Seybold SF 2000

, the major publishing conference, begins this week. It actually started Sunday afternoon with a number of sessions and "keynote" speeches. Seybold has many "keynote" speeches throughout the week but the "Special Opening" Keynote address by Steve Jobs on Tuesday at 9am is the one that all Mac fans (and many who are not) are waiting for. What will he say? There's no hint on the keynote abstract page--there's no abstract. In addition, according several web sites, an Apple spokesperson announced that the speech will not be webcast this year.

Will Steve Jobs introduce any new or upgraded Apple products? Last year he introduced the new Power Mac G4's but with all the recent blockbuster introductions at Macworld (Dual G4, G4 Cube, iMac upgrades, new full-size keyboard, new optical mouse and iMovie 2) there's not a lot left untouched. Seybold is a professional publishing conference so an iBook upgrade wouldn't fit well. I expect anything new with the iBook to be announced at Apple Expo Europe in Paris next month. The Mac OS X public beta is due out next month as is ATI's Radeon graphics card. The PowerBook (FireWire) is fairly recent and somewhat off topic for a publishing conference. Faster G3's? Nope, not related enough. I hope they will begin arriving soon but publishing mostly uses G4s. Faster G4s? Not yet is my guess--maybe Paris.

My guess for Steve Jobs' Seybold speech? If the reports are true that Apple's reason for the webcast cancellation is that most of the keynote's audience will be at Seybold, then I would expect a high level and very focused speech on Apple's support for publishing. It could feature the PowerMac G4 MPs and the publishing-specific software that it runs, including Apple's WebObjects and FileMaker. The latter, if included, may contain some neat surprises from the master of surprise announcements.