It’s coming! On January 6th, just a few short weeks from now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to deliver the Keynote Address at MacWorld 2004. The consummate showman, Mr. Jobs will undoubtedly wow the assembled faithful with the latest and greatest Mac stuff. Just what new products he will announce is, at this point, pure speculation. But in the opening portion of his presentation, traditionally reserved for “where we are today”, Mr. Jobs will have plenty to crow about.

25 million songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store since its opening in April. iPods flying of the shelves as this holiday season’s runaway hot-ticket gift item. The introduction of the PowerMac G5, arguably the fastest personal computer money can buy. The release of Mac OS 10.3 “Panther”, the best Mac computing experience yet. iChat and the iSight web camera, bringing teleconferencing to the “rest of us” with style and quality. All in a year when the major news coming out of the Wintel cartel has been viruses, worms, and security holes. But, I digress…

So, what about the new stuff? Again, these are all rumors at this stage of the game, but here’s a rundown of the “juiciest”.

Speed bumps to the PowerMac G5 line, with every system sporting dual processors. The current flagship dual 2.0 GHz model becomes the entry-level pro machine, with high-end speeds up to 2.6 GHz. Jobs promised earlier this year that the G5 would reach 3.0 GHz by next summer, and it looks like IBM is ready to deliver.

This year is the Twentieth Anniversary of the Macintosh. You may remember the first Macintosh commercial, aired nationally only once in 1984. Directed by Ridley Scott (of “Alien” and “Gladiator” fame), it is considered by some to be the best TV commercial ever produced. Its theme was George Orwell’s “1984”, in which gray-clad “citizens” shuffled in lockstep into an auditorium dwarfed by a giant TV screen with “Big Brother” (at the time, a metaphor for IBM) preaching a “glorious revolution” of conformity. Today, almost eerily, the metaphor fits Microsoft like a glove.

Anyway, what might Apple have up its sleeve to celebrate this anniversary? In 1997, for Apple’s “corporate” 20th, they introduced a limited-edition Mac with a flat-panel display, high-end speakers, and an FM radio and television tuner. Could Apple have another birthday surprise up its sleeve? We’ll know next month.

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski