David R Storms.com

It’s coming folks. Unless you don’t live with a fanboy or are completely unconnected to the tech world, then you are eagerly awaiting for Wednesday’s press event Apple is holding. I know I’m pretty excited, but who couldn’t be given all the hype around the net these days, well, I mean for the last few months. Of course the biggest rumour all point too…

Apple Tablet…iPad, iSlate, iTablet, Whatever

Who knows what the thing will be called. Personally, I don’t think I can imagine another word with an “i” in front of it that sounds good. Likely this mysterious device will have a new name. Everything points to this piece of hardware being the pinacle of Apple’s creation, maybe it will even eclipse the iPhone. I won’t speculate too much about what this thing is, because everything is conjecture at this point. There is no hard evidence about what this thing looks like or really what software runs it. Most people are putting it between the iPhone OS (that of course runs on all iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s) and Mac OS X (that runs on the desktop / laptop based computers).

I won’t bother including any photos of what people think it may look like, because I have no idea and what’s the point? My own opinions about this product align with what most of the world is speculating. It could be something the size of a sheet of paper that is basically a large screen. The iMac screens are gorgeous to look at and I suspect we will see something similar or better on this device. There will be no keyboard, you will touch a virtual keyboard. This will mean a lot of people will go back to the single or double finger picking on this thing. I wouldn’t expect to type a whole lot of things on this. What I would love to see is that the Bluetooth keyboard that came with my iMac work with this.

I believe that the software will be very close to OS X. Ideally Apple might want to keep their software development somewhat uncomplicated by not introducing a third operating system. Managing the desktop client, server software, iPhone software, etc would be tricky. But depending on groundbreaking this device is, chances are new software was created to create the world that Apple is looking for. Almost certainly it should emulate if not natively support all the apps in the AppStore which would put upwards of 100,000 apps at the devices fingers tips.

I don’t think I can add anything further, just that this is the main thing (including myself) that everyone will be paying attention to, I suspect it will be announced near the end of the presentation.

iPhone OS & iTunes, iLife Updated

As all of us iPhone owners know, there hasn’t been a software update in a long time. That could mean there just isn’t anything urgent warranting a bug release, but realistically Apple will be gearing up for a 4th edition of their iPhone Operating System. Normally the release of iPhone software major updates are done at a developers conference Apple runs called WWDC many months from now. A lot of people think that iPhone OS 4.0 has some significant tie in to the infamous tablet device and it is logical that Apple wants to announce its feature set at the show this week and then release to developers the development software they need to make software for the new device, not to mention to test all their existing apps for 4.0 compatibility.

Also rumoured is that to support all the new cool things Apple is doing, a refresh of iTunes will be required, so it is possible that this will be announced as well. iTunes just had an update last September so who knows if a new one will be coming this fast.

On the heals of this may be an update to the iLife suite of applications for Macs. I love iLife and if anything is announced I will be really interested.

Other Hopeful Updates

I purchased and use the iWork suite of productivity tools. I would love it if Apple came out with a new version here.

While I am very intrigued, I don’t currently own an Apple TV. I know they recently lowered the prices, but something new to push me over the edge would be great. It could be possible that the whispers of Apple dealing with cable companies could bring with it a TV subscription service? I could see myself dropping satellite service and going everything through the Internet, I mean it looks like we are heading that way anyway right?

I don’t expect much of anything else. If there is a tablet, it will take priority over this show and they are less than 2 hours so I doubt they will have time for much else. Perhaps they will announce some updates and at WWDC expand on those changes.

Drop a comment with your favourite rumours and what you expect to see. I will discuss my reactions to the Apple event once I’ve had time to soak them in!

I had the honor of being one of the contributors features on the This Week in Tech podcast #228: The TWiT of the Decade. When I saw on Facebook that Leo asked fans to contribute by using Vidly to record and tweet their thoughts on the most important tech story of the decade, I had to do it. Within minutes my unscripted and a bit nervous response was posted. Over the Christmas holidays I had to catch up on my podcasts and today when I was listening to the episode I was very shocked to hear my submission!

Thanks to Leo for adding my thoughts to his show. And thanks for making the video available on YouTube, you can watch the whole show here. My appearance is around the 1:42 mark. Enjoy!

My how the apple has fallen! If you are anything like me, you use Google’s search engine a lot. I rely on it heavily and it is the first site I turn to when searching because I trust the results and I can somehow find what I want almost every time. Being that I use the site every day, it is set as my default home page so I get to see the new graphic as they come out.

Today they were celebrating Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday. That’s great. And for the first time that I can recall, the logo is a bit animated in that a small apple falls from the logo.

When I saw this I had to laugh. I can’t help but think that this is some kind of inside joke about Google dropping Apple due to the recent turmoil each of them have been in. There must be a bit of bad blood between the two what with the Google Voice app denied from the iPhone AppStore, plus Google competing in the smart phone OS space.

You could also read this not only as Google dropping Apple, but maybe pointing out how far Apple has fallen from the proverbial tree. Perhaps saying something about recent animosity regarding the AppStore approval process.

Something to think about, either way it’s very very clever, even if it wasn’t meant to be!

I decided to try something new this month and see how long it lasts. If you look at the top of the site you will see a “Live” link. Click that link and you will go to the UStream page that has an embedded video player. This page will contain the live feed that I am broadcasting online from my computer or phone. This sounds crazy but it’s just something new I feel like trying out. Typically if I’m somewhere worth capturing video, I think I might as well share it live as creating a video, then uploading it later.

UStream has an awesome technology of capturing the video and uploading it to several places, such as YouTube of which I have an account.

UStream will post a “tweet” on Twitter for me when I start broadcasting, and if you follow me on Facebook my Twitter feed is pushed there so you will know when I start broadcasting too. You just have to click a link or visit my site and you can watch the live feed.

I don’t particularly have much to share, or have any set schedule, but every now and then I plan on uploading some live video. It will also be setup on my YouTube channel as well.

Let me know what you think. Technically this can go under the “life casting” category and I’m eager to see how this works over a 3G connection.