I appreciate your letter and would like to wish you the best in your recovery. I am relieved that you and your family have the medical answers that you need.

I would also like to offer my apology to you. Your health is your private matter and it should remain so. Like many people in the Apple community, when there was news of your health, whether truth or rumors, I listened, read and paid attention. So the media kept reporting it. I wish that I had the discipline to ignore the news related to you and Apple, but I don’t.

Since I was a young kid, Apple has been part of my life. From the Apple ][ that was in my classroom, the Macintosh Classics at college, my switch from PC to Mac in 1999 to today with my MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPod(s), PowerMac, etc. (I even had a NeXT Cube in the early 90s!)

It is obvious that your vision, design aesthetic, and desire to create products that are insanely great (not just really good) has left an indelible mark on Apple’s products and the expanding Apple community.

And beyond your work at Apple, you have transformed the world. We love and care about you because of it. I cannot apologize for caring about you, that would be disingenuous. My apology is for feeding the press reasons to invade your privacy.

At some point, nature will force you to retire from your position at Apple. That will be a sad day. But I know that I have forever been changed by you, inspired by your work.

Again, best wishes for your health and I am looking forward to Phil’s speech tomorrow at Macworld.

From A Member of the Apple Community

Apple News Update
The keynote address will start with Steve Jobs giving the “State of the Mac” update. He will highlight the number of countries where the iPhone 3G is now available, iPhone market share, laptop sales numbers, App Store success for developers and overall revenue. In other words, “Buy Apple stock, we actually have cash in the bank and great products.”

Preview of Snow Leopard
Steve will turn over the presentation to Phil Schiller to demonstrate some features of the upcoming operating system. There will be a focus on enterprise features to better integrate with corporate networks. For some reason, my sources tell me that there will be someone from Cisco touting enterprise security and the Mac in some form. In an effort to be “green,” Apple will be offering Snow Leopard as a downloadable upgrade version to existing Leopard customers for a reduced cost. Steve will come back in to tell us that Snow Leopard will be shipping in April or May of 2009. (Coincidentally, that is when new iMacs and iLife will arrive too.)

MacPro Update
Steve will come back and introduce Scott Forstall to present the updated MacPro. This will feature the Intel Nehalem processor, support for USB 3.0, an optional Blu-ray burner, and new graphics card options. Also expected would be a refresh of the 30″ LED Cinema Display, same idea as the new 24″ version. (Side note, the 20″ display will vanish.)

AppleTV/MacMini = MediaMac
Steve will return ready to announce the next generation AppleTV update, or perhaps called the MediaMac. More HD content will available through iTunes with more studio partnerships. The FrontRow interface will be upgraded to support a partnership with NetFlix and perhaps viewing web content through Safari. iPhone/iPod Touch Remote application will get an upgrade to make this even cooler. In spite of the “Bag of Hurt” comment, there will be a Blu-ray reader on one of the models. (Side note, people will gripe that you can’t burn DVDs or CDs from the MediaMac, which is so five years ago anyway.) You will be able to connect external hard drives and stream content from iTunes libraries on the local network. And the device will support 1080p video formats. Price for this will be $299 with a DVD drive or $499 with a Blu-ray drive. And the MediaMac will have the same style as the current AppleTV/MacMini, but instead of white, the case will be aluminum with black plastic inset.

Not Mentioned in the Keynote
Shortly after the keynote, Apple will release the 17″ MacBook Pro with the updated form factor, which will ship in February. Also there will be upgrades to the Xserve line with the new Intel processors.

Not Going to Happen
There will not be a Mac tablet or mini notebook machine. Steve Jobs will not have gained 20 pounds. John Mayer will not be playing at this event.

So if by some amazing chance my predictions for MacWorld are correct, I wanted to at least make sure my post was out there early! Post your comments below with your predictions.

Perhaps they are going to purchase a new iMac or MacBook?

So, for all of those people ready to jump from the PC to the Mac, here are some good resources for you to ease the transition:

• Some General Tips for Switch to Mac From Windows – Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
• Mac 101 – Apple’s website
• Hack Attack: A Guide to Switching to the Mac – Adam Pash, LifeHacker

And if you still need some convincing, perhaps Ellen Feiss can help.

