montyfood

Next week is going to be quite a week - for nerds like me, at least. Not just the release of Cloverfield - which, barring some miraculous transatlantic teleportation or mere aviation, I shan't be able to see until the UK release two long weeks later - but also Macworld in San Francisco where Steve Jobs will once again unveil some shiny new Apple products to make technophiles wet their pants with excitement.

First, the monster movie
I know this has been hyped beyond belief, but I am 99% certain this film will live up to the buzz. Not only has it benefited from a fantastic online backstory which has unfolded slowly like a rare flower, but it seems it will genuinely tackle the unusual task of telling a city-destroying-monster story from an engaging and human viewpoint that embraces where we are as a global communiculture right now. It seems fitting that the film was initially known as 1-18-08, as it timestamps the picture with the technology, culture and people of that date. Recently released (and mildly spoilerific) production notes from Paramount contain some valuable nuggets from producer JJ Abrams, director Matt Reeves and writer Drew Goddard about how the movie is very much about who we are now and how we would engage with a terror of unimaginable proportions. Call me easily impressed, but I am awestruck by the creative way it will apparently employ the "device" of the handheld video camera itself to record the other-worldly invader, but also to reveal the layers of the inner lives of those who we journey with through that terrible night. I'm loath to call this a "game changer" 'til I see it for myself, but I do have the feeling this film will add something unique to the heritage of sci-fi/horror/monster movies. Nay-sayers who think it's just the latest Blair Witch - well, that may be akin to likening champagne to fizzy grape juice.

Next, Macworld 2008 predictorama
Which, non-chronologically, leaves me with the Jobs' keynote on Tuesday. Another "game changer" in the offing? The rumour mill purports just two big revelations for Macworld: movies on a rental basis via iTunes with some major studios on board, and secondly, a super slim smaller MacBook of some kind. Allow me to postulate in public for a moment on those two themes...

Jobs has previously downplayed the whole TV thing as some sort of "hobby", but it's a no-brainer to believe Apple are as anxious to be leaders in the digital video distribution space as they are in music. It seems to me that for the movie rental rumour to come true we're also looking at some kind of (hardware) revision to the much-maligned AppleTV box. I can foresee an AppleTV equivalent of the WiFi Music Store ( available for version 1 boxes as a software update); if a movie is only good for 24 hours you don't want to waste 30-45 minutes of that time downloading it first to your computer and then to the ATV, do you? There's been other rumblings of Apple shipping Macs with Blu-ray drives (although apparently not the new 8-core Mac Pro) - well, what about putting a Blu-ray slot-loader in an AppleTV so it becomes your DVD player replacement for the next gen? Make it more compelling for you? My other prediction would be that some movies will be available up to HD resolution. Although bandwidth and disk space are issues here, you can already get free HD-size video podcasts on iTunes from a variety of sources, and the longer AppleTV is left to simply upscale its iTunes Store offerings, the more it's putting off a true HD experience. (While I'm at it, if there's going to be version 2 I'm going out on a limb and predicting it'll run a handful of games as well, though I'm prepared to hedge my bets and say that could be a forthcoming feature via a software update.)

What about the rumoured smaller, slimmer MacBook? Just an anorexic MacBook Pro or something more? Steve Jobs once said they weren't going to make a phone. Apparently (according to this recent enlightening Wired article) even as he said that, they were designing one in the labs. Steve Jobs also once poured scorn on the Tablet PC. Can you see where I'm heading with this? I don't think Steve was being duplicitous, just shrewd. Knock down the existing players in a field before you enter it with a blinding new strategy. A game changer. So it won't be just the "Tablet Mac", rather it'll build on all the hype and kudos of the iPhone - I'm fully expecting the MacBook Touch. A device as thin and as beautiful as an iPhone but with a 13" screen. Oh, and I think it'll run an OS that's basically Leopard.

How did I come to this preposterous prediction? Follow these tenuous strands, held together into a cohesive theory only by the willingness of my mind:

• Exhibit a: The delay in Leopard development was supposedly due to pulling OS X engineers onto the iPhone project. What if they were actually putting extra time into 10.5 to make it the foundation for future touch-driven OS X-based devices?


• Exhibit b: Supposedly an iPhone SDK is due in February. How about that SDK is actually for all Apple's multitouch devices so developers can convert their apps to take advantage of not just for the iPhone/iPod Touch but the MacBook Touch too?


• Exhibit c: Those new ever-so-slim keyboards - why did the Bluetooth one cease to be an extended keyboard? Doesn't it look like half of a laptop? Could the MBT be the other half? Natch, I envision a virtual keyboard on the MBT, but the wireless hardware one is there for folks who really need it.


• Exhibit d: It may feel like I'm clutching at straws slightly with this one, but consider Stacks in 10.5. I kept asking myself "why?". Don't those massive icons in Stacks grid view look like they were meant for selecting with a finger in a touch interface, rather than with a mouse? And, while we're on the GUI of Leopard, what about that big iPhone-like slidey switch in Time Machine? The Time Machine interface itself? The global setting that makes all windows icon or list view - knowing all windows will open as icons would be handy for a touch-based interface, especially since resolution independence and even bigger icons arrived in 10.5. And, of course, the ubiquitous Coverflow is just begging to be "touched" so you can rifle through your files.


• Exhibit e: I hate to cite Apple patent filings, but they're out there: showing a laptop with a touch interface in lieu of a trackpad; an iTunes-like window with a touch scrollwheel and qwerty keyboard; Finder windows with iPhone-like zoomable GUI elements for touch-based interaction (resolution independence again); a musical keyboard; a touch-based universal remote control (to control that new AppleTV perhaps?), and so on.

All pure speculation of course. But, for my money, if Apple doesn't unveil such a ground-breaking device next week then I sincerely hope we don't have to wait until next January before it does.