Here are my 8 candidates, ripe for an Apple takeover, baring any regulatory intervention. I have no insider knowledge and full expect Apple to hoard it’s money during the economic downturn, but wouldn’t it be cool if…

The Obvious

Dell – A huge rival, and certainly would give them a boot in market share. But what would be the point? 90% of existing Dell customers wouldn’t buy a Mac unless it was at Dell prices. Apple’s only choice would to ship a version of OS X for Dell boxes, there’s no value, it would just increase market share for the other low cost PC makers. Odds: 20/1

Sun Microsystems – Apple and Sun have long been linked but it recent months Apple has been cast as the aggressor. Technology-wise Apple could do far worse that Sun; Solaris, SPARC, Java, DTrace, MySQL the list goes on and on. Apple are desperate to break the Enterprise market, this would give them a big leg up. Odds: 5/1

Palm – Again, I see little point to this acquisition an instant doubling of there Enterprise phone market, but it certainly wouldn’t double iPhone sales. Palm (much like Apple) have a hardcore of supporters that would be unwilling to move to the iPhone. Again the only route for Apple would be iPhone OS for Palm devices, an interesting proposition. Odds: 15/1

The Not So Obvious

EA – Games are almost important to Apple, with the enviable side-effect of the App Store being a massive games market for the iPhone Apple is ideally placed to become a industry leader. It has long puzzled me why Apple has never got a foothold in the games market? Maybe because they let Microsoft buy the companies making Mac games. But I digress, EA would bring some great titles to the Mac and iPhone/iPod, Apple could start to challenge Sony and Nintendo; a beefed up Apple TV that can play (proper) games, handhelds that interact seamlessly and Desktops and Laptops with hundreds of titles! Apple would rule the living room. Odds: 10/1

Nintendo – This is just a quickie; Wii technology, Japan, Nintendo DS market share plus all the reasons listed above. Odds: 25/1

AMD – Apple have shown their willingness to get their hands dirty when it comes to chip design so how about AMD. Production, design, technology, brains. They would get all this with AMD, plus cheeper chips for desktops etc. Intel would not be happy and it would take some effort to get OS X optimized for AMD. Odds: 18/1

Boxee – Lets face it Apple TV hasn’t lived up to it potential, maybe it’s a slow burner. Version 2.0 of the software was a massive step forward, but buying Boxee would be a quantum leap! Couple this with an iPhone emulator so you can play App Store games and you getting close to a game changer. My advice to Apple would be to give away Apple TV’s with iPhone contracts on AT&T, T-Mobile etc, it needs market share but more importantly mindshare. Include a digital TV receiver and recording functionality and your away. Odds: 10/1

The Crazy

Twitter - http://valleywag.gawker.com/5240350/could-apple-buy-twitter You have to Ask you self one question? Why? And the answer can only be iPhone. But that only throws up more questions? iPhone and Mac OS X already have a billion clients, the only only way they could have a strategical advantage would be to close the API to not iPhone/Mac OS X clients. Piss off a lot of people and Kill Twitter… never going to happen 10,000/1

Adobe – have a license to print money with Photoshop, Apple would do well to drop the price and cancel the PC version. Incorporating features into iPhoto and Mobile Me (online). In addition they would control Flash/Flex and have a jump on Microsoft’s Silverlight. Flash for the iPhone would make some people very happy too. In addition, allowing App Store application to be written in Flash would increase the inventory 10 fold, it’s an attractive idea for 1000’s for Flash developers (that would otherwise never touch iPhone/iPod development) and Apple. Odds: 50/1

There are two reasons I am writing yet another hackneyed MacWorld prediction entry:

1. I always get it right but never tell anyone
2. Cash in on all the loverly Apple keywords, like sub-notebook, MacTouch and new iPhone

With all that unpleasantness over with I can begin. We all know Mr Jobs prides him self on secrecy and clandestine projects but the simple fact is Apple is a business and needs to make money and a quick look over their aging product line tell us 90% of the keynote.

Preemptive Strike   

As to ruin the narrative of this entry Apple have this week released update Xserves and Mac Pros. I won’t insult your intelligence dear reader with the pretense that, if I had written this entry last month I would of predicted these update before January 12th. But I would of. 
So, one nil to me. Ok one all. 

