CES and Macworld Expo predictions

Two trendsetting trade shows hit back to back, starting next week. Here’s a preview.

Consider my take on Macworld Expo. I think that the headliner there, although Mac heads will be loath to acknowledge it, will be Microsoft. It’s been four years since Office for Mac, the one piece of software that every professional Mac owner must have, has felt its creator’s touch. The new features in Office 2008 for Mac are almost incidental. Office 2008 is Universal, meaning that it runs natively on Intel and PowerPC Macs. Microsoft came by that honestly, using Xcode and Objective-C, accumulating expertise along the way that has made the developer staff blogs of Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit one of the very few I check out regularly.

That’s not to say that I have no questions about Office 2008. For instance, why will Entourage in the standard edition of Office 2008 stand out as the only mail client that doesn’t connect to Exchange Server? I’m also curious about Office 2008’s integration with the OS X dictionary that’s shared by all Mac apps. I can see both sides of this: Microsoft’s Office dictionaries and proofing tools are available in many languages and are geared for auto-correction, while Mac users like having one consistent master dictionary and thesaurus that operates system-wide.

Lest you think that I’m writing about Officeworld Expo, Macs built on Intel’s Penryn 45-nanometer Core 2 CPUs will roll out at Macworld. I’m selfishly hoping that a Penryn MacBook Pro will be first out of the gate. The Santa Rosa model is more than fast enough. I’d like longer battery life and a break from the heat. Macworld Expo’s heavy emphasis on an IT track fills me with new hope for an eight-core Xserve. That could bring a consolidation angle to OS X Server virtualization. I have a wish here, too: I’d like to see the entire OS X presentation layer rendered optional for OS X Server, with a flip of a switch in the Server Admin tool or a command-line operation. This would vastly shrink the resource footprint of a virtualized Mac server.

The iPhone will be a star attraction as well. The 3G iPhone will make its bow, and perhaps we’ll see a hint of the iPhone/iPod Touch software development kit (SDK) that Apple plans to deliver in February. My personal wish is a screen alignment process, like the one that Microsoft handhelds use. This addresses the parallax problem that makes iPhone typing so error-prone. If Apple or AT&T decides to put a premium on 3G iPhone or the iPhone service plan, the raspberry you’ll hear during the Macworld Expo Webcast will be mine.

Why would a publication of InfoWorld’s orientation dispatch someone to CES? Don’t let the word “consumer” fool you; CES isn’t a city-sized Circuit City. It’s chipmakers and manufacturers selling to manufacturers and importers, importers selling to distributors, and America making a rare appearance as a global peer player on its own stage. It’s a chance to see technology and strategy in the making, as well as products that are already well entrenched in Asia and Europe but haven’t yet caught the slow boat to the States.

I always see breakthroughs on multiple fronts at CES, and it’s not a show I try to predict. I do expect to see the theme of consolidation play at CES as it does in IT, but with the spin of simplicity that IT doesn’t usually take the time to make a priority. For example, when IT thinks of it, unified communication is a complicated server-side solution. What electronics vendors want is to sell that idea to consumers in a retail box. Why? Because that’s what consumers demand. If there is a consistent lesson to take away from CES, it is that simplicity always deserves priority.