When it comes to the Apple Music Event coming up on Wednesday, September 9, it is a lot of fun to speculate on what we’d like to see announced. When it gets down to cases, however, what we can really expect to get is probably a lot more limited.  I suppose as Apple fans we’re a bit spoiled. We can’t expect every announcement to be as exciting as the first iMac, the first iPod, the first iPhone, and the first iPod Touch. Or can we?

A lot of people are counseling to limit our expectations. The more soberly inclined among Apple pundits seems to agree on almost nothing except that this event is likely to be an iPod refresh for the most part. Honestly, that is what seems to be called for right now — something just new enough to kick over iPod sales for another good Christmas season.

Still, Apple is known for bringing around a surprise or two when you least expect it. Let’s take a sober look at what we can expect to see on Wednesday... and then spice up each prediction with a nice bit of a slightly more imaginative nature that could add a really magical Apple sparkle to the occasion.

The iPod line

There can be no doubt we’re in for some refresh here. After all, the event invitations feature a classic iPod silhouette motif and the line “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it!” The iPod line is the product series that brings the music, and we can be virtually certain Apple will want to be offering some reasons for us to trade up over the fall and the holiday season. This is the traditional time for an iPod-centered event, so what can we reasonably expect to see?

The new shuffle is about as tiny as it can get, so unless Apple’s signed up with the American College of Surgeons to offer a dime-sized implant that goes under the skin right behind your ear and eliminates the need for ear buds, I think we can assume that the miniaturization trend is over.

It might be reasonable to expect a cosmetic change, but I wonder if colors really matter when the item in question is almost too small to see at twenty paces already. More likely would be a drop in price on the existing model to about $49, and/or a model with about twice the capacity for the current price of $79.

If I were feeling a bit more fanciful, however, I’d look for Apple to move back to a larger design more akin to the Generation 2 clipback model, restoring the buttons for those who like them but including VoiceOver and remote-bearing earbuds as exist on the Shuffle 3G. Such a model would probably have more capacity for the money.

Want me to go way out on a limb? I’d love to see a shuffle with a postage-stamp-sized screen that displayed either album art or a visualizer-like light show, but I fear that’s a bit beyond practicality. It would be interesting to see a 2G-size shuffle that snapped into a variety of fashion accessory mounts, though — a bracelet, necklace, belt buckle or pin. This would offer a lot of third party accessory opportunities and make wearing a shuffle even more of a fashion statement. (This makes keeping a variety of colors available a must .)

The iPod Nano seems to change shape almost every year, and I doubt this year will be an exception. It could afford to get a bit bigger and feature a larger screen and a built-in camera. (The prudent man doesn’t expect video here... but the more freethinking CouchGuy might not be surprised.). A capacity expansion is practically a given if a camera is installed.

Is the iPod Classic going to stay in the line? I think so, though it is possible Apple could kill it off. Even the conservatives among us seem to be expecting it to hold on one more year, simply because there are still a lot of people who want to carry all their music and still have room to use their iPod as a portable hard drive. The realistic expectation would be no capacity change at all but a slightly lower price. Slightly less realistic but sure to be popular would be sticking a camera on this baby, too.

Getting daring with the Classic leads me to think of a combination of the Classic’s capacity with an iPod Touch’s interface — a bulkier item I’d be tempted to call the SuperTouch. Such a device would be a power hog, having to handle both a touchscreen and a hard drive. But oh, man... what a device for the true on-the-go video fiend! 

The iPod Touch is an absolute must for an upgrade. The camera is almost a dead certainty, and it isn’t that much more outrageous to figure it will be take both stills and video. Lower prices for higher capacity is very likely. I would further expect them to keep the current more-limited iPod Touch at the bottom of the line at a price that makes it practically irresistible, as they did with the iPhone upgrade. Anything that makes the potential app market larger is likely to be seen as a Very Good Thing by Apple, and a really cheap iPod Touch would do that nicely.

A bit less likely but still not too far out would be wireless sync with iTunes via Wi-Fi. That might wait, however, until they can do it with both the iPhone and the iPod Touch at once. Uh... I wonder — could that be added to the existing new iPhone with just a software upgrade? Hmm...

If it were up to me, I’d push a little farther and make the new iPod Touch a feature match for the iPhone — just without the phone. Camera with video, microphone, compass, voice control, Bluetooth — the works. Why the heck not? Might it cannibalize some iPhone sales? Yes, and why should Apple care? They no longer have a direct financial interest in selling you cellular contracts, and they’re rather hacked off at AT&T anyway. An iPod Touch that was a feature-for-feature match for the iPhone without the cellular communication capability makes sense for Apple today.

