I have two [Update: three] predictions for Macworld 2007: one hardware and one software [and one squishyware] . I haven't seen anything close to these, so I'm either uniquely right or just as wrong as everyone else. [Post-keynote update: I scored zero out of three. However I hope I may simply be premature rather than plain wrong. There are plenty more announcements still to come before June since the Keynote concentrated on only two products, and the Beatles' music was conspicuous. You can also see how I did on the iPhone here]

Storage That Works
The hardware surprise is that Apple will show a home storage and streaming appliance. Specifically it will:

• House up to six drives
• Take the exact same drive modules as the MacPro
• Have dual Gigabit Ethernet with Jumbo packet support and port trunking
• Have eSATA at 3Gbps, Firewire at 800 Mbps, and 802.11n wireless
• Support RAID and allow for incremental upgrades without downtime
• Have a built-in router
• Do back ups automatically in the background

Why? And who would want one?

The target market is the sub-SAN, sub-XServe content creation crowd, plus home power users. With six drives, the amount of storage is enormous and several RAID configurations are possible. It would be great with Aperture, Final Cut, or as a home streaming server for movies and music. The dual trunked Ethernet will allow direct connection to MacPros at maximum speed. With suitable switches it will work through a network as well. 802.11n wireless will let it stream to iTV with ease.

You can put it underneath the iTV and connect it with Ethernet, using the wireless to communicate with the rest of the world, or put it in a closet and use it wirelessly to the iTV, or put it next to a Mac and run it as a local storage box through Ethernet or eSATA or Firewire 800 and use it wirelessly at the same time. The built-in router allows you to wall off parts of the functionality among the network connections while still passing specific traffic.

Software That Sees
On the software side, the surprise will be Quicktime. Apple will show real-time facial recognition and object tracking and Steve Jobs will have even more fun showing it off than he did Photo Booth. It will let software treat scenes intelligently, allow iChat to know how many people are present, make games possible that use gestures, etc. You will have to wait for Leopard to get it though.

[Update: Final thoughts. I reckon that Paul McCartney and the remains of the Beatles will be there and will be providing some musical diversions]

What do you think? Any chance I am right?

Tags: Macworld, Apple, Server, Wild Guesses