Off-topic: MacWorld 2007 - Steve Jobs Keynote

In less than an hour, 3pm in Brasília, 9am Pacific time, Steve Jobs takes the stage at MacWorld Conference & Expo 2007 in San Francisco. The keynote can be followed live on several sites (see the updated list).

This keynote has spawned dozens of rumors and articles across the industry. Forbes published All Eyes On Apple and Jobs yesterday, and for good reason: nobody in the industry builds anticipation like Steve Jobs’s Apple.

The enigmatic image above showed up on Apple’s site a few days ago and fed a good share of that anticipation. What are they trying to say? A simple corporate “happy new year” message? From Apple? Probably not.

At WWDC 2006, Steve announced some of the headline features of the next operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, expected to ship this quarter. On that occasion he showed the famous “Top Secret” slide: there were new features they weren’t going to reveal, so Microsoft couldn’t copy them ahead of time. Has the moment come for us to finally learn those secrets?

Meanwhile the rumors keep coming. Will Steve announce his retirement? A new Mac to celebrate Apple’s 30th anniversary? A subnotebook MacBook with solid-state storage? The long-rumored iPhone, the iPod plus phone combo? An immediate Leopard release?

Or will it be smaller stuff: the already-known iTV, new versions of iTunes and iLife, secondary Leopard details? Or the usual fare, a Mac Mini with a Core 2 Duo and a Mac Pro with the new Dual Quad Xeons?

Keep your eyes open. Steve Jobs’s MacWorld keynotes are always explosive. Just remember 1997.