My Macworld WAGs

After a cursory glance at the Mac rumor sites, I have the following WAGs (Wild Ass Guesses) to make about what's coming to Macworld this week. The hype from Apple suggests it could be good, so we'll see.

- iTV (100%) Obviously since it's already been announced then Jobs will at least talk about it more, if not roll it out as available. Again, if it downloads and stores video directly from the iTunes Store, it's a killer product. If it just streams existing media from your Mac, then it's a niche product. (If it's also DVR, I'll once again wonder why I never bought Apple stock back when I used to have some money.)

- iWork '07 (100%) And it'll have a spreadsheet. Is it odd that, to this day, I still use Microsoft Office exclusively? Apple may have to overcome that in more loyal Mac users than just me -- they could start by not making Pages seem more like a Microsoft Publisher competitor. I even use PowerPoint instead of Keynote. Weird, huh? (Of course, as I mentioned, I'm typing this on a PC laptop, so maybe I've been slipping to the dark side for years.)

- iPhone (90%) I think the hype is about Apple's phone. Smartphone/PDA/portable media center. I see people on planes watching iPods and I'm thinking that Apple could take the "ha ha, we made people care hard disks in their pockets" brilliance of the iPod two or three steps forward by giving us something that we don't even quite know to ask for yet. It'll have to browse the Internet, get e-mail, access the iTunes store and have enough storage for all that media...but if it does, it'll be the Next Small Thing.

- Server Mini (25%) I might be the lone holdout for this -- frankly, if Apple would do what I'm asking with the iTV, then it's basically already a home server. (Make it also an AirPort base station and let it act as a file server as well as a multimedia repository and you've got a Server Mini.) For the small office, a Server Mini with a fast hard disk, wireless base station capability and perhaps a built-in printer server would be a very nice option. (I've just installed a Lacie Ethernet Mini Disk in my office this weekend and still can't get the damn thing to work. Apple?!)

- Mac Tablet (10%) Maybe not even that likely. I've seen a few rumors and it'd be an interesting thought, but unless they've gone somewhere with handwriting recognition that no one (but Apple, really) has ever been before then I'll believe it when I see it.

I'll post more WAGs if I hear anything interesting.