Welp, it's the last weekday before the Big Day, and in light of the fact that a lot of people had their Stevenote prognosticative radar knocked severely out of whack by that goofy iWalk hoax, we figured we should do a last chance wrap-up of the various bits and pieces expected to accompany Steve onstage come Monday. You know, just for giggles... because we're pretty sure that whatever we predict, we're going to get blindsided by something unexpected. It is simply the Way of Steve, and should be accepted as such.

First, the easy stuff: there will be a new iMac, largely in part because Mr. Jobs realizes that if he sits on that flat-panel consumer desktop any longer, the crowd will rend him limb from limb, Reality Distortion Field notwithstanding. For what it's worth, faithful viewer Andrew notes that MacMinute has "confirmed" that the LCD iMac will boast a 15-inch screen, a G3 running at "up to 750 MHz," and an $1800 sticker price; there will allegedly be CRT-based "classic" iMacs sticking around as well to round out the lower end of the price spectrum. Think Secret concurs, adding that the older iMacs will gain new colors, presumably as a booby prize to consumers who can't scrape together the cash for the LCD model. As for us, we have no divine insight on this short of the very general notion that a flat-panel iMac will debut, so we're passing on these details on a strictly as-is basis.

A couple of weeks ago a cosmically-aware lava lamp told us that iPhoto would make an appearance at this event, and both MacMinute and Think Secret apparently now agree. We'd like to add that Adobe's aura is looking very dark right about now, indicating that while the company will indeed ship a handful of Mac OS X-native applications next week (not Photoshop, unfortunately), those guys will be smiling through gritted teeth, because they are not happy about this whole iPhoto thing. Oooo, tense. While we obviously wish the best for both companies, the soap opera-producing side of us can't help but hope that Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen takes a swing at Steve onstage, only to be tackled and dragged away screaming by security. So we're hopeless romantics; sue us.

One thing the lava lamp never revealed was an iBook update, but both MacMinute and Think Secret think we'll see a speed bump and maybe some color choices. Personally, we'd think that current iBooks would have been end-of-lifed by now if that sort of thing were going to happen, and as far as we know, they haven't been; however, we've never known MacMinute to be wrong about this sort of thing, whereas you really can't trust fortune-telling lava lamps any farther than you can comfortably spit them these days. So we'll toss those folks the benefit of the doubt, here, and stick new iBooks in the "probably" category, despite our own gut feeling on the matter.

Something that MacMinute doesn't mention is a new set of Power Macs; we're not sure if we should read anything into that. Think Secret is waffling, stating that they "do not have enough confidence to confirm there will be a 1 GHz G4 announcement." That runs decidedly counter to the wisdom imparted by the lava lamp, but that was a couple of weeks ago, and things change. There's also that little matter of a lava lamp being primarily a piece of retro kitsch, and not commonly used as a means of divining the future, but hey, it all seemed so clear at the time. Let's just say that if we don't see the low end of the G4 spectrum rise to at least 933 MHz come Monday, we're going to be very disappointed in the predictive abilities of globs of wax suspended in mystery liquid. (Unless the G4 bump comes, say, later in the month instead. Then we'll reconsider.)

So what's left? Our lava-filled link to the Powers That Be hinted that Mac OS X might become Apple's default booting operating system next week, though no one else seems to think so... and even that certainly isn't worth the massive load of hype that Apple is spreading around. Faithful viewer Mark McClure noticed that the Slogan O' The Day over at Apple's countdown home page is "To go where no PC has gone before." (Sort of brings a whole new perspective to our musings on the iWarp, doesn't it? "The engines canna take much more, Captain!") People are interpreting this to mean all sorts of things: a port of Mac OS X to Intel iron, for instance. As for us, we're pretty much all speculated out at this point, so we're content to wait and see... and, we hope, gasp in surprise and delight. Now where'd we put that drool bucket?...

Okay, okay, we lied-- we're not all speculated out. We've got a little more juice left when it comes to guessing at the "big thing" that Steve's got crammed up his sleeve for Monday's hoedown. It has to be something pretty special to live up to Apple's own hype, right? Well, this whole "to go where no PC has gone before" teaser got us thinking (always a dangerous thing, we know), and we found ourselves taking that phrase in a rather literal sense. In other words, what if Apple is hinting at technology that can be physically used where personal computers typically aren't taken? Basically, we're pondering the idea that Apple might be looking to take the wireless freedom of AirPort networking to the next logical stage; instead of being tethered to a Base Station with an invisible 150-foot leash, what if Apple found an easy and reliable way for its customers to stay "wirelessly wired" anywhere in the country, or even the world?

