"The first 30 years were just the beginning." Does this bold statement portend a new iPod video with a full face touch screen? A set top box that can stream video content to your television? A wireless phone that is also a full fledged iPod with the slickest design and operation you can imagine? No, these products may all very well appear at Macworld, but this has got to be about the future of personal computing. Apple did ignite the personal computer revolution and then reinvent it after all.

I think Apple will introduce a nano-computer, masquerading as a smart-phone . Basically a tablet computer the size of a Treo or Blackberry with a far more clever input method, full face screen and some version of iLife running on it. Ideally it would be a stand alone wireless nano-computer running OS X. Think of all the capabilities of a MacBook combined with a phone. Dock it on your desk with a wireless keyboard, mouse and full screen monitor and it would be your home computer. Take it on the road and it would be your laptop. Put it in your pocket and it would be your phone, camera and your iPod. Take it to work and let the Xserves do the heavy lifting. I think this computer will not only be possible within the next five years, it will represent a paradigm shift bigger than the current migration from desktop computing to laptops.

Current technology would of course make this computer a brick, much larger than a Zune and more expensive than a MacBook. The Apple genius-phone will have to point the way to such a device with a mobile version of OS X and iLife. Much of your data and the programs that manipulate it might be located on the internet. Strip down the memory. Even sync it with your computer rather than replace your computer. Whatever it takes to put a placeholder out there to position Apple for the coming revolution. It might take a serious partnership with Google to pull this off. Phone service providers be damned.

Oh, or it could be that secret feature that Steve alluded when he last demonstrated Leopard in public. What better time to announce IT, whatever IT might be. Something like full support in Leopard for all Windows XP API's would be cool! And, one more thing..... iLife for Windows.