Portable Success

Lets start off with what has over the last 3 year become the bed rock of Apple’s resurgence, the MacBook Pro. The MacBook line is in desperate need of a make over but it the Pro version that you can bet the farm on.
Intel announced new processors (immediately incorporated into the Desktop and Server lines) so we can reason the MacBook Pro updates will be more significant. But how significant? I’m going to stick my neck out and list all the updates I expect to see:

1. Processor upgrade (duh!) – 45-nm Penryn procesors at 2.4GHz to 2.8GHz
2. Graphics upgrade – an NVIDIA with 256MB as standard up to 512MB in top models 
3. Thinner enclosure – not by much maybe 20%-25%
4. LED backlight screen – I’m just jumping on the bandwagon with this
5. Longer battery life – nothing revolutionary here, all down to the processors and screen
6. Gesture Pad – enhanced and much bigger track pad that will respond like the iPhone interface with; stretching, pinching, scrolling and all that CoverFlow goodness.
7. Blu-Ray Drive – high end models only or possibly on a ‘built to order’ only option
8. Mac OS X 10.5.2 – like shooting fish in a barrel!

So, 8 prediction for the MacBook Pro – check back after the Keynote to see how I scored. What this will mean for the more consumer focused MacBook it’s hard to say, but here we go:

1. Processor upgrade
2. Screen upgrade
3. Price drop

Only time will tell, but I don’t expect anything more than modest upgrades to the MacBooks. The upgrades will only bring the low end portables in line with the new Sub-Notebook and help define the product lines.
The real interesting thing about the new portable is its name. Looking back over the product lines we can surmise it will follow the Apple convention and take the moniker of Mini, Nano or Touch. These are surly different beasts.
The MacBook Mini/Nano – a sub-notebookw with 13″ screen no internal optical drive, SSD hard disk and about a micron thick.
The Mac Touch – the long rumored and tablet Mac, all kinds of wireless including GMS/GPRS  and WiMax but only a 64GB SSD hard drive. It wont be locked to a carrier like the iPhone but will take an optional SIM card for true mobility. It’s just a big fat iPhone.

Don’t Touch

 
I don’t think we’re be seeing the Mac Touch this time, mainly because of the same confusion you found when reading the previous paragraph and I felt writing it. To be a success it has to have so much and still I can see no market. It would just be too expensive.

Less is More

 
So that leaves us with the The MacBook Mini/Nano – we have a Mac Mini so to avoid the confusion The MacBook Nano will be born. As far a product positioning is concerned the MacBook Nano will sit between the MacBook and MacBook Pro and be priced accordingly. Below is a list of of expected features (by no means exhaustive): 

1. 13″ Screen, LED backlight
2. 64GB – 128GB SSD hard drive
3. 1GB RAM
4. Touch interface/Trackpad similar to the new MacBook Pro’s
5. WiFi – all flavors a/b/g/n 
6. USB 2.0 – possibly mini-USB
7. Very thin – is this a feature?
8. 45-nm Penryn processor at 2.1GHz
9. Non-removable battery (but it lasts 12 hours)  
10. Mac OS X 10.5.2
11. iPod style universal docking port
12.  Multi-Colourd – Apple uses this neat trick to reinvigorate ‘old’ lines, expect this on updated MacBooks too.

Wow! It’s like I have a crystal ball. Well, that’s not all we still have the Apple TV and Mac Mini to look at. This is where my predictions tend towards guess work as opposed to the well thought out and meticulously researched prose above.
I can however, say with some degree of certainty that if the Apple TV is not update next week, it’s dead. If it does get a second bite at the home entertainment cherry it will see a MAJOR upgrade; more Mac OS X like features, Safari, Blu-Ray (you heard me right!), bigger hard drive and iPod dock.

Mini Minor

 
I have even less of an idea about the Mac Mini – they are great, I’d love to see an upgrade and a price drop. But the updated Apple TV might just incorporate all the features.
So there you go, 100% guaranteed to happen next week* or never. Please feel free to rant about how wrong I am going to be – I will be publishing the emails of those that make fools of them selves.
One last thing… iPhone update, a new 16GB version followed by a modest price drop, oh and a iPhone Nano. * Not a guarantee.