Another year, another Apple keynote. This year’s event is particularly interesting for a couple reasons:
Apple is widely expected to announce two new iPhones, with 4.7 and 5.5-inch displays.
Apple is widely expected to unveil a wearable computing device that everyone is already calling “iWatch”.
As always, industry analysts are singing to the tune of “Apple needs the iWatch to be powered by unicorn blood or else they’re doomed”.
Fortunately, a more sane variety of Apple reporting exists and, as usual, they have also put forth their own predictions for what we’re likely to witness today. Here’s a roundup of some of my favorite ones:
John Gruber adds to his already detailed predictions a few weeks ago. Overall, a nice and balanced prediction by John, as usual. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t get most of them exactly right.
Marco Arment starts with a nice explanation of why bigger iPhones seemed quite ridiculous in 2011 but actually make a lot of sense now, and then he goes completely crazy and predicts a $2999 Retina iMac for this winter. I really wish he gets this one right, despite what it would do to my wallet.
Max Child (hat tip to Gruber’s aforelinked piece) makes one of the most interesting propositions I’ve read: that the iWatch could actually turn out to be quite similar to an iPod, in that it could be optimized for playing music and podcasts while people run, only this time wirelessly. It would also integrate with HealthKit and display other biometric and health-related data, opening up a whole new array of possibilities. This makes so much sense that I wonder why it hasn’t been brought up by more people.
Federico Viticci has been hinting on Twitter that there are huge updates coming to several very popular iOS apps that take full advantage of iOS 8’s new features. Also, Transmit is coming to iOS. That, in and of itself, is already huge, so it looks like we’re in for a treat.
Dan Moren of Macworld also shares their list of predictions, and all the usual suspects are there: new iPhones, iOS 8, OS X Yosemite and, of course, the iWatch. It’s a nice recap if you haven’t been keeping up with the rumors.
Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica has similar predictions, all nicely laid out for your reading pleasure. Also, since September has traditionally been Apple’s music event, they hint at other possible music-related announcements from Apple, such as maybe new iPods or anything involving the Beats brand.
Josh Lowensohn of The Verge says there are 5 things to expect from Apple’s big event, although in reality he lists quite a few more, so I’m not so sure about that title. Still, good stuff all around.
As for myself, I agree with most of the conservative predictions we’ve seen. I believe we will see two new iPhones at 4.7 and 5.5-inches, and I believe Apple will introduce a wearable computing device that may or may not be called iWatch, because there sure is a heck of a lot of smoke for there not to be a fire.
As for the more outlandish predictions we’ve seen (that this new device will also cure cancer and command alien species at your will, among others), I remain a bit more skeptical.
Whatever it ends up looking like, I expect a typical Apple device: insanely good at a small set of tasks, with the potential to evolve through iteration into something much more capable and powerful.
Luckily, we’re just a few short hours away from finding out. If you’re excited to see what happens, you can watch the keynote live on Apple’s website.