Wired pools together a pile of WWDC predictions. Gotta love em–especially the number of times that touch is mentioned. How many times have we said touch is here? It is.
One prediction that’s close to my heart is one of an Internet Tablet. From the article:
Steve Jobs said that Apple would never make a Tablet Mac. He also said there would never be a video iPod. A Kindle-sized iPod Touch would certainly be a great toy, but would anybody buy it? The iPod Touch is popular because it is a regular sized iPod with a slew of killer features, and people are used to the size. But a MacBook Touch would be a whole new product: too big to fit in a pocket and too small to do any real work (not to mention the lack of a real keyboard). But then, if anybody can take a flailing (read: all current tablet PCs) category and make it attractive, it’s Apple.
Actually I think a MID- or Kindle-sized iPod Touch would be a killer product. Part music iPod. Part book reader iPod. Part video iPod. Part remote for Apple TV. There’s no question in my mind that with a device like this Apple could ignite several magnitudes more interest in readers than lets say Amazon or Sony have been able to accomplish–in and out of schools. It would also give a boost to the teetering Apple TV.
Of course, there’s plenty of engineering reasons to think that the time isn’t quite right for this. The displays aren’t quite there. Nor is the battery life. They’re close enough for me, but I’m not sure if they’re close enough for Apple.
Tomorrow morning at 10AM Pacific Time we’ll all know if predictions like this are off base.