With the rumor mills working overtime in preparation for MacWorld, I’ll take a chance at throwing my hat in the ring with a few predictions. Notably, the last time I tried this, I completely debunked the idea that Macs would switch to Intel, so hey, caveat lector.

Mac hardware: can’t say that I’m expecting much on this front. The Mac laptop line was recently refreshed to Core 2 Duo models, iMacs are already pretty sweet, and the desktop Mac Pro is already frickin’ fast. There’s talk of an LED backlight in new laptops, which has interesting implications for longer battery life, but in the meantime I’ll settle for toying with underclocking my Mac.

OS X 10.5 (Leopard): man, I’m seriously looking forward to this one, but no one is saying it’s ready yet. One or two components are already available in previews, though, and I have a strong suspicion that certain features will vastly change the way people work with their computers.

iTV: I’m expecting a more featureful preview of the iTV, a real product name that won’t conflict with El Gato’s EyeTV, and a ship date. With video iPods and the Apple Store already geared up, there’s just too much money potentially sitting on the table for Apple to miss this window for much longer. It would be nice to see something taking advantage of (or at least enabling) the 802.11n high-speed wireless for those of us with recent vintage Macs, but if I had to guess I’d expect this to be a Leopard feature.

iPod: I’m not an iPod guy, but I’ll comment in brief on the speculation about the “real” video iPod release — the current one being deemed “fake” because of the small screen. I’ve got a Palm TX that does beautiful video on the sort of screen that people want for their iPods — that is, one that covers the entire face of the device. Problem is, if you hold the gadget vertically you get the same small screen display (scaling a 4:3 or 1.85:1 video with the long edge along the width of the handheld), and it’s not physically designed to be held horizontally. I expect Apple could do a better job of this, but I’d expect to see this on a later generation of iPods rather than a current refresh.

iWork spreadsheets: this would be nice, as Microsoft Office is pretty much the only game in town at the moment. (I’m running a port of OpenOffice instead, but I don’t expect many other people would.) But what I’d really like is lightweight table support in TextEdit, so I could fire up a few numbers and sums without launching a huge bloated app. Application launch time for Office, OpenOffice, or Pages is annoying when I’ve always got TextEdit documents open anyway.

iPhone: this is the bit of kit I’m really hoping for, and I’m likely to be a day-one purchaser. As I rarely get tired of mentioning, my current phone sucks eggs, and my smartphone is showing its age. I’m extremely ready for a new handset, and iPod features would be nice.

Everyone seems to agree that it’s going to be a GSM worldphone with iPod software included; rumor has it that there are separate batteries for the two features so you can’t kill your phone by listening to podcasts. I presume it will rock with Bluetooth and EDGE data, hopefully with Mac integration that won’t require 3rd party support to use as a modem. It’s been a while since a really solid phone came out of the box with perfect iSync and Bluetooth modem features, and who better than Apple to sell me one?

But a phone needs a network. My thinking on that topic in roughly descending order of probability:

1) There was talk for a while that on launch, the iPhone would only work with Cingular despite technical compatibility with any GSM provider. As a T-Mobile customer who thinks their data plan is still the best deal around, this would be a bummer. But I don’t think this will be the case — this would require locking the phone down with crippled firmware, with the sole advantage going to Cingular. I don’t see that as a standard Apple strategy. I’d sooner expect to see an unlocked GSM phone on sale immediately at Apple Stores, Best Buy, and whichever carriers wanted to pitch it.

2) I think there’s enough disenchantment in the cellular industry, and that Apple’s got sufficient positive mindshare and retail footprint, for them to make a serious move in selling their own phone service. But the catch is that their entire target market already has phone service and might be reluctant to switch carriers. This announcement therefore wouldn’t surprise me, but I’m not expecting it.

3) There are interesting possibilities with VoIP, though — Apple already has an investment in video clients with iChat, and their market is now well-acquainted with using Skype to reach landlines. The problem with VoIP handsets, though, is their lack of coverage: no wifi hotspot, no phone service. Folks like me are happy to reconfigure their handsets accordingly, but I wouldn’t call that a mass market technology.

On the other hand, take the same handset and give it Bonjour, and you can have it automatically handshake wirelessly with your laptop or desktop. Now you can tell your customers, “if your computer has an Internet connection, your cell phone gets unlimited minutes.” That’s something that people can easily grasp. I think it might be a bit too Star Trek for Apple to try it — but then again, the lack of players in this arena might very well be the best reason for them to do so.

Okay, Steve. We’re waiting — what’s the “one more thing”?