Predictions for Apple’s Event

Now that its confirmed, I’ve got some predictions for next week’s Apple event.

Steve starts out talking about how awesome the iPhone is and all that numbers stuff they start out every keynote with.

OS 4.0 is announced, in beta now, to be releases in the first week in April. Apple touts new APIs (many previously private) that allow for cool new apps. No big changes to the UI (Apple is actually hamstrung by this in the future – any UI change has to be revolutionary not evolutionary). Not many changes is because the OS devs spent most of their time working towards other products sharing the “OSX Mobile” family.

Announced along with this is the iPhone 3GS for Verizon, available in May. 3GS goes top to bottom – no more 8GB 3G. Possible 64GB iPhone due to new flash memory stacking technology that allows more memory in the same volume (important to keeping the iPhone thin).

Then, the tablet of course. Some cool input paradigm. $499 subsidized through Verizon, $699 unsubsidized. $30/mo data plan. Verizon only. AT&T version doesn’t come out until next year after they fix their broken network. There is no real use to guessing what type of features it has, I would guess that internally its just a big iPod Touch with a cellular data connection – you have your CPU (probably dual core ARM A9), cellular chip, all the sensors and accelerometers, camera, flash memory storage (probably 32GB). How it works is the “Apple magic”, the secret sauce that makes it worth buying.