As the only remaining Mac trade show in North America, you can expect a tremendous focus over the coming weeks on just what Steve Jobs has lying in wait for us in January at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Predicting what Apple is up to is no longer the exclusive right of Mac-oriented sites, and fodder for those who deal in rumors. The mainstream press has already begun to talk about what you and I can expect and the results will make headlines across the planet.

Now perhaps someone from Time or Newsweek is even now planning sessions with Steve Jobs to get an advance look. Conspiracy theorists might even suggest that one or more of the major newspapers will have stories about the new products attributed by “sources within Apple.” No doubt they will be planned leaks, to hype the announcements to a fever pitch.

Having watched this scene play out in various ways over the years, I can tell you that I remain amused by the process. I’m reminded of the photographers who look for test automobiles covered in cloth or tape to hide their design, hoping to get a picture of the new models coming from Detroit, Japan, Germany and Korea. At the same time, you won’t read much speculation about what new products will emerge from Dell, HP and Samsung.

Looking at the possibilities, it would seem almost certain there will be an iPod-related product of some sort. Some are talking of a super-sized model, emphasizing its video capabilities with a more watchable screen, humongous hard drive space, and perhaps a digital video port so you can play it through a large screen high definition TV at full resolution. I have mixed feelings about such a product, since Apple has been making its iPods smaller, not larger. If it gets too big, it loses its utility as a portable music player, and becomes a stationary appliance. Is that what Apple wants? Besides, even though we’re seeing rapid movement towards alternate distribution for TV shows, it remains to be seen how many will buy them from iTunes after the initial excitement wears off. Oh well, maybe the episodes of “Night Stalker” that were filmed before the show was cancelled and never broadcast will be sold online.

I’m expecting any new iPod to be largely a variation on the theme. Slicker, more capacity, an extra feature or two or three, and a similar or lower price.

Now about those computers. In June, Steve Jobs said the first Intel-based Macs would appear by the middle of 2006, and the company hasn’t changed its tune. At the same time, with Intel’s dual-core “Yonah” chip hitting volume production next year, some are already putting them inside new Macs. The stories have it that Apple is working full bore on developing its first MacIntels, and bringing Mac OS X development in sync on both the PowerPC and Intel platforms.

So what does that mean? Now a June introduction might be suitable for a business computer, but Apple would want to get consumer models in the channel as quickly as possible. This would also help educational buyers get their orders in by spring. There’s also another dilemma facing Apple. So far, Mac sales have increased sharply. There has been no negative impact because of the impending processor changeover. But I don’t expect free sailing after the holiday season. Expectations will be high, and Apple will want to fill demand as soon as it can.

At the same time, it is clear that Apple has been moving towards Intel for quite some time, long before the official announcement. It’s not just the operating system, but the products that would carry the new chips. The basic designs may have been completed months ago, and Apple only needs to fine tune the electronics with test samples of the new Intel chips. Lots of components, such as laptop displays, hard drives, networking chips and so on are already industry standard and don’t have to change. The focus may be largely on cooling systems and whether, for example, an iBook or PowerBook can gain a slimmer form factor as a result.

I rather suspect that, except for the iMac G5, which was just modified, you will see modest or perhaps significant changes as the new MacIntels are introduced.

The timing at a Macworld Expo keynote would fuel a tremendous demand. I am willing to go along with the speculation that a Mac mini and perhaps an iBook and PowerBook will be the first to go Intel and that one or more of these models will be unveiled in January. I don’t see Apple having much of a choice, because buyer expectations may well kill sales of existing models after the first of the year.

On the application front, Apple has already updated its professional applications. iWork has been a non-starter, and perhaps a 2006 version, with a spreadsheet component and some flashy new features, might help to make the suite a true AppleWorks successor. I also expect an iLife ‘06 with perhaps an additional application, but that prospect requires some more thought.

I’ll be back soon with more.

