iPod Expo

For me, the Apple announcements at Expo for the past couple of years haven't been all that exciting. Mac Mini and iPods hold little interest for me, and the consumer focus of this show makes me wonder why Apple don't make a big splash at the CES in Las Vegas (which was last week) instead.

This year, most rumours centre around Intel-based laptops, which is something I thought would happen around now (6 months ahead of schedule) as soon as they announced the switch to Intel last year, so I won't be surprised by that, and nor will anyone else, since this rumour has now morphed into accepted fact, in spite of the lack of confirmation.

Now people are second-guessing what the Big Thing will be, because Intel laptops aren't big enough, apparently. So the rumours currently centre around huge displays (some say plasma, others LCD, since plasma is considered a doomed technology) with a computer built-in, HDTV-ready, suitable for living room use.

People skate over the expected new versions of the Apple "i" apps, but, for me, this is where the most interest lies. Why? Because, although Apple acts like a hardware company, it's the software that makes it special and different. Without Applesoft, as it used to be called, Apple would just be a Sony wannabe. It's the software that leaves Sony and its ilk floundering in Apple's wake.

OS X really is easy peasy. and the iApps are pretty excellent. Final Cut Pro is an industry standard, and Logic (previously by Emagic) goes from strength to strength (though Pro Tools is still better, for my money).

So what's going to be new in iLife '06? Well, I think, finally, that Apple will pull together the buzzwords of 2004 and 2005, and come up with an end-to-end solution for personal publishing on the web. You'll be able to create blogs/web sites with photos, videos, and podcasts, and publish and host it all with a .Mac account. It's a solution that won't appeal to the tech-savvy codesters who use Moveable Type and things like that, people who already know how to set up a server and file hosting.

It will appeal to the Flickr/Blogger set, those who can't be arsed to learn how to use CSS and scripting, who just want to snap a photo, make a movie, record something in Garageband, and pop it up on the web without having to learn Geek. You can already more or less do this, with various tools, but Apple are going to make it gobsmackingly easy and joined-up.

Or not.