ARTS & FARCES internet

Here’s a laundry list of what I’d like to see from Apple at its “Back to the Mac” event on Wednesday, 20 October 2010 (in addition to the next major revision of Mac OS X, of course; all apply to the 15-inch MacBook Pro, my tool of choice):

1. Top-of-the-line Intel Core i7 processors with updated, automatically switchable, slide-scale variable third-party graphics (I’m looking at you NVIDIA Optimus), and a user-replaceable battery
2. High-resolution (1680x1050) antiglare display standard
3. 8GB RAM and larger hard drives standard
4. Lower prices for optional solid-state drives (SSD).
5. HDMI and USB 3 ports
6. Integrated WiMAX radio
7. Updated, fully 64-bit iLife and iWork
8. Updated MobileMe, with an iDisk as useful as Dropbox
9. An explanation of the North Carolina data center (see 8, above)
10. That one thing in OS X that will make us all wet ourselves (no, not FaceTime; that’s a given in an updated iChat)

I know it’s too much to hope for, but I’d really like to see an OS X roadmap with regard to iOS. If they’re going to merge—and I’m not at all sure that’s as likely as everyone else on the planet seems to believe—I want to know about it definitively sooner rather than later. And if the Touch interface comes to OS X, I sure hope its in the trackpad and not in the screen.