And what if Apple invented a new device that's "almost a Mac," which can tap into that service and is small and rugged enough to take anywhere? It's not exactly revolutionary, we admit, given the existence of handhelds like the Palm VIIx and services like OmniSky, or those Blackberries that have become so ubiquitous at corporate three-martini lunches. But remember, the iPod isn't exactly a "breakthrough" device either, yet Apple called it one-- because while we already had MP3 players, Apple presented the iPod as an MP3 player done right. What if Monday's "big thing" is the Palm VIIx or Blackberry done right? Maybe with color, better useability, more (LOTS more) bandwidth, and the like. What if it's that tablet Mac we've all been waiting for, and it's a fully functional Mac with take-anywhere wireless Internet capabilities? Presumably that could go "where no PC has gone before."

Most of this is idle and baseless speculation, with a healthy dose of wishful thinking thrown in, but there is a basis for at least the "wireless 'net" stuff we're tossing around. If you're a rumor hound at all, presumably you've heard the term "Gigawire" kicked around in the context of allegedly leaked info about Apple's upcoming Mac products. We never really ran across anyone who could tell us what Gigawire actually is, but based on the context of its usage, we had taken to assuming that it's Apple's name for the next and higher-bandwidth version of FireWire. But if it is, it's apparently capable of much more than just hooking up hard drives and pushing digital video data.

Try this: take a virtual visit to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Click to search for trademarks, and opt for the "New User Form Search (Basic)." Search for any trademarks whose Owner Name and Address field contains "Apple Computer." You'll wind up with a list of some 600-odd trademarks registered by Apple. Among them is FireWire, and if you pull up the detail listing, you'll note that under "Goods and Services" is a pretty lengthy list of stuff like "computer peripherals and consumer electronics, namely, scanners, smart monitors, modems, printers, disk drives," and all sorts of like devices. So far so good.

Now find the entry for Gigawire, registered this past September. If it were just a faster version of FireWire, the "Goods and Services" entry should be pretty similar, right? But instead, we see this: "Telecommunication services; cellular telephone communication; Communication by computer terminals, communication by telephone, facsimile transmission; providing of electronic mail (E-Mail); computer aided transmission of messages and images; communication between computer peripherals and devices; information about telecommunication." Doesn't that sound like a lot more than a zippier peripheral interconnect bus to you? Just something to think about while you're killing time until Monday.

By the way, if Steve doesn't unveil an "iPad" or some form of tablet-style, pen-driven Mac slate on Monday, it looks like Microsoft will get to enjoy the lion's share of the press attention next week. See, faithful viewer Nina Tovish happened to stumble across what is in all likelihood the real reason why Uncle Steve moved his keynote from Tuesday to Monday: according to InfoWorld, Bill Gates is delivering another keynote on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show. (By the way, if you've heard the rumor that Steve was also going to keynote at CES, we should let you know that the Mac Show proved it wrong with a three minute phone call to the show's organizers. Darn that investigative journalism.)

And what is Bill expected to show? The Viewsonic AirPanel 150, a flat-screen wireless monitor that pops out of a docking station and allows users to carry it around. It works a little like a tablet PC, in the sense that users will apparently be able to use the detached panel with some sort of input system as a wireless "thin client" terminal. In other words, if you get sick of working at your desk, you could grab your screen and a stylus, carry it into the living room, plop down on the couch, and keep right on working wirelessly. Yes, you could also do this with a laptop, but that's so '90s. Get with the times.

What's particularly intriguing about this development is the fact that Apple has long been rumored to have a similar technology in the works, and you may recall whispers of an LCD iMac whose screen was actually a removable thin-client webpad thingy. Most recently, faithful viewer Greg Hill informed us that a mention of this sort of product just showed up at Dave Winer's Scripting.com: "I've heard about the iDock, which is a flat-screen on an 802.11a network that moves your desktop anywhere you want to work in the home." In other words, it's the AirPanel 150, only Apple's version.

If this is indeed one of the things that Steve intends to unveil in the course of his keynote address, you can imagine the ickiness that might have ensued had he taken the wraps off of this alleged "iDock" on the very same day as Bill Gates was demonstrating the AirPanel to a different keynote audience. Likewise, though, you can imagine how much fun it would be for Steve to give us the iDock one day before Bill does his AirPanel thing. That's not just stealing someone's thunder; that's stomping said thunder into little tiny thunder pieces. Now that will be worth watching.