The big surprise at Macworld last year was that the keynote was pretty much about about one product: the iPhone. This year there seem to be many things that are already known: a slim laptop, an update to the iPhone, a new Apple TV and movie rentals. So none of these is probably the big thing. And the banners saying "There's something in the air" have everyone talking about wireless technologies.

[Update: Less then 100% wrong this year. Home storage yes, but not attached. In fact very unattached: Time Capsule. Apple is moving the world slowly to computer appliances. We did get the rambling CEO again]

Last year my predictions were 100% wrong. Throwing caution to the wind, I present my probably all wrong predictions for Macworld 2008:

A Home Storage System
I keep putting this one up, and one day I will be right. Nobody does home storage right, particularly for Mac users, so there is a big market opportunity there. I think it will not be a networked box (NAS), but instead will be locally attached for performance. If you want to make the storage available on the network, plug it into an Airport or a Mac. Software does the bridging.

Wireless Data Service In Every Laptop
WiMax is a little new to the market, so if Apple has built it into anything, they have been doing an awful lot of work with chip vendors and software in secret. It's quite possible that Apple is putting WiMax into everything portable, but more likely is the addition of 3G or EDGE into the laptops.

No Shows
This is not the venue for for a new release of Aperture. PMA is much more likely. There will also be no new iLife of iWork: we already got those last year. The no-show I am hoping for is the "other CEO" who comes in at about minute 35 and rambles with notes until the audience winces. I really think that Steve puts these in so we can deal with the calls of nature.

A New Mac
I think a new desktop Mac is quite likely. Something that fits between the high-end of the Mac Pro and the low end of the iMac. It would be bigger than a mini, with at least two hard drive bays and at least one open slot for a PCI card. This would keep many people happy who need some expansion and flexibility but don't have the wallet for a full-blown Mac Pro. What makes it possible now is the low-power Intel chips and the subsequent option to package the electronics compactly.

Multi-User Mac Software
This is a long shot, but I think it will come one day. The Macs are already multi-user, but not with with multiple simultaneous screens. This software will allow a number of people to plug mice, keyboards, and screens into one mac and all use that one machine as though it were their own machine. That makes things much cheaper for schools and other high-density applications.

A Recording Device
Except for building it into Macs, Apple has avoided making audio and video recording equipment of any kind. Even the iPhone and iPod can't record video or sound. So there is a product gap for some sort of device that does one or both. You sync it with your Mac or PC just like an iPod and iTunes tracks it in its library. What Apple can better the market with are ease of use, recording quality, and capacity. With iTunes, Garageband, iMovie, YouTube, all the infrastructure is in place for personal event recording, editing, and publishing. We just need the gadget.

Tags: Apple, Macworld, Wild Guesses, Server, Fun, MacPro, Wireless, iPhone, iMac, iMovie

One of the new Apple Airport Extreme base stations now has a home in my computer closet --I mean literally - it is a closet. It's freeing up space, replacing some very old hardware, giving me a way of wirelessly connecting old devices, providing a Mac OS X computer for the kids, increasing my wireless network range, and centralizing a printer. All for $180.

My previous wireless network was based on an Airport Express operating in bridge mode. The Airport Express had a somewhat limited range, but the Airport Extreme gives a much stronger signal and does better against the 2.4MHz interference and other networks around here. The Airport Express will be pressed into service as a way of networking an older computer that lacks a wireless card, or connecting to the Brother printer if I move it.

A now ancient Linksys router connected the network to the internet via a DSL modem, but that is no longer needed. That also saves a huge power brick.

The largest space saving is in the exit of a G3 iMac DV. That used to be a server, but I don't need one any more. The Brother laser printer has a print server built in, so out goes that function. I no longer host anything from home, so no need for those services. The iMac is now running games. All my shared storage needs are met with a USB drive attached to the Airport Extreme. On the network the partitions look like separate shared disks on a server. Mounting the disks can either be done through the Finder or by a utility that uses Bonjour to automatically mount the disk when it is available. I had hoped that the two partitions on my disk could be configured in such a way that one would be public and one local, but that is not the case: the sharing settings are global. Either all the disks and partitions are available to the internet or none are.

The disk shares the USB port with a printer via a passive 4 port hub. That centralizes my HP color printer.

Set up was easy, but not so obvious in places. Initial configuration with the Airport Utility is straight forward, but you have to know to select Manual set up when you want to change more parameters later. I initially typed in an IP address incorrectly and the base station spotted the error and took me to the page where I could correct it. That was a nice touch.

I did have a hang up that required a reboot. Something happened to the USB disk, and the result was a frozen router. It is also inconvenient that the Airport Extreme must be rebooted to store any parameter change, even if it has nothing to do with communication. So my entire network and file sharing goes down for 20 seconds at a stretch. I am finding that my work PC laptop is much happier with the Airport Extreme than it was with the Linksys router. DHCP actually seems to work now and the weird delays and timeouts have gone.

Tags: Airport, Networking, Server, iMac, Interesting Stuff

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

By design, vaults are supposed to be stored on Firewire or other local, directly-attached drives. But this does not take into consideration all the people with large, fast servers and NAS systems who want to use those as backups for local library storage.

Here is how to create a vault on a network drive. This article applies only to storing a vault on a server with an HFS+ filing system accessed via Appletalk (AFP), such as another Mac or an XServe. Other situations require a different approach.

First I will attempt to create one and see what goes wrong. I go to the vault pane lower left and add use the action (cog) menu to create a new vault. I can have as many vaults as I like for my library, allowing me to keep drives off site and rotate them if I wish.:

The Add Vault dialog comes up, so I navigate to my server and try to create the vault:

But Aperture does not like what I am trying to do:

So I have to work around the check that is being made. Instead of trying to create the vault on the server I will create it locally and then copy it to the server. First I create a vault on my desktop and it appears in the vault pane:

Then I quit Aperture and copy the vault from the desktop to the server. The vault on the desktop is no longer needed, so I trash it -- but I get an errorr if I try to do that:

It is locked. Vaults are locked as a precaution against accidental deletion. I must unlock it first by selecting the vault on my desktop, hitting command I to get the information window, and then deselecting the Locked checkbox.

Now the vault icon has lost its little lock badge:

And I can drag it to the trash and empty the trash. But I am not quite done yet, because Aperture does not yet know about the vault that is on the server. If I launch Aperture and look at the vault pane:

I see that Aperture cannot locate the vault. To tell Aperture where the vault is located, I select the vault and select Update Vault Path from the action menu:

Now I can navigate to the vault on the server to update the path:

And Aperture is happy and can use it:

Finally I can back up my library to the new vault.

There is a new warning in Aperture 1.5 about backing up managed and referenced masters:

This is a very useful warning if I expected all my masters to be in the library, because it is telling me that not all of them will be backed up to a vault. Finding all referenced masters is easy: I click on the library and bring up the filter dialog. Select File Status from the + menu (and maybe set the rating to Rejected and Better):

And then select Referenced from the File status pop-up:

If I wish, I can save this as a Smart Album for immediate use as well.

Tags: Aperture, Vaults, Networking, Server