Macworld is coming up in a couple of days, and although I will be on a plane during the breathlessly awaited keynote, I still have some thoughts on what may be coming up… about 95% of people writing online have thoughts on it, too.

After last year’s fantasy-fulfilling iPhone announcement, expectations are high for this Macworld. It seems very unlikely that Apple will top that, but here’s what I think you may see.

We’ll see hardware refreshes. Now that Apple is using Intel chips, we know a lot more about the release schedule of the processors they’re using, since Intel publishes a processor roadmap and is very vocal about new chips. Intel is in the process of pushing out new CPUs, the “Penryn” line, mobile, desktop and server, and I think we’ll see some new Apple machines using them - specifically new MacBook Pros and likely MacBooks as well, and an iMac speed bump.

The iMacs just had a significant refresh last summer and I can’t see Apple doing any major changes to them beyond giving them new CPUs. The MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, however, haven’t had any significant changes in a while. In fact, Apple followed a very clever strategy when they switched to Intel chips - they didn’t make major changes to the appearance of the machines. An end-generation PowerPC iMac or PowerBook doesn’t look much different from a first generation Intel iMac or MacBook Pro. This was a great way to subtly tell people that they were still the same machines.

The MacBook Pro/Power Book has looked the same for a long time now, and while it’s still a great looking machine, I expect that Apple will update it to bring it more in line with the appearance of the new iMac.

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This is an update of last year’s post… it wasn’t a great year for mainstream comics. Both Marvel and DC have gone down the path of satisfying long-time fans by brutally killing old characters. Both have been running long crossovers like Countdown, World War Hulk, 52 and Civil War which have ultimately served more the purpose of selling comics than telling satisfying stories.

This year’s major comics-related films have also garnered less than stellar reviews.

Given that, I don’t have a lot of new things to recommend, but there are a few things the comics fans in your life might enjoy.

Do you have a comics lover in your life who you’d like to get a holiday gift for, but haven’t got a clue what to get them? Read on, true believer.
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This week instead of offering 99 cent rentals, Amazon is offering free rentals or purchases of downloads of 24 “classic” films. These movies can be played under Microsoft Windows, compatible portable devices, and on networked Tivo Series 2 and Series 3/HD boxes.

First, the films you can outright purchase for free. If they behave the way other films from Amazon do, you’ll be able to re-download them again later and they won’t expire once you’ve downloaded them.

Click on the title to see the movie’s listing at Amazon.

Charade
His Girl Friday
House on Haunted Hill
Love Affair
The Man With the Golden Arm
My Man Godfrey
Penny Serenade
The Snows of Kilmanjaro
Till the Clouds Roll By
Under Western Stars

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Amazon has made several movie downloads available for rental at only $0.99 via their Unbox service.

Downloaded movies can be viewed once within 30 days of the rental date. Once you start watching one, you have 24 hours to finish it. You can view them on your Windows PC, a compatible Windows mobile device, or a compatible Tivo unit (which must have a high speed Internet connection) which is registered with Amazon.

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Wes Anderson, writer and director of “Bottle Rocket”, “Rushmore”, “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”, has made his own entire genre of quirky, dry films filled with eccentric characters. His latest film, “The Darjeeling Express”, looks to fit in perfectly, and is due out in limited release on the US on September 28th.

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Here are some shortcuts into Amazon to help you set up your Tivo to work with Unbox video downloads, find videos, and find some useful Tivo accessories.

• Register your Tivo(s) with Amazon Unbox
• Find rentals
• Find science fiction & fantasy movies
• Find horror movies
• Find TV shows
• Tivo Series 2 - 80 hour and 180 hour
• Tivo Series 3 - the HDTV Tivo with CableCard support and HDMI and component video out
• Tivo ethernet adapter - not needed for Tivo Series 3 and dual-tuner Series 2 units, which have built-in ethernet ports - requires Tivo 7.3 software or later
• Tivo Wireless adapter - Plugs into the USB port of your Tivo and lets it connect to your wireless network

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Tivo’s been looking for a movie download partner for some time now. There was a day when Tivo and Netflix were in bed together, but their dalliance bore no fruit. A couple of months back, Amazon replaced Netflix as Tivo’s bed-mate, announcing that Amazon’s “Unbox” video service would allow you to view movies on your Series 2 or Series 3 Tivo.

This is the kind of thing that gets announced and months later people are scratching their heads saying “Hey… do you remember something about Amazon downloading movies to Tivo? Did that ever happen?”… imagine my shock when Amazon and Tivo announced last week that you the service was now working.

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Part of my childhood I grew up in rural Maine, desperate for stimulation. There were a few kids my age nearby and fortunately we became friends pretty quickly, but my mind was hungry. I was all over the map, from learning from Radio Shack electronics kits my father would get me to taking apart calculators and reading Scientific American. I liked electronics, chemistry, math, computers, physics, astronomy and cosmology.

That was long enough ago that my sense of time is skewed. I have to work out when things happened by relating them to other things and deriving the dates and my age. Two of the most important things that I remember learning from are James Burke’s “Connections” and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and without looking them up online and seeing when they aired (Connections was filmed in 1978 but I’m not 100% certain when I saw it, and Cosmos in 1980), I was unsure how old I was when I saw them. It turns out I was older than I thought; I was 16 in 1980. I thought I’d seen them when I was younger… but many of my memories of TV from then are confused; were we living in the country or the city? When did we get cable? When did I see music videos? Were both my parents still there, or one, or none?
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Do you have a comics lover in your life who you’d like to get a holiday gift for, but haven’t got a clue what to get them? Read on, true believer.
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Amazon today unveiled their new video download service: Unbox, rumored for several months. Apple is expected to announce the iTunes Movie Store on September 12th; I imagine that Amazon wanted to beat them to it by at least a few days.

The service is built on Microsoft’s Media Player architecture, and utilizes Microsoft’s DRM (Digital Rights Management). Some of the consequences of this are:

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