In truth, I expect down the line the differentiation between the iPod Touch and the iPhone to go away entirely. Build and sell one unit, into which you can slide a sim card — or not — as you choose. No sim card — it works just fine on Wi-Fi — and perhaps on WiMax. That’s most likely a year or two away, though.

iPhone

Any substantial iPhone upgrade at this time — well, that’s a prediction too far out for even this CouchGuy to contemplate. But I would expect a software update to accommodate a few things that could get added to the iPod Touch, like the wireless sync capability I mentioned earlier.

iTunes

An iTunes upgrade is to be expected. Conservatively, we can probably look forward to some social networking features — perhaps tied in with existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter and perhaps featuring Apple-branded social network offerings tied to MobileMe as well. Most of us would expect a few performance enhancements and some new media deals to announce.

The new digital media format codenamed “Cocktail” seems like a good bet for introduction under iTunes 9. The more restrained prediction has this as simply a way to package a set of songs with album art, lyrics, liner notes, and music videos in one downloadable product. Some of us, myself included, think this might be the first use of the format, but that it is designed to be much more — an ambitious attempt to establish a true multimedia package format that would be perfect down the line for all sorts of things, including multimedia textbooks.

What I’d most like to see is a complete revamping of iTunes as a media organizer. Frankly, it is a mess right now, trying to stretch metadata and sorting capabilities originally intended for music only to fit a much broader range of media. iTunes is slow and bloated and not very well designed to handle media stored on multiple drives, networked storage, or “cloud” backup. It needs to support more formats, organize files better, and run a lot more smoothly than it does. I’m really hoping some of this will be addressed in iTunes 9, but realistically I think the less-important social networking and album format “upgrades” are a lot more likely to happen.

Really out-there predictions for DVD ripping capabilities aren’t likely in the face of what has happened to RealNetworks’ RealDVD software in court recently. If anyone could have a chance of taking on the dimwitted media giants in this arena, it would be Apple — but I don’t think they are ready to do that yet. 

As for The Beatles in the iTunes Music Store... it is well overdue and would be a great way to kick off Cocktail, but I’m not feeling it. I think they are going to miss the boat here. They’d be better off to do it now and sell digital downloads of all the new remastered collections in Cocktail format alongside the physical-media versions. But I think they are going to fiddle around on this awhile longer, which will result in a lot of lost sales when all that new Beatles material hits the torrent venues about a half-hour after the CDs come out. Pity. (I’d love to be wrong about this. Really, I would.)

Apple TV

You know the ol’ CouchGuy really wants to see something happen here, but the conservative and realistic predictor says it isn’t in the cards. That said, I’ll go out on the ledge just a little way and say I do expect something to be said about the Apple TV on Wednesday. New hardware would be a stretch, but I would certainly think it reasonable to expect Cocktail support for the existing hardware.

If it were mine to do, though, I’d at least go for a revamp of the Apple TV software entirely with a Snow Leopard core and Quicktime X powered display capabilities. Using this opportunity to fix the sometimes sputtery iTunes syncing would be nice, too.

People predicting new hardware with DVR features or a subscription model on TV shows — well, the CouchGuy likes your spirit, but not your chances. Not at this event, anyway. A revamped Mac Mini with a hardcore Media Center orientation is maybe slightly more likely. Maybe.

Macintosh - Desktop/Laptop

This is the wrong show for this. I can’t imagine a scenario with a big Mac rollout for the stage on September 9. I would not be surprised at some moderate upgrades announced quietly soon after this event (especially to the iMac), but it won’t be the focus of this event. As I said, I’d give a very tentative maybe to a Media Center Mini, but only as the most liberal of expectations.

iPad

The majority opinion is that we won’t see an iPad tablet product until early to mid 2010. If you are betting the rent money, this is sure the way to bet. If you have some cash you can afford to lose, though, there might be some outside chance that Apple will make some sort of commitment to this, if just to admit the project is in the works and to turn loose of some iPhone app-making tools and expansions to support it for the developer crowd to play with.  The CouchGuy can, when he’s having one of those nice dreams, foresee a lovely surprise with an iPad that is essentially a big iPod Touch announced now (most likely for shipment after Jan 1, 2010) with a hint at a full OS X touchscreen Mac coming later. I haven’t quite given up hope that the iPad is ready now. It sure would make for a nice holiday sales season for Apple. But I won’t bet the farm.

Steve Jobs

And who, exactly, is going to be leading this clambake on Wednesday? The conservative money is on Phil Schiller as master of ceremonies because if the conservative view of what is going to be announced is correct, it is just not a big enough event to bother trotting out Steve for his big return to the spotlight. Personally, though, I’ll be surprised if there isn’t just enough magic happening to get Steve on stage for at least a wave, a smile and a word or two. A full-fledged Steve Show? Only if one or more of the long shots come in. A Beatles appearance, an Apple TV relaunch with a TV show subscription service, or an iPad reveal would bring Steve onstage to host. Otherwise, I think this is unlikely.

In any event, I’ll be hovering over my iMac waiting for each piece of news as it trickles in. I’ll share my instant reactions through my Twitter feed, and in a longer blog posting later in the day. No matter what, it’ll be a fun time.