[Peter Cohen]

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No, it began eight months ago. Apple's 30th year in business comes to a close on April 1, 2007.

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What's more, today (January 3rd) marks Apple's "official" 30th anniversary as a company -- it was incorporated on January 3, 1977.

[DocMacPS]

Tidewind nails the Big Picture best: the coalescing of All Things Apple that really do redefine what was once a computer company into something bigger than the sum of all it's parts. And no one word or phrase to do it justice; Apple becomes a Network, a Broadcaster, a Content Platform, a Communications company, a Producer, a Staging company, and more... A loveable, compelling MONSTER that everyone will love and hate - as it utterly redefines INTEGRATING the sum of all of it's 30 years in the business. [ Insert rumble of thunder in the distance here ]

[Miche]

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Apple's 30th year in business comes to a close on April 1, 2007.

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No, April 1st 2007 will be the 31st anniversary of Apple, and the beginning of its 32nd year.
Or, if you prefer to count from incorporation, Apple has entered its 31st year today: my point being that the nth anniversary marks the end of the nth year, not the beginning.

[moikle]

Given the extreme hype, the one thing that I can think of to match the hype (and blow Vista completely out of the water) would be a completely new computer interface. Something along the lines of a real 3D interface, similar to the new Wii controller. Think of reaching "into" the screen and manipulating objects by grabbing and manipulating them with your hands -- not with a mouse. Now that would be, IMHO, really cool.

[feefer]

Leopard will run OS X AND Windows software, without the need for dual-booting, Parallels, etc. Completely transparent software compatibility via built-in emulation would be revolutionary for OS X.5, and is so obviously useful as to be off the radar...
Chris

[MacAdict]

I was looking over the Leopard sneak peaks, and I noticed something odd: there does not seem to be any GUI changes to existing applications. Could this mean that their work on the GUI is one of the secret features? Also, they Leopard sneak peak page and TimeMachine both seem to have a dark, un-aquaish theme. Could this be Aqua's replacement (or alternate option)? While a bit of that is nice, I do not think I would enjoy it nearly as much as Aqua.

[gate222]

I don't know what drug you use but it was very exciting to read your article. I'll pray God every night 'til the 9th. Let's just hope that your predictions will be mostly accurate.

[elroth]

My idea exactly:
Jobs announces the iTV, Leopard, new Macs and iPods, etc., then ends the talk; just as he is ending, we hear a phone ringing. He pulls the new apple phone out of his pocket (it's a video phone!), and on the line is Paul McCartney, who asks if he can come on stage and play a few songs. As he comes out, Jobs announces the special Beatles iPod which contains the entire Beatles (as a group and as individuals) catalog. It's shaped like a yellow submarine.
The phone will have an iSight installed.

[KJ]

I hope to see intel core 4 duo processors in mac's future, especially in the macbook pro lineup.

[Willow_Piper]

Apple could re-ignite the computer revolution by releasing Mac OS X for generic Windows PCs. The market is ripe, now that Microsoft is coaxing its giant, crippled, ugly white elephant onto the market.
If Apple made Mac OS X available for all PC users, they'd take a hit on their hardware lines, but the software side of the business would skyrocket. $99 for Mac OS X 10.5 verses Windows Vista? I know which most people I know would choose. Announcing round two of the OS wars, now that would be truly revolutionary.
I doubt we'll see anything truly revolutionary next week.

