1. Apple Tablet – That it might be the device I am hoping it to be – I started pining for a good color eReading/media device more than a year ago. The Kindle and Sony Reader devices began to show us what is possible, but as much as they accomplished, where they fall short is very apparent.  You still cannot have a satisfying magazine experience on an eReader if that magazine relies on anything beyond basic text. The tech web crowd has been very cautious about giving any mileage to the rumors that have propelled interest in Apple’s tablet project along for the last year, but at this point it seems very apparent that the thing is real and will in all likelihood be revealed this month.  When that happens, I’m hoping for a device that can bring traditional print, audio and video content together in ways only the full web has attempted up until now, and do it in a package small enough to easily carry around, slimmer than most existing notebooks today with no physical keyboard to get in the way. If they do it right, it could help define a new kind of electronic media

2. Greater openness and compatibility in eBook formats – Maybe the best thing the Barnes and Noble nook has brought to the eReader market is its wider range of formats while still being linked (but not shackled) to a major online retailer.  It looks like a strong emphasis of the Apple tablet will be as an eReader.  I’m hoping that this will  help move major content producers toward freedom from DRM restrictions. It took a few years, but the involvement of Steve Jobs and Apple has finally done that with music offered through iTunes. I see eBooks following a very similar path to digital music as they gain popularity.  I’m just hoping things can progress a little faster and with fewer false steps this time around.

3. Continuing and more diverse competition for the iPhone – Since its initial release, there have been, and certainly will continue to be people who simply hate the iPhone. That’s fine, but it’s a mistake for anyone to ignore the impact it has made in getting an easy-to-use multi-function device into the hands of a great many people. Its integration of the extremely popular iPod media player platform and a huge and constantly growing app store are the major tent poles that have propelled it forward. An impressive development this year was the release of the Motorola Droid phone, the first smart phone to make hardened iPhone devotees seriously consider another option. When the the eyes of the Apple faithful begin to wander, something a bit remarkable has happened.  Besides being a truly nifty gadget, the Droid shows us that Apple’s market position is not unassailable and with development of a more robust app store for the Andoid OS, a real horse race is possible.  In 2010, I’m hoping to see even more solid competitors to the iPhone emerge, if only to keep Apple moving forward.

4. Mobile Drobo for 2.5″ hard drives – I love Drobo and have been using several with great success for nearly two years.  But one thing they’re not is easily carried about. Laptop-size hard drives have begun to get quite roomy, now I’d like a Drobo that can hold two or three or four of these drives while still being not much bigger than a full-sized drive in an enclosure.  That would be great for people who generate a lot of data on the road like photographers and independent video producers.

5.  A slightly better Griffin Simplifi -  This is an easy one.  It should already be on the market and I’m lost to explain why it isn’t.  Here’s what I want: A compact iPod/iPhone dock with multiple media card-reading options and USB ports, all on the front. The current Simplifi comes so close to this, it’s almost cruel. It has all this functionality already, but the USB ports are on the back. I want a Simplifi (or something virtually identical) with the USB up front, next to the card slots. Please, someone make this.  I’ll wait right here.

What are your wishes for the next year? Are you already sick of hearing about the Apple tablet and wish it never to materialize? Maybe you’d like to see some advances in home theater technology or a new DSLR camera with amazing features at a breakthrough price?  Leave a comment and tell me what will make your 2010 technologically unforgettable.

1. 32 GB iPhone – I wished for this a year ago, and having not gotten my wish, I’m stubbornly repeating it.  It’s hard to believe that it was a technical issue that kept the iPhone 3G’s capacity capped at 16 GB.  I think a difficult-to-market price point is a much more likely barrier.  With 16 GB I’ve got most of the music I want, but only a sampling of the video I wish I could carry.  Sure, I’d fill 32 GB eventually as well, but hopefully by then I can be wishing for something in the 60 GB range.

2. Stable Mobile Safari – Things have gotten better with the recent iPhone software upgrades, but Mobile Safari still has an uncanny knack for closing my browser just when I’ve entered a lot of text into a web page.  In 2009, I’d like to se this mobile browser become as stable as the desktop version.

3. Apple MegiPod – Rumors have be floating around about a large format iPod Touch with a 7″ – 9″ screen.  This sounds to me like very nearly what I was talking about in my recent post about a lightweight color ,pdf reader.  It would be nice for viewing larger-format videos as well (maybe with a true 16:9 aspect ratio to seal the deal).  If such a device made it to market, I would be buying it on release day.

