MacWorld rumour update: Apple to release Apple-branded products? The shocking truth contained within!

The annual MacWorld Expo kicks off this morning with Steve Jobs keynote address. Every year Jobs uses this venue to do a couple things. One, he discusses upcoming upgrades and improvements for existing Apple products (more RAM, more white plastic, etc.) Two, he often uses the opportunity to unveil Apple's next "big product." Last year it was the iPhone, which you may have heard about on every website in the fucking world. Although Mac geeks like to speculate endlessly about what the big surprise will be, Jobs announcements often come completely out of the blue. He even has a little catchphrase, where after announcing all the minor products and upgrades he'll make to leave the stage before turning and saying "Oh, and one more thing" before announcing the big surprise. Why so many people hang on the word of someone who channels Peter Falk during a speech is anyone's guess. "And one more thing" is about as cool of a catchphrase as "You're the man now, dawg," albeit without the horrible cringe-inducing racism. Anyways, I thought I'd examine some of the likeliest "surprises" Apple might have in store for us, and just for fun, throw in some baseless slander about Steve Jobs along the way. Touchscreen MacBook or iMac This is the most popular rumor floating around right now: Apple will release either an iMac or Macbook with a touchscreen built in. Some people reckon Apple may go a step further and release a keyboard-less tablet device – tablet devices being that market that's floundered a bit in the last few years due to the fact that no-one anywhere wants a tablet device. The only people who've ever expressed any interest in tablet computing are artists. Fortunately for Apple, as a group, artists are not known for being terribly smart with their money - although they're also not known for having much of it in the first place. It's difficult to imagine them, or anyone else, scooping up an inevitably pricey tablet Mac in any significant numbers.

Fun baseless Steve Jobs slander: Steve Jobs desire to have touchscreens installed in every computer is partly due to his nickname around Apple's Cupertino headquarters, "Old Semen-Mouse." iBook Given Apple's extensive experience with their iTunes store, and the semi-positive response people have given the Amazon Kindle, it's possible Apple may want to get into the ebook market. Although it's still uncertain how large demand for ebooks is, Apple would have some pretty strong advantages over it's competition, assuming that it doesn't release the ugliest device ever created. Fun baseless Steve Jobs slander: Jobs has been experimenting with a prototype version of the iBook for several months now. He particularly enjoys reading the series of Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine, and finds the ability of the iBook to be used one handed particularly useful while relentlessly masturbating to the same. Sub-notebook Essentially an Apple version of the Asus EeePC, this would likely take the form of a very small Macbook that forgoes a hard drive for a few gigs of solid state memory. Sub-notebooks are kind of a hot thing right now, but a key element of them is that they're supposed to be cheap. And "cheap" has never really been Apple's thing, in much the same way that "healthy" has never really been bacon's thing. In general, Apple avoids the low end of the computing market, preferring the higher margins available when selling more powerful machines, and there's no reason to think they'll stray away from that now. Fun baseless Steve Jobs slander: Steve Jobs has non-consensual sex with dead animals. ___ Chris Bucholz is a writer and a robot. His personal blog, robotmantheblog.com contains a great deal of other humor articles, all of dubious quality and taste.