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.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

If you have any other good predictions, please post these in the comments.