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I’m a free market person through and through and I do not like monopolies of any kind. I am happy, for example, that Microsoft’s share of the browser and operating system market appears to be eroding, if only a tiny bit. At the same time, it’s fair to say Apple has a monopoly of its own with the iPod. It will only mate with iTunes for downloads. If you want to use another music service, well, that’s just too bad.

Of course, this closed system has been part and parcel of the Apple business model. And, as I said in my commentary on whether Mac OS X will ever be licensed to other PC makers, there are undeniable advantages to Apple’s approach.

First, of course, iTunes is the largest legal music site on the planet, and has over two million tracks available. So, with rare exceptions, such as the Beatles catalog, you can satisfy most of your musical needs. The interface is relatively easy to navigate, and runs the same whether you’re using a Mac or Windows PC. Although there is a digital rights management system in effect for the songs and videos you buy, it doesn’t really interfere all that much with the way most people handle their tunes.

What’s more, iTunes is mostly reliable and stable, so except for the usual version point-zero bugs, which are quickly fixed, you can depend on it to operate as you expect. After you get the hang of it, the process of ripping a CD, buying songs from iTunes and transferring the whole kit and caboodle to your iPod is a piece of cake. You hardly have to think about it. Unlike the other music services and the music player makers, Apple offers a complete music management system. Everything works together, and you don’t have to put up with the uncertainties and incompatibilities that some encounter when using one of the other music services along with someone else’s music player.

Forget for the moment that the iPod is a cultural icon and the standard bearer for music players. Forget that Apple keeps making it better and pricing has become downright aggressive. You put the entire package together and it just works.

At the same time, technology pundits want Apple to let you use other music services with your iPod. I suppose that sounds pretty reasonable. After all, it’s possible a selection available on another service isn’t offered via iTunes, such as the first digital version from John Lennon’s solo catalog. Sure, maybe iTunes is a superior service, overall, and offers better integration with the iPod. But Apple makes most of its money from the hardware. The music store barely breaks even and is really just a promotional arm to sell more players. So where’s the harm in giving users a choice?

The theory goes that Apple might actually sell more iPods because there are fewer restrictions on how you can use it. In the end, people might try Napster-to-Go and Yahoo Music, for example, and just choose to return to iTunes. So what’s wrong with that?

Well, as a practical matter, I cannot see where this is as onerous to Apple’s income as cloning the Mac OS. If the goal is to sell as many iPods as it can, allowing the player to operate with any music service shouldn’t be all that treacherous a move. It is true, of course, that the largest iTunes competitors all employ DRM technology from Microsoft, which means that Apple would have to cut a deal with Bill Gates, or one of his lieutenants. It may also mean that hardware changes would have to be made to the iPod to accommodate the expanded support, although this might be accomplished with a firmware update of one sort or another.

In the end, I still believe iTunes will dominate the business by a huge margin. All right, maybe Apple will have to add a subscription-based alternative to keep up with the competition, but is there anything wrong with that? I am not enamored with subscribing to music, but I can see its value as a way of sampling new tunes before you buy a new tracks or even an entire album. Sure, you get a free 30-second sample from iTunes, but is that really sufficient to get a feel for a song?

Now from Apple’s point of view, I can see where the company, aside from other considerations, might not want to be blamed if you run into a compatibility problem with another music service. It’s also true that Steve Jobs wants full control and can offer perfectly reasonable and logical reasons why it makes sense in the digital music arena.

Of course, nothing is forever, and if Apple felt threatened by its competition, perhaps it would open up its closed system to give iPod users more options. It’s very true that the growth of the music service hasn’t quite kept pace with the growing iPod user base. But I’m not holding my breath, not for a moment. Even though I can see the advantages, we all know that Steve Jobs has other ideas.

