Up the Swanni River… Without a Paddle

Thanks to MacDailyNews for reminding the ol’ CouchGuy to throw a sneer at Phillip “Swanni” Swann, president of TVPredictions, who is – for the third straight year – predicting the imminent demise of the Apple TV. You have to admire the stamina, at the very least, of a man who can be so wrong so often and still have the fortitude to come back for more humiliation. Keep tryin’ Swanni! Hey, maybe you should predict that HD-DVD sales will slow down in 2009. That one might have a chance of being right.

You Can’t Keep a Good Hobby Down

The Apple TV project isn’t bulletproof, of course. If the movie industry continues to foolishly fire endless boxes of ammo at the device, as they have since it was introduced, they may eventually manage to wing it and maybe give it lead poisoning. But so far, all they’ve managed to do is keep its head down. The movie industry will surrender to common sense and the lure of easy money eventually. Apple TV just needs more content to make a breakout as the easiest-to-use, most family-friendly set-top box out there. Personally, I’m predicting that 2009 is the breakout year, and we might see the break at (or soon after) Macworld Expo 2009.

Given Apple’s obvious intent to play down Macworld as an announcements venue, we might not see the real meat of Apple’s plans until an Apple-campus event in February or so, but I think we will see hints at Macworld that the Apple TV concept is far from dead. Here’s what I’m expecting to happen sometime in the first part of the year.

The Mac Media Mini

This has been widely predicted for Macworld Expo and I wouldn’t be at all surprised, though I think it may be awhile longer before we really see why this is so important to all the CouchApples out there. Predictions are for a long-overdue spec bump for the Mini, giving it  2.0 or 2.3 GHz Core Duo processors, NVIDIA graphics, dual display capability, and much more expandability than the current long-in-the-tooth version. I think that very likely, but I also expect it to be designed to be even more suited to home theater uses, with HDMI output and a revamped Front Row that basically emulates the functions of the Apple TV.

I do not expect this to replace the existing Apple TV. Rather, it is the next step up for those who want more expandability. The new Media Mini will be a home entertainment hub, capable of being configured to run your central music/video/photo repository (iTunes, natch) and feeding it to your main TV, your home computers, your video-capable iPods and iPhones, and – through other Apple TV devices – to your other home TVs. It will support a variety of relatively easily swapped-out drive options, including larger hard drives (USB 2.0, but probably not Firewire), solid-state drives, a Superdrive (perhaps with the ability to upconvert standard DVDs) and – down the line – perhaps Blu-Ray. It will support gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth and an infrared Apple Remote for a variety of control and connectivity options.

iTunes Media Library Media Hub Software

Either along with the new Media Mini or soon thereafter as a separate product, I expect a true Media Server software package. This will run on any Mac, but is designed especially to take advantage of the Media Mini’s capabilities. This will be an expanded version of iTunes designed to easily gather and organize your media and feed it out to wherever you want it – including across the internet to remote locations where you might take your laptop or iPhone. The iTunes Media Library will be designed with expandability in mind, making it easy for Apple to add support for a variety of sources and formats via a plug-in structure. (Boxee would have been a great place to start here. Have you guys been talking…?) It will also facilitate easy backup to a Time Machine or connected big drive array. (Connect something like this to a Drobo and never worry about storage space again.)

The Apple TV App Store

The success of the iPhone App Store has surely not been lost of the Apple TV team. I expect an early-2009 update for Apple TV and the Media Mini which brings games and other third-party apps to the platform. The Apple TV would be a great casual gaming platform, and there are many household productivity apps that would lend themselves to being attached to your TV. iChat via TV with a USB webcam peripheral? Certainly! This is a source of continued revenue that I cannot imagine Apple passing up for much longer.

Expanded iPod Touch/iPhone Remote App

With the expanded capability of an Apple TV App Store, a Media Mini, and an iTunes Media Library, we need an expanded version of the Remote app for the iPhone to control it all from a convenient touchscreen across the room. The iPhone can also become a game controller in this manner. Slick! Even better with the inevitable larger-format touch-based product the CouchGuy expects sometime in mid-year.

That’s where I expect this to go sometime this year. What do you expect out of Macworld Expo and beyond? Share your thoughts in the Comments!