Back to Mac Media Event Predictions

Last week Apple announced their second media event of the fall season with the title of "Back to Mac", scheduled for October 20, 2010 at 1PM EDT. Of course being an Apple fan-boy I am very excited to see what is in store for the Mac, which has appeared like a red-headed step child since the iPhone was released.

Here is the image for the event.


Okay so here are the predictions:

Mac OS X Lion - It seems pretty clear from the image above that Apple will make some announcement around the next version of Mac OS X. I am predicting some listing of the features and also a couple demos of the new features, but it probably won't be available until the WWDC next summer. The convergence begins....I expect it to include some new UI features with a more iOS look and feel as Apple begins the process of moving towards a single OS for all their devices. Not exactly sure about any other changes besides some general UI stuff, but maybe some updates to the native Mail and Calendar apps.

MacBook Air Update - The MacBook Air was announced back in May of 2009 and hasn't been updated since, so I think a new version is a near certainty. The new MacBook Air will probably be thinner, lighter and have a longer battery life. I think they will probably add a new screen size and also add some more multi-touch support. The long shot would be an actual touch-screen and ability to switch from Mac OS X to iOS.

iLife '11 - Again it has been two years since the last iLife update and it is time for some updates to the suite. Not exactly sure what the changes will be, maybe bringing some more features to iMovie and hopefully some better Faces usability in iPhoto.

FaceTime - I have had an iPhone 4 now for four months and have only used the "killer" app FaceTime on it once. The big problem is I don't know many people with a device that actually supports FaceTime. I think iChat will finally get FaceTime support and Windows may also get iChat as well. Since Apple wants to get this out to as many people as possible I don't think they will include it in iLife and will hopefully push it out as a Mac OS X update.

Now I just have to wait five more hours and find out if my predictions are true.