Mac OS X Predictions

The news is still exciting so I’m going to make some predictions.

Apple’s pen technology and tablet will finally happen.

The resale value for Power PC based Mac’s will drop dramatically on the lower end. The decent higher end boxes will maintain their value until people finally accept that the x86 boxes will run their software fine. (There will always be those who ghost images and don’t want to risk their business on new technology just yet).

Fact. Apple will release their developer boxes next week. Within 2 days of them shipping a box, the following will occur.

Screenshots will show up on the web

Pictures and a detailed analysis of the dev hardware will show up on the web

Within 1-2 weeks of them shipping:

Bit-torrents of the x86 version of Tiger/Leopard will show up

Someone will announce patches to allow the OS to run on commodity hardware

I’ll say this. If I had 2 weeks to blow full-time, I could guarantee that I could have a patched version of OS X running on some commodity hardware.

People will still have to buy Mac hardware to run OS X legitimately. I think this will still occur. With better pricing and their solid hardware support (things just work), they will continue to have a healthy hardware market.