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An article on the Top 10 Space Mysteries for 2003 got me thinking. It's near to New Year's, and so I've decided to forego my New Year's resolutions in favor of building this list: Top 10 Mac Mysteries for 2003. Some we may find out, and some way may never know...

1. Will "fast enough" ever be fast enough? With Intel chips speeding ahead and Macs sitting around at 1.25 GHz (times two!), it's safe to say that for 95% of the users out there, computers are "fast enough." Where oh where ye Power4? 🙂
2. Will the browser wars be renewed? Will Apple ship its own "iBrowser" based on Chimera/Mozilla/Your Mother's Cherry Cobbler Recipe? Will we see x.0 releases of Omn and Internet Explorer?
3. What will 10.3 have in store for us? Most certainly to be answered this year, and most certainly not to include any of the following:
   • BeOS
   • The "purple polka dot box" compatibility layer.
   • EOF for Cocoa desktop applications.
4. Will there be an Apple store on every corner? With over 50 stores currently in place, how many more can we expect to see in 2003? Will they become exceedingly profitable or only mildly profitable? Profitable at all?
5. What will the next iDevice be? iPhone? iPDA? iCologne? Or just a digital iBible for all us religious cultists (shut up Leander Kahney).
6. Will Bluetooth take off? Apple supported USB, and it took off... will Bluetooth? And better yet, why the hell doesn't the HipTop (or whatever T-Mobile calls it) have Bluetooth? I want one so bad, but the damn coverage is terrible where I am and the Web interface for getting info into and out of the damn thing is crap.
7. What happened to those Christmas trinkets? Those things sold the day after Thanksgiving at Apple stores across the land? The money clip, the clock, the pens... What happened to them? Why were they only sold for a day? Some mysteries may never be exposed...
8. Will Mac OS 9 users ever shut the hell up? I say we give them another year. If they're not mostly silent by the end of 2003, I think we'll just have to wait until they - or their machines - die of old age. At least there haven't been any calls for "open sourcing OS 9 so its development can continue" or anything yet... or did I speak too soon? All I know is that my copy of OS 9 didn't come with any of these rose-colored glasses those die-hards seem to have gotten.
9. Will Cocoa apps ever run on Windows? They used to. Kinda. From what I've heard it was kind of a bitch, but, at least they ran... kinda. We may have to wait for the GNU people to do something, if they don't throw a hissy fit like the GNU Darwin morons.
10. Will Apple's market share ever break 10%? 25%? One of the key reasons why the Apple stores are so effective is because they simply expose people to the Mac. Many people bought PCs because they didn't really know they had a viable alternative! If Apple's market share ever does peek above the 10% waterline, to what factors will it owe its success? Perhaps:
    • The Stores
    • "Alpha Nerds" loving Mac OS (Uni)X
    • iDevices
    • Growing contempt for MS
    • Miracle

So there you have it: the Top 10 Mac Mysteries of 2003, as determined solely by one young crankpot named Erik.

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