30” display.

All of these predictions are merely speculation, based on Apple’s history, rumor sites and published roadmaps from companies that Apple sources components from. While this article solely represents my opinion of what could be around the corner in 2010, I’d love to hear what you think or would like to see. Share a comment or two with your thoughts!

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