Wednesday, January 2, 2008 -- 8:48 p.m. -- at my desk

13 days from now, we'll all be talking about what amazing proclamations Steve Jobs made while at stage at Macworld in San Francisco.

Will we get an ultraportable Mac tablet-like device? Will we get new software?

Will we get a new iPhone?

It's impossible to say. Unless you have magical powers, it's going to be one of the world's best kept secrets right up until the big event.

We've gotten what might be little tidbits ... like the purported 1.1.3 software. We may get a really nice enhanced look at the iphone software development kit -- SDK for short -- that really shows us how much more powerful our iPhones stand to be once it's released in February.

We could get a new iPhone, but if I was a betting man, I'd bet on the only possible change being a model with more storage room. An 8 GB and a 16GB model, perhaps, with the 16GB at $399 and the 8GB at $299. This will only increase sales of the iPhone, but again, I have no special knowledge that this will happen. It just makes sense given the state of the flash memory market and the capabilities that already exist.

And then there's Steve's famous "one more thing" which could be anything. Could it be related to the iPhone? Maybe. What I'm saying is that we are just going to have to watch.

My plan as of this moment is to liveblog the event -- no, I won't be there, but I'll be online at my trusted sites that are and I'll transcribe every single detail. There may be spelling mistakes and no pictures, but it will be there. So if you are used to checking out other sites for keynotes and hitting refresh, might I recommend you plan on coming right here for all your keynote needs?

And if you have any advanced thoughts about the keynote, please by all means write me in the comments and share what's on your mind.

Thanks for calling.

I don't see apple releasing any new iPhone hardware. Personally I still can't put mine down and I bought it in June. iPhone still has that wow factor, and they'd be wrong to replace the current model any time before 09.. My two cents

I do see some major software release and alot of sdk info coming, hopefully along with a nice new lappy, since mine is needing replacement..

Posted from iPhone

SCOTT'S REPLY: Agreed 100 percent, steveo -- I plan to buy 2 new laptops at some point this year. I'm actually hoping I don't have to buy a new iPhone too.

Scott, I have been wondering about something. Im coming to you because you are becoming my number source for iphone news lol. When in Feb. is the SDK supposed to come out? Im not sure if I just missed it or no one knows.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Thanks, Greg, for making me your number one source of iPhone news! The exact date was never released by Steve Jobs -- he only said February 2008. I'm sure he really didn't know when it would be ready. Hopefully he's more specific at Macworld.

If the software dev. kit becomes available in February, it will still be months before apps become available if they are vetted by Apple for security and flaws, so I don't anticipate any news in that area.

Since the iPhone was launched, it has always been a READER-type device, not a document-creation device. This is important. You can look at websites and read/write emails. You can only look at pictures you take or have on your home computer, unable to do anything else with them. Apple does not allow flash, etc to be downloaded to the phone, you can only look at a static website, since this would assume some file has been put on the phone that you could do something with at a later date.

I love my iPhone, but neat as it is, just looking at websites is beginning to bore me, and not one thing Apple has done in the past six months makes me think that's going to change any time soon. I hope I'm wrong.

SCOTT'S REPLY: I don't usually want my callers to be wrong, but I hope you are too ... and I think the SDK is a little further along than we may all think. I don't think it will take a ridiculous amount of time to get some fruit from it and I would expect Steve to at least try to whet our appetites.

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