Willow

[GregForbes]

I have been thinking about the tablet Mac for a while now - what I want is a iPad.
Features:
Size - Ability to display a full A4 page on the screen at one time. From my calculations a 15 4:3 display should be able to display a full A4 page with about a centimetre left for the dock. I want minimal border beyond the screen. Thickness up to 1.5 cm. (I want to be able to ditch the lever arch file of papers I typically take with me on the plane and substitute a pad sized device. ). This device would also be able to be used in meeting much less obtrusively than a laptop.
Primary input device pen based text entry and page markup and editing functions based around Newton/inkwell type technology. (I need to be able to annotate my papers prior to the meetings and edit documents provided by staff). Pen based internet browsing and iTunes, widgets etc should be straight forward.
Interfaces USB*2, firewire, Bluetooth, Airport, 3G cellular data access
Drop the keyboard.. Most laptops with attached keyboard are too cramped to use on a plane. You cant read the screen and use the keyboard without contortions. Provide compact portable keyboard to take with you if you need it. For office /home use provide a simple (and cheep) dock that you can drop the iPad into (similar to iPod docking stations) which will provide power (via a magnetic connector similar to Macbook) and allow the iPad to be used as the desktop screen (in either portrait or landscape mode) in conjunction with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and an Airport connection to the home or office network.
Similarly DVD drives etc should be external devices. These days most data exchange on the road seems to happen using thumb drives rather than CDs floppys etc.
Battery life 8 hrs. If this means we need two - include them.
Storage 80gb hard drive as per top end video iPod
iPad should have a built in stand similar to a photo frame which allows it to be propped up in landscape or portrait mode as required.
Bluetooth could be used to connect to handsfree phone earpiece/microphones to allow intergration of normal phone functions. Find the entry in your address book and make the phonecall using the Bluetooth headset.
iPad should be able to swap between 3G cellular access and Wifi to allow internet access anywhere.
Build in isight camera and microphone to allow video conferencing and recording of meetings/lectures. (camera should be built into the top of the device and rotatable so that it can be left on the desk and rotated to point at lecturer.
Liaise with photocopy manufacturer to develop firewire interface into photocopiers to allow bulk scanning of documents to be loaded into the iPad
Provide ability for voice recognition text input (third party).
I am sure that this device would appeal to a large number of business people and students. If you build it right and integrate the phone, itunes, and browsing capabilities well it would be a compelling lifestyle device
Apple - please hear me!

[don731]

Has anyone made the "Disney" connection? Some folks may remember that on the 25th anniversary of Disneyland, Walt made a speech to his employees that basically said "We are just getting started, so don't rest on your heels" (paraphrased).

[dux5]

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To me, at least, the just the beginning portion of the phrase implies something truly forward-thinking. Apple is basically stating that its taken the past 30 years for the company to get where it is now, and that it plans to use all that knowledge to really show us what it can do.

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The last 30 years was about great hardware in an ecosystem with great software and a great OS.
That philosophy translated into the iPod/iTunes ecosystem, which ignited the portable-media device era (or re-ignited, if you want to count the Sony Walkman).
But, iPod/iTunes and Podcasting is really just a part of what's happening in society today -- just a piece of the Digital Hub.
Five years ago, Apple introduced the Digital Hub concept as a way for people to get their stuff to work. Moving photos from digital cameras; moving images from digital video cameras; moving music to someplace it was useful (the iPod).
At MacWorld, Apple will present: The Digital Hub, Remastered!
"The Digital Hub, Remastered" is all about access to information. How many times have you left a text document on your office computer and then needed access to it at home? How about a great photo that you would have loved to share with someone you just bumped into? A phone number? Web address?
The list goes on because our data is scattered all over the place. Home computer. Work computer. iPod. Flash Drive. .Mac. CDs/DVD.
"The Digital Hub, Remastered" will connect all of these scattered devices (think: iSync, plus home on iPod, plus .Mac)
Joining the party are two new devices:
-iPod Phone (with a better name, but something that from a branding perspective ties to the iPod).
- iPal (also with a better name, but includes a branding tie to the iPod).
Both devices feature an OS X lite/mobile version so that you can take what's important with you. (Bookmarks/widgets for local weather, traffic, etc.).
The phone is essentially what everyone's been talking about. Fully integrated and syncable withOS X apps. Small like the Nano, but a big screen. Intended to be used with a BT headset.
The iPal is in iPod Video-sized device that will allow access to informaiton on it (iCal, AddressBook, iPhoto images via preview), but is also designed to work in a "docked" mode so that your entire work computer has the ability to be your home computer. It also connects as a volume via USB to a Windows-based box to allow access to files. It will feature a screen the size of the device with virtual controls and have a huge HD capacity (120 GB).
iPod takes on this form factor, but retains iPod UI. It is a media player and basically nothing more. Apple will leave that alone.

