The App Store: A real money spinner

It’s that time of the year again where the tech world gears up for Expo season. MacWorld is first up in San Francisco from the 5-9th of January with CES overlapping for a day in La Vegas from the 8-11th January. Our coverage of CES can be followed using the tag CES so keep your eyes on us for the latest in tech goodness but for now we’re going to concentrate on a MacWorld that might be one to remember, not necessarily for good reasons. Hit the read link for the rumours, the speculation and our thoughts.

Apple have, I’m sure you’ve all heard, announced that this is the last MacWorld that they will attend and that the keynote normally given by Stevey J himself is not going to feature the Apple herald. The keynote on Tuesday is going to feature Philip Schiller and will likely cover the many successes of the iPod and iPhone lines and sales of Apps in the App Store. This may sound boring to most but it has been a record year for the iPhone and iPod lines and the App Store is a fantastic success even with it’s inherant flaws.

Rumours of more exciting announcements, if evolutionary is exciting to you mind, have centred around the Mac Mini. TUAW and many other sources are reporting that the new Mini will break with the design seen in the current generation following the new colour and material scheme set up across the rest of the range with black plastic and aluminium. They’re also reporting that the Mini will be able to take two HDDs instead of an optical drive which will please those who use the Mini as a small server. A Quad Core MacBook Pro, probably the as yet un-refreshed 17″ version, is also on the cards and ties in nicely with the launch of Intel’s new Quad Core laptop chips. Current rumours as of writing indicate a unibody design, which I would be surprised if it wasn’t, yet with a long life non-removable battery. The iMac may also get some love with some new internals (Quad Core iMac anyone?) plus some DisplayPort action to follow suit with the new laptop line.

Other rumours on the table include updates to the Mobile Me service including iDisk integration for file sharing. This could be the MacWorld that brings the fabled iPhone App notification system, or the holy grail of wishes, Copy and Paste. Chance would be a fine thing, although I’m not going to rule anything out at this stage. The iPhone Nano/Mini rumours are also doing the rounds with murmurs of a PAYG iPhone. Getting more and more speculative we get onto the rumoured iTablet, or a form of larger iTouch. Rumours also surround the fact that Jobs is not heading the keynote this time round for MacWorld with speculation that this might be the announcement of his stepping down from CEO and moving somewhere else in the company or the age old ’spending more time with the family’ statement.

So that’s your lot from me, other rumours are a little far fetched for me, I don’t think Apple will introduce a netbook, and although I would love to see an Apple TV integrated into a Mac Mini or just a much more capable ATV I think it’s unlikely at this stage. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen though, so watch this space. What do you our fair readers think? Will Jobs step down? How about a Blu-Ray drive? Is a large iPod Touch something you’ve always dreamed of? Or are you raging because the Pro isn’t looking like it’s getting any Apple love?

Tags: apple