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" You&amp;#039;ve been waiting for months, and the day has finally arrived: The new Microsoft Zunes are out! Wait, why are you making that face? These are some pretty sophisticated machines. They&amp;#039;ve got wireless syncing to your computer, there&amp;#039;s a new 80GB model and some smaller 4GB and 8GB flash-memory Zunes. And they have this snappy new interface called the Zune Pad, which lets you browse through music with a flip of the finger. ... What? Why are you staring at me like that? Don&amp;#039;t you care about the new Zunes? Okay, okay. I agree: The next-gen Zunes are probably going to do more to solidify Apple&amp;#039;s reputation as the most innovative electronics company on the planet than they will to finally get Microsoft&amp;#039;s foot in the door with the portable electronics market. From the iPhone&amp;#039;s introduction early this year to following up with the iPod Touch and cracker-size Nanos last month, Steve Jobs and Co. have set the bar so high for technology and design that competitors might have to blow an entire production cycle--and that&amp;#039;s just to put out something to compete with what Apple has now. So the clever little Zunes and Samsung P2s and Creative Zens that would have been groundbreaking products only a year ago seem at best derivative, and at worst, totally out of touch.  Apple&amp;#039;s been having a hell of a year (business scandals aside). And that&amp;#039;s led me to write way too much about its products already, so this will be my final Apple column of 2007. With the crew from Cupertino remaining secretive (their standard, if prompt and polite, reply to my curious emails: &amp;quot;We do not comment on future products&amp;quot;), I&amp;#039;m letting out all of my predictions at once. Then I&amp;#039;ll simply be right or wrong about whatever developments come between now and January--and battered around in the forums either way. But after pushing the envelope on innovation of late, Apple should be able to achieve these five new breakthroughs.    BUZZWORD: How iTunes with Subscriptions Could Save Music BUZZWORD: Apple Tells Us Why iPhone and iTunes Don&amp;#039;t Get Along BUZZWORD: iPhone Signals Death of Iconic Clickwheel LAB TEST: iPhone vs. 7 Top Smartphones in Extreme Conditions PODCAST: Beyond iPod Touch to the Future of Apple 1. The iPhone Becomes a Wireless Credit Card Somewhat overshadowed by Jobs&amp;#039;s unveiling of the new iPods last month was the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, with wireless download capabilities via the iPod Touch and iPhone. To launch the service, Apple made an unfortunate partnership with Starbucks that will essentially turn these devices into a marketing arm for the overpriced coffee company whenever their owners enter one of its stores. As of Tuesday, Starbucks icons are popping up on screen, giving users the chance to tap into the Seattle company&amp;#039;s musical taste and purchase accordingly. Think what you will about coffeehouse alt-rock and folk music, but what is happening here is truly revolutionary in the realm of portable devices. It&amp;#039;s something cellular providers have been trying to accomplish for quite some time: A direct route to your wallet through your portable devices. Remember, when you purchase music, movies and TV shows through iTunes, you are charging directly to the credit card associated with your account. So as you hop from hot spot to hot spot, your iPhone or iPod Touch is essentially a high-tech credit card replacement that can slurp up virtual content--books, music, movies, maps, software--and allow you to pay for it on the spot. If it doesn&amp;#039;t fit on the device, it will automatically load when you plug in your \u00FCber-gizmo at home. And imagine the marketing possibilities. When you walk into your local Gap, a message appears on your device along with an audio greeting through your earphones: &amp;quot;Welcome to the Gap! Check your iPhone for an exclusive coupon for Gap/Apple customers! Pay for a new sweater on your iPhone and get a 15-percent discount!&amp;quot; A device that can push targeted marketing into people&amp;#039;s pockets is a powerful bit of leverage for Apple to have.    BUZZWORD: How iTunes with Subscriptions Could Save Music BUZZWORD: Apple Tells Us Why iPhone and iTunes Don&amp;#039;t Get Along BUZZWORD: iPhone Signals Death of Iconic Clickwheel LAB TEST: iPhone vs. 7 Top Smartphones in Extreme Conditions PODCAST: Beyond iPod Touch to the Future of Apple 2. With Leopard Come Super Laptops Apple is supposed to launch the Leopard operating system (OSX 10.5) this month, which, if I had to guess, is the perfect time to update the aging MacBook Pro laptop platform. There are a few technologies that have been evolving in the laptop world that Apple would be ripe to exploit here.  