MacWorld wishlist

John Gruber says "all Mac-related web sites must publish pre-Macworld Expo predictions regarding what Apple may announce at the show."

What I have is not so much predictions as an "I hope they've been thinking along the same lines I have" wishlist.

• An HD or better laptop. 17" if you must, but I'd like a 15" or smaller. The iPod Nano has 204 pixels per inch and a beautiful display. A 1920x1200 screen at that density would be 7" diagonal, or at iPhone's 163 ppi it would be 8.8" - there's plenty of room. You could get the 30" display's 2560x1600 into a 13" screen at iPhone ppi.
• Come to that, a 7" diagonal HD iPhone/ iPod Touch would be lovely too. Not just for video, but for reading the web and facing-page PDF's on. Give it Bluetooth keyboard support.
• Obviously, a new Mac Mini. I have a big shiny Sony HD TV and I want a little Mac to drive it (are you getting the HD theme here yet?)
• Separate out the phone crap. I don't like phones, and holding screens to my ear is daft anyway. Make the earpiece separate naturally. Come to that, negotiate me a data plan without a calling plan with your carrier buddies. Amazon did it for Kindle. And for goodness sake ship iChat for the handhelds. Put a camera on the top of the screen like the Macs all have.
• Drop DRM already. For videos too. And HDCP. 
• Extend your lovely bluetooth keyboard to have a trackpad too. Make it work with iPhones and the new 7" HD iPod too.
• one more thing -  Phil Schiller, stop charging for QuickTime Pro. Admit the mistake you made ten years ago and make video editing natural again.

iPhone's great step back from iChat

I did watch the iPhone Macworld Keynote last week - here's my chapter-list version of the stream so you can skip through it to the bits you find interesting:


(I'd do the same for the download except 1. Apple obfuscated the url enough that I can't be arsed to packet sniff it out and 2. they still don't have HTTP 1.1 seeking support working right, despite me building and demoing it about 5 years ago).

After watching it, my biggest surprise was how much of a step back it was from the rich interaction that iChat supports. With iChat you get presence info, chat, sending documents and integrated audio-video chat (when the other user's computer and connection supports it). Instead, iPhone had a legacy telco worldview baked in, with calls not conveying any further context (watch the combined demo near the end, where Jobs has to retype Schiller's email when talking to him on the phone). The iPhone has the camera on the wrong side to be a videophone, and Jobs did not mention any ability to make calls over Wifi rather than the Cingular network, or anything about IM (as opposed to SMS).

My hope is that this is just Jobs not mentioning the features that don't demo well yet, but my sidekick's AIM integration is the reason I am so hooked on it; it buffers chats server-side so thatintermittent phone connections on the train don't interrupt conversation flow.