Rumour mill: something’s in the air at Macworld


15 Jan 2008

LONDON: Something’s in the air. This is the tagline surrounding Macworld 2008 where Apple CEO Steve Jobs will soon be unveiling the company’s line-up of new and improved products and services for the year to come.

This tagline is causing a ripple of rumours to pass through the BBC studio in London where media wait as Macworld beams in live via satellite from San Francisco. The thinking is that the big new announcement is hidden in this line – it may be a new product to do with wireless, ie “in the air”.

A European PR rep from Apple told Silicon Republic that although all new ideas from the Cupertino-based firm are a closely guarded secret, she thinks that Apple will not be announcing an ultra-thin MacBook or MacBook Pro because it would be “too obvious” and “easily replicated” by other tech companies.

She believes that a smaller, perhaps touchscreen MacBook-type device may be announced. Maybe that long-talked-about tablet Mac.

Meanwhile, most rumour sites on the net predict an Apple TV 2.0, an update to the dissapointing Apple TV which has not sold well, perhaps due to content being tied so closely with the iTunes store while other streaming media centres allow most media content and formats.

While it was one year ago today when Jobs announced the ‘revolutionary’ iPhone, today people predict an update, maybe 3G instead of the slow EDGE data transfer, maybe some new applications.

This journalsit is going out on a limb and saying that the something in the air is 3G for the iPhone. I may have to eat my hat.

By Marie Boran

(Editor’s note – we have ketchup back in the office just in case you need to eat your hat Marie!)