[IVIIVIi4ck3y27]

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I hope to see intel core 4 duo processors in mac's future, especially in the macbook pro lineup.

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Ummm... You mean Core 2 Quadro, and there's no way you'll see it in a laptop anytime soon. The only dual-dual core platforms Intel has at the moment is Clovertown (Xeon) and Kentsfield (Core 2 Quadro, Core 2 Extreme). What's more, there's really little practical reasoning to go Quad, most of the time you're going to be lucky in your tasks to saturate 2 cores... much less 4. If you look at the info. on Anandtech, most applications that you can throw at the Core 2 Quadro or Xeon variant actually produce minimal performance benefit; especially to a more traditional computer user. In fact, in some ways you actually lose performance. The required usage of FB-DIMM's to the Clovertown architecture (ECC) are a hinderance in many ways too (especially for gaming or graphics rendering performance), that's without the memory latency between the cache's being brought to mention as well which both suffer from. Kentsfield doesn't suffer the ECC FB-DIMM route, but it's still not anything you'll see in a laptop anytime soon, and really of little benefit.
It's still a great platform when compared against it's most logical competition (i.e. Opteron) simply on a price to performance ratio; and mostly in high-end rendering or serving where you can put the grunt to use (as you really have to throw a lot at this system to see performance benefits, general usage actually will see a performance loss). You can build multiple dual Xeon-based quad machines for the costs of one 8-core Opteron box; or get into blades and you can fill a couple units vs. have one slot plugged. With that said, Opteron does scale better per core (as it should if you know the hardware specs, Opteron's are using more sockets)... but it's also still exorbitantly expensive in comparison.
Really, AMD's best offerings (price competitive vs. performance) right now are Opteron and the 939-based Athlon 64's when compared to Intel. In that regard... it's actually kind of sad. Opteron is way too expensive despite it's performance advantage (but still slower performance per watt), and the only reason Athlon 64 is price-competitive is because the equivelant Intel offerings are either woefully outdated (i.e. PIV), or... underpowered (Celeron), or too expensive per performance (Core Solo, Core Duo) when bought in singular units for BTO purposes. You can build a solid AMD rig right now for peanuts that'll smoke the hell out of the remnants of Intel's PIV family, and the Core Solo/Core Duo never really came down in pricing enough to bear fruit and render AMD even sillier than they're looking at the moment. This would be the low-end computer segment. AM2 is kind of weak when compared to Intel's Core and Core 2 lineup on price for performance, and AMD's 4 x 4 is a sad, sad, sad joke unless you do a lot of 3D rendering (i.e. Max, Cinema 4D, Maya, Lightwave, Modo, etc.). For most things, a Core 2 Duo can outrun 4 x 4, and in general... can outrun Core 2 Quadro as well. Core 2 Quadro vs. 4 x 4 though... it's a no-contest, in about 1% of all comparisons performed on Anandtech... the 4 x 4 was better than the Intel Quad offering. Otherwise... Core 2 Quadro or Core 2 Duo were the winners in the rest.
Core 2 Duo makes a lot more sense for the consumer and prosumer markets. I am not saying we won't grow into more cores down the road (similar to 64-bit computing), but until things are threaded enough to really jump on the bandwagon... I think Core 2 Duo is more than enough for most, and actually would benefit from clock speed improvements and maybe even individual caches per core over anymore cores being added. It's a case of the Core myth being added to the Mhz. myth at this stage...