Update: Well, it happened, and it does support widgets, which even show up as normal apps on the home screen. While I’m fairly certain this means the iPhone will support any widgets through syncing, that hasn’t been confirmed. And Dashcode tells me that widgets can run Java, which suggests that you really would be able to run most anything on an iPhone without mucking up the phone OS. (Though it would be super nice to have developer access to the sensors, camera, etc. We’ll have to wait until June to find that out, likely.) Also, the Apple TV isn’t as much of a server as I’d liked, but, along with the new Airport Extreme (thus making it a $500 purchase…), it could be heading in that direction. I’m most surprised that we didn’t see anything on iPhone integration with Apple TV, Leopard, and iLife, as well as anything on the important software updates coming down the pike, but that all may be forthcoming in the next couple of months. Speaking of months…June?!? I didn’t want to have to keep my Treo that long.

I just have to throw out some last-minute predictions before Steve Jobs’ keynote tomorrow morning. Even though I suspect not all of this will happen tomorrow, I already missed going on record with my thoughts on Apple & Akamai before Cringely read the tea leaves the same way I did (more on that in a minute).

I’m not sure if we’ll see a phone from Apple tomorrow, or if what we’ve all been waiting for will ever be identifiable as a “phone” at all, other than that it can place phone calls. It may or may not show up in the keynote (though my 2-year-old-Treo-toting-self really hopes it does), but at the moment I’m more interested in the phone (for lack of a better word) as a platform. I’ve been told by someone in the know that it doesn’t just do one or two things differently, such as being a good music phone or video chatting to Macs, which is expected at this point, but does more like five or six things differently, and that, unlike the iPod, it will be open to developers. In fact, we were instructed to get versed in the platform quickly, as Apple’s banking on it carrying their brand to ever corner of the globe in the next five years, just as the iPod did in the last five years. So what could those other features be, exactly, that are going to set the pace for mobile development in the next few years?

The one feature I’m speculating on, which, if it does show up, will likely be misunderstood at first, is Dashboard widgets. Ever since Dashcode was leaked months ago, I was suspicious - why did we need a dev tool to build what were, essentially, tiny web pages? If anything, iWeb should hold that functionality, no? Then Leopard was announced to be including Dashboard sync, a feature that no one really cared about. But together it points to Apple putting further emphasis on widgets, which, really, are a kind of silly thing to invest so much effort in. Yeah, they’re fun, but on a desktop they’re mostly little RSS toys, and don’t accomplish much you couldn’t do pretty easily some other way.

But we’ve never seen good implementation of web data on mobile devices. At best, you have Opera Mini, which is a decent web browser. But what if I just need movie times? It’s usually easier and faster to just call. But a widget-ized phone could provide such data quickly and easily. Add in a screensaver function, which updates news tickers and such when your phone is in your pocket, and we might finally have a good reason to use mobile data, all in a very seamless, Apple-y kind of way. I maintain that widgets were really always about mobile and (wait for it…) television, and introducing them in Tiger was a way to jumpstart development. Now, Apple can launch a phone platform that already has thousands of applications that work with it, and, because widgets use web technologies, Dashcode will make it super-easy for even amateur programmers to develop awesome software for the new platform.

And the new platform isn’t limited to the phone. Wouldn’t widgets on your TV be nice? The Wii Weather Channel is really much more fun that tuning in to The Weather Channel, and why wait for CNN to scroll headlines when you can scroll through them yourself? So, yes, I think the iTV (or whatever it ends up being called) will also be widgetized. I think the iTV will shape up to be much more than people predicted, as well, and will definitely integrate tightly with the phone and the 2007 iPods. (That’s part of why I’m not sold on the phone showing up tomorrow - touchscreen wireless iPods that can act as remote controls and mobile screens would be a nice complement to the iTV, whereas a phone may be too much newness.) And with all that Airport X2/X4 being pumped into our homes through the iTV, I bet the new phones will support VOIP. Maybe the new iPods, too? Maybe they’re actually the same product? I’m almost sure that 2007 will see the extension of OS X into other types of products, until the UIs of all the devices are one and the same, just task-optimized, and most of them probably syncing up through the iTV, which will act as a lightweight server, but we’ll think of it more like a media hub. There. That’s my all-encompassing theory for Apple’s 2007, which is probably not correct.

Okay, enough with the hardware speculation. And I’ll skip the rather-obvious rumors about OS X getting an Illuminous redesign (it will be gorgeous and resolution-independent, and will look identical across all the new products, with lots of optimizations for tiny screens and giant screens). The other thing that I think will happen in 2007 is that Apple will ditch Akamai and move iTunes to a Google-built delivery network. So, yes, Cringely said it, too, but here’s my take:

While everyone was bitching about Apple not being prepared for the obvious onslaught of those who were gifted iPods and iTunes gift cards for the holidays, some of us were thinking “oh, they knew, but it wasn’t their fault, it was Akamai.” After dealing with Akamai while I was at CBS, I can say first-hand that it’s awful - slow to update, unpredictable ping times, and lending you a feeling that you’re not actually in control of your own website. They’re almost certainly to blame for iTunes’ bad behavior on Christmas Day, and you can bet that Apple won’t let that happen again. Eric Schmidt is sitting on Apple’s board, and Google is probably the only company that owns the fiber and servers to support such a network. With their dark fiber purchases and shipping containers full of servers, they can and will be able to provide the fastest response times. This may lead to Google providing the same service for other companies, though probably not in 2007, as everyone waits to see how an HD iTunes on Google survives the next holiday season.