Elsewhere on the site, we’ve got our annual predictions article posted, or as we in the writing biz are fond of calling it, the chance to be wrong in public. We run a predictions article at the start of each year in which we throw out some guesses as to what kind of products to expect in the coming year. Then, we hope against hope that no one bothers to bookmark the article so that they can remind us of our failures 12 months from now.
But we’re not the only ones who get to humiliate ourselves publicly. Late last year, we asked you for your 2008 Mac predictions. And you responded filling our forums with dozens of guesses, both educated and out-of-left field.
Here’s just a sampling of what some of you are expecting in 2008, arranged by category.
Mac predictions
- I was really hoping for new Mac Pros. Wasn’t that also a prediction for 2007? If we predict they will come out n 2008, we can’t be too wrong now.—nanosound
- MacBook Touch—a 12-inch Multi-Touch tablet-like portable that weighs 1.2 pounds, and has wireless connectivity and full OS X functionality.—thgd
- A gaming Mac.—Kashchei
- An iMac with room for a second hard drive. (Think Time Machine.)—jstephe
- Solid state hard drives in the MacBook Pro and a quad-core MacBook Pro.—SoaDMTGguy
- Blu-ray will become standard on Pro models.—jholman
iPhone and iPod predictions
- An iPhone with at least 16GB of memory.—UU_evangelist
- I hear your “16GB iPhone” and raise you a 3G 16GB iPhone. Which will be released 11 days after I buy an iPhone.—cphoffman42
- A home VOIP Wi-Fi phone system, with which the iPhone will be integrated.—taldrich
- The iPod nano gets bumped to 16GB in January.—McGuyver
Mac OS X, present and future
- Stacks will bring back the standard folder in the Dock functionality option.—lwdesign
- A preview of OS X Lion with full multi-touch capability, ZFS as the default file system, and Home folder on iPod and .Mac.—Nobody
This and that
- Apple TV will be integrated into a new 32- to 42-inch wall-mountable LCD TV.—concentric
- iTunes Radio—this is a Wi-Fi-only app that allows you to listen to Apple-produced radio stations to aid in the discovery of new music. Of course, when you hear something you like, you’ll be able to click a button to buy it from the iTunes Wi-Fi Store.—leesmith
- 27- and 24-inch Cinema Displays that look like the new iMac, with two DVI ports and built-in iSight cameras.—leicaman
- An Apple-easy home server with easily expandable storage for a really easy central depot for music, photos, videos, movies, Time Machine files for the last seven years, etc.—drderic
- Steve Jobs will resign, naming Al Gore as his successor. All products will only be available in a lovely green color.—PeteVG
Perhaps our favorite forecast came from poster allthingea who ended a 10-item countdown of predictions—everything from all DRM-free music at iTunes to a discontinued Mac mini—with this observation of what to expect in 2008: Something no one will be able to predict that will be amazing and 10 times better than anyone can think of.