From...

January 6, 2000
Web posted at: 12:21 p.m. EST (1721 GMT)

by Dennis Sellers

(IDG) -- What will be the big Apple news at this week's Macworld Expo? Following are my predictions, based with fearless aplomb on absolutely no insider information, just my gut feeling.

1) Apple will introduce the latest revision of the PowerBook, codenamed Pismo. It will sport some nifty new iBookish features. However, the units won't actually be for sale until mid-February.

2) Apple will introduce AppleWorks 6, which will be on sale at the show.

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3) Mac OS 9.1 ("Minuet") and the latest version of QuickTime -- including the e-commerce enabled QuickTime 4.1 multimedia player -- will be available. They'll be maintenance upgrades with some nice tweaks, but no eye-popping features.

4) Steve Jobs will preview Mac OS X during his keynote, though the finished product is still six months away. (Why? Apple engineers are burning the midnight oil to merge Mac OS and NeXTStep/OpenStep technologies into one mind-boggling operating system.)

5) No Apple-branded PDA.

6) No Internet portal announcement.

7) No changing of the Apple brand identity. (Items 5-7 are all coming. I think they'll all be part of a BIG announcement later this year; Apple is fine-tuning its strategy in all these areas.)

9) There'll be no new iMacs announced (but they're coming; be patient).

10) Apple will introduce multi-processor G4s.

These fearless forecasts are based on my gut feeling. (Of course, it could just be gas so be forewarned.)