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Reading tea leaves in advance of Apple's announcements

By Dave Winer on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 1:49 PM.

Tomorrow's Apple announcements: 

0. This is 100 percent speculation, not in any way based on actual information. 

1. Of course like everyone else I assume Apple is unveiling their tablet. 

2. AT&T will either lose exclusivity or will be dropped altogether by Apple.  

3. The biggest innovation will be the touch interface. They will have a virtual keyboard that works amazingly well, and it will have other amazingly intuitive gestures that it understands. The touch interface will work on both sides of the device so you can wrap your hands around it and make stuff happen that way.  

4. Apple will unveil a new cloud that connects all its devices together. The tablet will only cache your information locally, all data and content is stored permanently on Apple's servers. (Apple must learn to be Google and Google must learn to be Apple, though neither ever will.) 

5. There will be a radically new iPhone and iPod using the same software as the tablet. 

6. The new iTouch software will not only run on all the newer devices, but will also run on the Mac. They will demonstrate their app store running on Mac hardware inside the same environment that runs on all the other devices. There will be subtle hints that the old Mac programming model is "legacy" -- where they began -- will always be loved by Steve, but eventually will be deprecated.  

7. Google will be on stage for the announcement proclaiming their support for the new device. Steve will say Google is a valued partner of Apple's. The body language will indicate otherwise. 

8. Ditto for leading publishers. 

9. Some ports will be missing on the new Macs. Maybe USB? Steve loves to delete ports. 

That's about it for now in the tea leaves department. I might think of some other things. It's always good to get your stake in the ground to see how you do. ">