Well, the iPhone event is done, and now that the dust has settled, we can look at what Apple has announced and how it stacked up against the rumors.
We’ll skip the surprisingly-short summary of Apple’s new stores, Mountain Lion updates, and iDevice sales and jump right into what most of us were looking at: the new hardware. Article Continues…
With the growing use of iPads in the classroom and Apple’s Education Event which concluded today, OWC’s focus on education applications is timely. Other World Computing will demonstrate at Macworld | iWorld 2012 Conference and Expo next week how schools can protect their iPad investments with its GripStand Station and GripStand cases. The GripStand Station is a Plug and Play storage, charging and syncing solution for technologically savvy classrooms as well as office, retail, healthcare, and other multiple iPad user environments.
Designed specifically for use with NuGuard GripStand 2 and GripStand protective iPad cases (sold separately), the GripStand Station allows iPad tablets to slide easily and securely into one of eight bays to store, charge and sync. The new, made-in-the-USA GripStand Station and other unique Newer Technology products will be demonstrated in Other World Computing’s (OWC’s) Macworld booth #513, in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Article Continues…
If you’ve been to Apple’s Web site or have opened the Store in iTunes this morning, you probably noticed the announcement for an event for tomorrow – and it promises to be something that we’ll “never forget.”
Marketing hyperbole aside, it’s still probably something at least marginally significant; after all, they’re announcing it both on the home page (thankfully replacing the MacBook Air promo) and on the front page of the iTMS.
Judging by the announcement itself, it is probably also of global significance. This assumption is simply due to the time of the announcement and how it’s presented. Usually, Apple announcements usually start somewhere around 10:00am, Pacific time. This time around, though, they’re pushing it a full 3 hours earlier, resulting in a broadcast during the late afternoon in Europe, rather than the early evening. More noticeably, they have announced times in London and Tokyo as well as the usual California and New York times, something Apple generally doesn’t do unless it is significant for the announced country/region.
Other than that, however, there is little to be gleaned from the announcement itself. In the absence of hard evidence, then, it’s time for the obligatory wild speculation. Here are my favorites, both from the Web and my own contributions:
Between the iPad, the iPhone 4 and iOS 4, this has certainly been the year for Apple’s mobile offerings. Though we had the requisite upgrades to the MacBook, iMac, and Mac Pro lines, along with a pretty significant revamp of the Mac mini, the Macintosh platform has taken a back seat this year to its touch-based cousin.
This event, though, is supposedly going to change that; apparently, Apple wants to talk about “what’s new for the Mac.” While the possibility of new hardware exists, the lion photo seems to suggest we’ll be getting a peek at OSX 10.7, which—keeping in with the tradition of naming OS X versions after big cats—could very well be code-named “Lion.”
Other than that, details are kind of scarce. What else does Apple have up its sleeve? We’ll have to find out on the 20th.