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First let’s look at the good news: According to present estimates, some one million Windows users have switched to Macs this year alone. Some might have been enticed to buy a Mac because of the famous iPod “halo” effect. Others are simply disgusted with Windows malware, and are in sore need of a change. Regardless of the reason, it’s the best news for dedicated Mac users in quite some time, and you have to feel optimistic that the trend will continue into 2006 and beyond.

At the same time, there are a few pitfalls that newly minted Mac users will confront, and existing ones too. One of the big issues was encountered by a client a few weeks ago. He isn’t a Mac switcher; in fact, he’s used a Mac for years, recently retired and wouldn’t want to consider any other computer platform. But his wife continues to work at her busy real estate business, and she needs to keep track of her online listings. Alas, the folks who run the site that provides the information she requires recently made a fatal change, or at least one that seemed fatal.

Now as most of you know, the Windows version of Internet Explorer has been losing market share, particularly since Firefox appeared on the scene. Although the estimates vary from survey to survey and from country to country, Internet Explorer’s share is in the range of 85% or somewhat higher. This is still a dominant position, but it also means that as many as 15% of the visitors to a Web site are using a different browser. Now I don’t know about you, but if I was in a business that depended on the maximum amount of Internet traffic, I wouldn’t want to turn away 15% of my potential customers. Now maybe the folks who build some of those sites do not understand this simple truth. Whatever the reason, a number of them require Internet Explorer. Not even the Mac version will suffice.

You visit those sites, they either don’t work, or deliver that message that you’re not going to be admitted.

That takes us back to my client’s wife, who, one day, found out that the multiple listing site she depended on had made the decision to restrict its users to Internet Explorer for Windows. She tried Firefox and Safari, and I added Opera to the mix (having it report as Internet Explorer), but no luck.

The client thought for a moment about whether it made sense to buy a cheap PC box at the nearest consumer electronics outlet, but reason took hold and he tried Microsoft Virtual PC instead. You’d think that would be sufficient, and it should be, but his difficulties were just starting.

First, his Power Mac, circa 2002, required a memory upgrade to afford maximum resources to Virtual PC. That was a fairly simple task. The next proved far more difficult. At first the result seemed promising. While performance seemed tepid, it was good enough to provide reliable access to the real estate site. Ah success! But not so fast, because the client then tried to print a document and nothing happened.

Now Virtual PC is supposed to provide seamless access to your printer, but there are some notable shortcomings. In the case of this particular client, he had three USB printers. One, a cheap laser, the second a multifunction device from HP and the Canon inkjet he relied on fast output of color photos. Try as he might, the Canon refused to run.

I checked Virtual PC’s settings for USB devices, and discovered that he hadn’t selected a default USB printer or any USB printer in the application’s settings panel. I also discovered that Virtual PC’s handling of USB devices was, as John Rizzo of the popular MacWindows site said on The Tech Night Owl LIVE the other night, “funky.” That, my friends, is a huge understatement. You see, if you use the Restore feature to provide fast launching of your PC operating system, it loses the setting for a USB device. This is a “feature” and not a bug apparently, because the way the process of “capturing” a USB device is designed.

Now if the client had a printer connected via Ethernet, he would not encounter such difficulties, for Virtual PC has no such difficulties with network devices. Sure enough, when I selected my own Canon inkjet, which comes with a network adapter, as the application’s default printer, it performed nearly as well as it does with my regular Mac software.

I suppose I could suggest the client spend additional money on a network adapter, assuming one is available for his printer, or just buy a new printer altogether. But the costs are mounting, and the copy of Virtual PC plus that memory upgrade and my services have pushed his expenses beyond that of a cheap PC box.

Where does the blame lie? Well, I suppose you could hope that Microsoft will find a better way to manage USB printers with future versions of Virtual PC, or that the migration of Macs to Intel and the potential of dual booting will make this a moot question. But in the end, the real blame lies with the ill-advised programmers of that Web site who made a move contrary to the best interests of their customers. And that is something that will be particularly irritating to folks who have abandoned the trials and tribulations of Windows and moved to the Mac.

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