What Is The Big Surprise Apple Announcement? Maybe A Tablet? (2006)

There’s a big surprise Apple announcement today where some “fun new products” will be revealed. But what could they be? Howard Wolinsky from The Chicago Sun-Times asked his readers to send in their thoughts. Here are their predictions on what the Apple announcement will be:

Apple Announcement Predictions

• Francois d’Anethan, dean of UBI, a business school in Brussels, Belgium, said, “The flip side of the iPod could be the face of a ‘Mac’ cell phone. That would be the ultimate piece of technology. Everybody I know who uses an iPod would go for it without the slightest hesitation.”
• Daniel Schattnik, a lawyer in downstate East Alton, said, “If they paired an iPod with built-in XM or Sirius radio, I would buy it tomorrow.” He said he would have no use for FM radio if he had satellite.
• A half dozen iPod dreamers said they would like to see the MP3 player morph into a personal digital assistant to track appointments, list contacts, link to the Web and move images, music and files wirelessly. This would revive Apple’s pioneering Newton PDA from a decade ago.
• John Soles of Yorkville said Wi-Fi on an iPod PDA “opens up so many possibilities. It would be cool if two or more people in the same room . . . could share music so each could listen to the others’ songs. The screen would be large enough to have a digital album with song lyrics and information similar to what is found in the jacket of CDs that one buys. Wi-Fi would be great for remote control and so many other things.”
• Vincent Verweij, chief executive of Makayama Interactive in Amsterdam, which developed iPod Media Studio software to copy DVDs for use on iPods, said iPods should have A/V inputs to capture video signals.

Will The Apple Announcement Be A New Tablet?

Although The Chicago Sun-Times readers tended to keep their speculation centered on the iPod, other people think Apple might announce a touch-sensitive tablet computer or a TiVo-like Apple Media Center. Rumored names for this product include the iSlate and iPad. You can read more about these announcement speculations here. Also, be sure to check out the official newsroom page for details after the official Apple announcement.