The first is solid-state drives--hard drives built entirely of flash memory that boot fast and use considerably less power than conventional spinning drives. The problem with these drives is that they generally lack significant capacity--we&amp;#039;re talking 32 to 64GB in a time when 160GB laptop drives are common--and they&amp;#039;re expensive. As for the expensive part, that&amp;#039;s no problem for Apple; the company&amp;#039;s customers have traditionally been willing to pay a premium for ease of use and innovation. As for the space limitations, if I were Steve Jobs, I&amp;#039;d solve that by including a sleek laptop dock that included a high-capacity hard drive and an optical drive. Then I&amp;#039;d integrate some slick software that lets the dock drive automatically back up the solid-state drive whenever it&amp;#039;s in the cradle. Hell, you could even store some bonus processing power (spare GPU?) in the dock to give the laptop some extra muscle when it&amp;#039;s on the desktop, but give it a low-power chip in the laptop that will keep it cool on the road and extend battery life. Speaking of extended battery life, Apple&amp;#039;s 15.4-in. MacBook Pro already includes an LED backlit screen, but I hope for the next generation they take a page out of Toshiba&amp;#039;s playbook and offer a transreflective screen. The Port\u00E9g\u00E9 R500 has a bright sunlight mode that can use the sun&amp;#039;s rays to illuminate the screen, extending battery life further.    BUZZWORD: How iTunes with Subscriptions Could Save Music BUZZWORD: Apple Tells Us Why iPhone and iTunes Don&amp;#039;t Get Along BUZZWORD: iPhone Signals Death of Iconic Clickwheel LAB TEST: iPhone vs. 7 Top Smartphones in Extreme Conditions PODCAST: Beyond iPod Touch to the Future of Apple 3. GPS, 3G and Work Email Arrive on the iPhone Ever wonder why Apple dropped the price on the iPhone so quickly? The business community seems to believe that sales to early adopters had run their course, and lower prices were needed to spur sales. I&amp;#039;ve got another theory: Steve Jobs needed some room at the top of his pricing model.  Since nobody&amp;#039;s going to pay more than $600 for a phone--I don&amp;#039;t care if the thing knits socks for you, anything over $600 and you&amp;#039;re competing with full-powered laptops--he needed to bring the 8GB model down to reasonable levels before unleashing a new premium iPhone (or iPhone Extreme, as the rumor mill would have us believe). There were so many capabilities left out of the original that there&amp;#039;s plenty of functionality still left untapped. If these three upgrades aren&amp;#039;t in the Apple pipeline, they should be: First, if the iPhone is going to continue working on AT&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s network for five years, the next iteration will definitely need to work on AT&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s 3G UMTS/HSDPA network.  Second, the iPhone eventually will have to play nice with Exchange servers by incorporating Microsoft&amp;#039;s ActiveSync technology, which will finally allow it to work with many of the corporate e-mail accounts that it&amp;#039;s now locked out of. So I&amp;#039;d expect that on next-gen phones as well--in fact, I&amp;#039;d like to see it offered as an update to existing iPhones, since I&amp;#039;ve got one.  While we&amp;#039;re at it, I&amp;#039;ll predict that Apple will throw a GPS antenna in there as well. Think about it: The iPhone already has a nice 3.5-in. screen and a great mapping interface through Google Maps. Give it a few extra gigs of storage, and you could throw map data for the entire country on the phone. Give it a TomTom-style touchscreen interface, market a car cradle and put half the GPS navigation device manufacturers out of business. Just so long as it doesn&amp;#039;t have to buy map data from Navteq, which is now owned by competitor Nokia.  Podcast: The Future of Apple &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;  BUZZWORD: How iTunes with Subscriptions Could Save Music BUZZWORD: Apple Tells Us Why iPhone and iTunes Don&amp;#039;t Get Along BUZZWORD: iPhone Signals Death of Iconic Clickwheel LAB TEST: iPhone vs. 7 Top Smartphones in Extreme Conditions "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a5061/4224871/>