Predicting my MacWorld Coverage and the Steve Jobs Keynote

As you all know, tomorrow is the big MacWorld keynote. Rather than follow the crowd and predict what’s going to be announced, I thought I’d try to predict my own coverage instead…

He’s gone and done it again, hasn’t he? “It’s a brand new area of technology, we’re leading the way, there’s nothing like this on the planet,” and the community goes absolutely wild. Come on folks, get a grip, this is not new!

Okay, let’s start with the technology. “The foundation of a new age?” Not buying it. After all I bought it back in 1998 on my first Psion Organiser, and it’s been incorporated into pretty much every ultra-portable since then. It’s available right now on a range of devices, yet pop it in a silver box with an Apple, and you’re all happy to pay twice the price, for half the functionality? You should be able to use it between any devices, not just those from Cupertino.

Ah, I lied., Sorry . You’re not happy at all. You’re breaking down the doors in ecstasy.

And oh look a content deal. Much like every other content deal announced in the US in recent years. A nice cosy relationship that keeps the price as high as the majors want, but somehow makes Apple smell of roses. You know Nokia and Sony have driven better deals for their handset and Playstation users, right?

What is nice is to see that they’ve not handed Steve the keys to the family jewels like they did with their music catalogues, so a lot of people are going to write this up as his first ‘loss’ in the media market but I think he’s going Trojan Horse in this one. One iTunes is the biggest elephant in the room, that’s when the trunk swinging will start. So while I’ll avoid Gizmodo’s the death of the music label it’s still a very short-term outlook from them.

Not surprisingly, there’s still no Beatles in iTunes I see, although with that divorce settlement due soon for Macca, who knows. Maybe in September… )

Ditto on the iPhone. You’ve sold a lot, that’s nice, but the point is that the majority of these are in the US. Look to any other territory where there’s even the modicum of competition in the functionality of handsets available and you’ve not got a hit. You’ve got the equivalent of the Nokia Communicator – an impressive device but in no way a mainstream success. Undercutting the US networks was easy, they’re in dire straights. But the likes of Vodafone, T-Mobile and others seem to have avoided you.

BTW, What did happen to the China Mobile deal?

What the rest of the world needed to hear about was the next iPhone. The one with 3G and the better camera, changeable SIM, removable memory, decent headphone jack, and enterprise support. Not just an extra 8gb storage. And about that “open development platform,” it’s an evil idea,but pushing everything through the iTunes Store to ensure you get your 25% cut from third party developers for every bit of code they place on other iPhones… well now the role of the iPhone is clear. It’s not a game changer to rework the mobile marketplace as the iPod did to music, it’s simply a way to get recurring revenue in ever greater numbers from your users.

Which is a great business move, especially as everyone is saying ‘thank you for this’ while handing you the money. Be honest, if you’d been the Sherriff of Nottingham you would have had Robin as your best man.

The worst of all this is no matter what’s said, the grumblings of people outside the fan-boy circles, the companies erased from history, and the commentators that just don’t get your vision, the updated technology is not only going to sell by the bucket-load, but when the inevitable faults in the first few batches arise, it’ll be brushed over as the price you pay for being at the cutting edge. Every CEO at every other Consumer Electronics Company wishes he could deflect criticisms of poor build quality, buggy firmware, and missing features as easy as Steve does.

There’s nothing new, yet everyone is crazy of it. How very 2.0.