Well, let’s face it. Tomorrow is a special event-style Steve Jobs keynote, and for like the first time since Apple has started doing these special events, they’re actually planning to talk about the Mac, instead of music. We didn’t do a PreviewCast this weekend because I was busy doing something else. But, I guess I shouldn’t let the day come without expressing some opinion of what I’d like to see be announced, particularly with the rumor websites going crazy again. You know what? I think I’m getting sick of rumor websites. Maybe I should stop subscribing to them. Oh wait, I’m a Mac podcaster. Damn.

Now, let’s get one thing clear: this is not a rumor list. The stuff that I’m talking about or speculating on here has absolutely no source backing it other than my wild imagination. I’m not even calling this rumors, I’m calling it a wishlist, because it’s stuff that I’d like to see (or not see) relating to the aging Mac lineup.

One thing that we probably won’t see is an iMac with multi-touch, never mind how revolutionary it sounds. First of all, that would kind of require a special version of OS X optimized for multi-touch, wouldn’t it? And as TUAW makes a valid point, holding your arms up to the screen would hurt after awhile. That’s probably why Microsoft opted for a table for their Surface instead of a traditional monitor. Still, this is a pretty good mockup of a multi-touch iMac:

Still, I suppose that everyone’s biggest rumor for tomorrow is a new iMac, one without multi-touch, and one with a new design. The big rumor would be brushed metal, which would basically make the iMac look a lot like the Mac Pro. Me? I’m not believing that. Why would Apple want their consumer level Mac to look like a Mac Pro? Furthermore, isn’t Apple kind of getting rid of the brushed metal in the next version of their operating system? Yeah. You get my point. Personally, I’m not sure just how much more they can do to an iMac that would make a radical design change, because this one has seemed to serve them well–I’m of the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude. I mean, the last time Apple made a change to the design of the iMac was back in October 2005, when they made the sides a little slimmer (by sort of “rounding out” the backside) moved the location of the ports, and added a camera. Most people today don’t distinguish the original iMac G5 and the iMac G5/Core Duo/Core 2 Duo with the camera as any different, but when the camera iMac was announced, it was introduced as “the next iMac”, and lo and behold, it wasn’t that different. I think that if Apple was going to have a new design for the iMac, it would be a brand new body, not just a makeover. I don’t think anyone expected the iMac G4 (which had the computer at the base and a floating display, which I liked better than the current model) to become a computer with everything behind the display, and tomorrow Apple will either announce some revolutionary new idea for the iMac or else will keep pretty much the same design with a few minor changes. Finally, I’m pretty sure that they WON’T be packing in those new Penryn chips that Intel announced–the educational buying season is coming to a close, and I’m betting that they’ll probably announce something available immediately if they announce anything at all.

A bunch of folks seem to also be saying that Apple is going to kill the Mac mini or something like that, but that’s another one that I’m calling “B.S.” to. Since when has Apple killed a product of theirs at a big announcement? As we all know, the last product that Apple killed as the Power Mac G4 Cube (which I still maintain was a beautiful design for a computer, can you say “NO FANS”?). They didn’t announce that they were killing it, they were just moving it away slowly. Furthermore, the last product that was rumored to be killed was the iPod shuffle. It went from January 2005 until October 2006 without being refreshed, and everyone thought it was going to be axed until Apple announced that it had pretty good numbers and a brand new generation of iPod shuffle that has exploded the small flash MP3 market. The Mac mini was last updated in the end of February 2006, with a slight change of the product lineup in July 2006 (dropping the Core Solo model), which means that it hasn’t gone as long as the shuffle did.. If Apple says anything about the Mac mini tomorrow (which it ought to), they’ll probably have some cool new version of it to announce. If they don’t mention the Mac mini tomorrow, then I might believe that they’re starting to kill it. Still, I would think that the Mac mini would be a nice little computer that really fills a market for someone switching to a Mac or someone who doesn’t want to spend $1000+ on any other Mac, and so I’d wager that the mini has done pretty well despite all these websites declaring it dead. Furthermore, I really think Apple should be focusing on the sub-$1000 market because that’s a market where its competitors (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.) have the lead. They understand that many people are willing to give up the whole enchilada so they can save some green. Apple, on the other hand, seems to believe in providing the whole enchilada and charging full price for it, and I’d really like to see Apple trim down their lineup a bit to attract the cheaper PC market (it would make my parents happier too when their 400 MHz PowerMac G4 from the year 2000 eventually breaks down).