• 16 GB and 32 GB versions of the phone at $399 and $499 respectively and yes, there will be a 3G chipset as the entire world is predicting.
  Apple stuck with the 8 GB and 16 GB versions of the phone, now with 3G, but with a severe price cut of $199 and $299 respectively.
• No internal GPS chip, but the 2.0 software will support external GPS devices through Bluetooth or through the dock connector. GPS kills the battery life and I don’t think that Apple would be willing to trade battery life for handheld GPS when they have a good solution with triangulation and WiFi locations.
  Internal “Assisted” GPS is onboard with the new phone.
• The iPhone will be a little bit thinner and perhaps a little lighter from an upgraded glass used for the touch screen. There are mixed rumors about the iPhone getting thinner and some saying that it will get thicker. Remember, Apple would rather make it thinner and lighter. Can you really picture Steve Jobs going onto the stage and saying, “The new iPhone is 2 millimeters thicker than before and I think that our customers are really going to appreciate the added girth.” Seriously.
  Steve downplayed the size other than to mention that it is thinner at the edges. The case is now plastic and the upgraded glass allowed it to be mostly the same weight.
• No ‘haptic’ touch response. Totally useless feature to have the phone vibrate a little when you touch it. Seriously, the touch response is built in to your actual fingers. If they include this, there better be a way to turn it off.
  Correct on this.
• There will be a way to search your contacts database on the phone that is similar to Spotlight search where you just start typing part of a name, company, address, phone number and it narrows down the contacts as you type. I need contacts search all of the time as I remember part of someone’s name or a company name.
  Mostly correct. Hard to determine if you can search business name or address from the demos.
• The 2.0 firmware will have a task application that works with the Leopard task service. I think that the reason this wasn’t included already has more to do with getting tasks to play nicely with Outlook on Windows machines.
  No task application, although the App Store will certainly get a full collection.
• Along the same lines the Notes application will get more useful and will synchronize with the Leopard notes that are in Apple Mail. My way out theory on this is that it will support in-line voice notes. If Apple doesn’t do it, I’m sure that a third-party developer will go for something like this.
  This may just arrive, but nothing for certain with today’s announcement.
• The 2.0 firmware will include a built-in game, something like Solitaire. There will be a LOT of games released with the 2.0 firmware and the AppStore for the iPhone. iPod Touch users will be thrilled as well for the new games that will turn the iPod Touch into a viable player in the handheld gaming space.
  No built in game, but the App Store will have at least 3 very cool games at launch as demonstrated yesterday. iPod Touch users will have to pay $10 to upgrade to the new firmware.
• The really interesting news is going to be from third-party developers and what they release for the iPhone. Apple can focus on the core feature set knowing that there are thousands of developers just waiting to create cool applications for a very hungry market of consumers. Personally, I want Yojimbo to sync with the iPhone.
  We saw demonstrations from a collection of companies including a music application from a single developer and very cool medical applications.
• For email, each account can have its own default signature, perhaps even sync this with Apple Mail. I have no reason to expect this, but it is a little wishful thinking.
  Still wishful thinking. We did get some better email management and saving image attachments.
• This may sound really basic, but there will be a way to copy and paste text from one application to another. This is more a challenge with the touch interface than anything else as there isn’t a logical gesture for this that doesn’t require a little bit of training.
  Not yet as far as I can tell. Perhaps in iPhone 2.1 or 3.0.

All in all, yesterday’s announcement is a bit of a yawn for me. Really, the big difference with the new iPhone is the plastic case, the 3G speed, GPS and a price cut. Functionally, my current iPhone will be able to do almost all of the same things (not the GPS or as fast) as the new model. Launching it in 70 countries is pretty special as well, but since I’m here in the USA, that wasn’t an issue for me.

The interesting announcement was revamping .Mac into MobileMe, and as a subscriber to .Mac, I’m curious to get my hands on the new features when this rolls out next month.

I was anxious all morning and afternoon without my trusted iPhone. I ran through all of the scenarios: maybe I would be without a phone for a week while mine was repaired; maybe I would have to pay to fix it or worse, replace it; maybe they wouldn’t have any in stock for replacement. (There is a new version of the iPhone coming out in the next month or so. The iPhone is out of stock everywhere in the US.)

So I got to the Apple Store a little early for my appointment, checked in and waited for about 5 minutes until they were ready for me. I explained what happened and took a look at my phone and confirmed that it was cooked. They opened a drawer, pulled out a replacement iPhone and swapped out the SIM card. We plugged the new phone into my laptop machine and the restore happened gracefully. My phone reauthorized with AT&T, my contacts, calendars, bookmarks, photos, podcasts and such synchronized and I was ready to go. I signed some simple paperwork to acknowledge the swap and I was on my way.

The whole process took less than 10 minutes. No loaner, no fees, no questions. Just a shiny new phone. I was ecstatic.

I purchased a new screen protector for the phone and during the checkout, the Apple rep saw that I had a .Mac account. So, he asked if I had any suggestions for the .Mac service. We talked for about 5 minutes about my years with .Mac and that I’ve been mostly happy but I felt that the service needed to step up to the plate. Mostly, I use it to sync between multiple machines. My suggestion was that .Mac members have their iTunes Store purchases automatically backed up to your iDisk without taking up any space. In other words, no need to manually backup purchases as I could always download the tracks again from an authorized computer.

In short, I had a one-to-one conversation with an Apple employee interested in my suggestions. And right after they had amazed me with their customer service.

I have a post tomorrow about making big promises and then over delivering. Today, Apple over delivered on its big promise.

I was already a loyal Apple customer, but today proved why.

So, Mr. “Dude, you’re getting a” Dell, with more and more companies embracing the Macintosh, the worldwide success of the iPhone, music sales greater than Wal-Mart… (If only I had purchased 1000 shares of Apple when Mr. Dell made his suggestion.)

And in other news, Microsoft has given up its bid for Yahoo.