This morning’s mention on .Mac’s website that there will be some downtime tomorrow starting around 10 AM (keynote time) hints that there will be a .Mac update announced. In fact, I think that it confirms it. I don’t know about those people who say that the Mac mini is dead, but .Mac has been lacking of any major updates for much longer. Save for a new webmail interface last fall, the value of .Mac has gotten steadily worse. They finally upped their e-mail/storage to a combined 1 GB after Gmail redefined the webmail market, but even then, Gmail offers almost 3 GB for free now. .Mac groups are pretty much a ripoff of Google Groups or Yahoo! Groups or a number of other websites, all of which are free, Backup is going to become obsolete when Time Machine comes out, Virex is no longer included (nor really important to most Mac users)–essentially .Mac has become an expensive extension to iLife. About the only place where it becomes a bit helpful is when you have multiple Macs, in which you have a sweet syncing feature and IMAP e-mail (which Gmail REALLY NEEDS), but even that isn’t really worth $100/year, especially when Google is offering so many of the same services for free.

That said, a .Mac update is LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNG overdue (reminds you of those Metro PCS ads, eh?), as confirmed by Steve Jobs when he and Bill were at the All Things D conference. But it’s going to take a WHOLE lot to update .Mac to something of value. iTools became .Mac on July 17th, 2002, in which Apple slightly beefed up the iTools offering and announced that they would be charging for it. The .Mac package has barely changed in the five years since then, but since then, rivals such as Google and others have begun to offer much more bang for no buck and .Mac’s offering is pretty pathetic, and the price makes it even worse. Therefore, if Apple is going to keep on doing .Mac (which they probably will), they’re going to have to do a couple of things. First of all, they’re going to have to really beef up their offerings. They’re really going to have to increase the amount of storage available to subscribers, we’re paying for it after all. They are also going to have to add some new features and new integration with the Mac platform that is as mouth-watering appealing as the Synchronization features already present in there to help provide the “edge” to the offering that will get people interested in .Mac again. Sorry, Apple, but special stuff for the iLife apps isn’t really going to cut it. And finally, Apple is probably going to have to look at lowering the price. Unless Apple can really revolutionize their .Mac offering, I don’t think that people are willing to pay $100/year now for what they were somewhat-willing to pay $100/year for five years ago, particularly with Google offering stuff for free. That’s not to say that Apple won’t keep charging, but I’d say that it should be no more than $50/year now, depending on how cool the product offering is. There was a rumor on a website that said that Google and Apple might partner to do stuff with .Mac; personally I doubt it. I would think that Google would want you to just go all-out for their own free services instead. I’d say the only way that .Mac would include Google technology would be if it were free again, like it was during iTools. You know, that wouldn’t be bad either.

And finally, iLife and iWork. It’s still unknown whether or not Apple will keep these as separate applications or build these into OS X Leopard. I know that I’d like to see them built-into OS X Leopard, but I personally think that Apple will keep offering them as separate products so that they can make more money. Furthermore, I’m betting that they are going to require Leopard to run, otherwise, why would Apple be holding them off till now? Probably they’re going to brand it as “iLife ‘08″ and have it ship at the same time that Leopard ships. As for features? I’m not going to speculate too much, but I’d really like to see new podcasting features in GarageBand. Also, I think that iWeb really needs some improvement, and I’d really like to see Apple bring it up to the stakes of something like RapidWeaver or Freeway. True, those cost money and iWeb is free, but couldn’t we get something a little less tacky that actually offers something for someone that has a little bit more experience with HTML, CSS, and the like as well as the innocent newcomer? It would also be nice if it had some improvements for people publishing websites to somewhere other than .Mac.

Everyone is definitely looking forward to tomorrow’s event because Apple has a lot of loose ends to tie up for its Mac market. After announcing nothing for the Mac during Macworld, no new Mac products during WWDC, and releasing only a few meager product updates throughout this year, they have a lot to catch up on, and we’re all hoping to be excited by new announcements tomorrow. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on MacRumors Live, and then possibly arranging a PreviewCast episode after the keynote is over to talk about what’s announced, so to all the PreviewCasters out there, stick around after the keynote if you can!

Tags: announcements, Apple, iLife, iMac, iPhone, iWork, Mac, Mac mini, multi-touch, PreviewCast, Steve Jobs