4. USB 3.0 Drobo – When moving files from one place to another, speed matters.  The current Drobo, using Firewire 800, moves files about twice as fast as the first generation USB model.  USB 3.0 offers the potential of being five times faster than Firewire, limited in this case by the speed of the drives. That 5x increase may not be functionally obtainable, but I’d like to see what Data Robotics can do with the faster transfer technology.

5. Fewer wires – Wi-Fi is a start, but I still have too many wires and cables feeding into my laptop.  The Eye-Fi SD card is a great example of taking a formerly physical connection and making it wireless.  I’d like to see more of this trend, in the hope that the tangle of wires under my desk can one day be banished completely.

So, there are my wishes.  At least one I feel fairly confident about, others are more of a long shot.  Next week I’ll be in San Francisco at Macworld, bringing you news of the cool gadgets on display there.  While obviously there will be an Apple slant to a lot of the stuff on display, I’ll be keeping an eye out for things that will appeal to non-Apple users as well. Hope everyone is off to a great 2009.

iPhone – 32 GB storage capacity – The iPhone increased its upper limit early in the year, but capped at 16 GB. The refresh to the iPhone 3G at mid-year brought a few new features, but no change in storage size.  My wish still stands.

iTunes – Greater control for multiple devices – iTunes received some nice upgrades over the year, such as the grid view for content, but the granularity with which you can customize synching to multiple devices served by the same library, has remained the same.  Manual content selection per device is still the only way to get different stuff on different iPods/iPhones.

Amazon Kindle – Concept proven, now make it pretty – With the exception of a price drop, nothing changed with the Kindle this year.  It sounds as if a refresh is scheduled for 2009, but it doesn’t sound dramatic (certainly nothing like the color screen for which I was wishing).

Apple TV – DVD and computer independence – I got half of this one, with the Take 2 software upgrade announced at Macworld in January 2008.  The new software allows  the Apple TV to have complete independence from a computer, making purchases and free downloads directly from the iTunes Store.  The DVD thing may never happen, as Apple seems to be trending away from optical drives.

Nokia N810 successor – Make it cellular – There really hasn’t been an N810 successor, and as much as I love the N810, I’ve got to confess that everything I wanted it to do is pretty well handled now by my iPhone.  I’ve barely used my N810 since I got an iPhone in January ‘08, largely due to the N810’s dependence on Wi-Fi for connectivity.

So, I didn’t do too well at my tech wishes for 2008.  But then, they were only wishes. Not predictions, but hopes for where new technologies might head.  That’s part of the fun of the online gadget community and I’m not about to stop.  Stop by tomorrow, for five things I’d like to see in 2009, and have a happy new year!

It seems like a nice lightweight netbook might be the solution.  Since I started thinking about this, I’ve been looking at both the ASUS eeePC S101 and the Acer Aspire One.  Both seem like good options, the ASUS, maybe a little nicer, but I’m not sure it’s $300 nicer. In addition to being cheaper, the Acer also has 160 GB of storage (the S101 only has 16GB of Solid State Storage), but of course the larger, more conventional drive brings extra weight.  I’d love to be able to consider the eee Top, but it’s not yet available in the U.S., and even if it were, I might find it’s heavier than I want as it’s designed as a small desktop unit.

If a slightly larger color screen and 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity were added to the existing Amazon Kindle, I think that would be just about exactly what I want.  But I’m not expecting color E Ink for quite a while.  The device I really want probably doesn’t quite exist yet, but I doubt I’m the only one eager for something like it to hit the market.

The other part of my Apple TV wish was for a DVD player to be incorporated in the device. That’s not happening, and given Jobs’ explanation for why it was not a big sacrifice to lose the optical drive in the MacBook Air, I’m not holding my breath for the future. It sounds like Apple’s philosophy on data delivered by removable disc is that it’s a dying concept and we should all start getting used to receiving such data as downloadable files. That’s probably true, but they’re trying to get us in that mindset a little earlier than most users might like.

iPhone – 32 GB storage capacity: I don’t have one yet, and the reason I don’t is storage capacity. When the iPhone was announced, I was using a 60 GB iPod with Video for a mix of music and video. I just couldn’t see trying to designate a subset of that data to fit in an 8 GB device. I wanted the iPhone to allow me to replace two devices with one, but that storage limitation just wouldn’t do it. So this year, in the anticipated iPhone 2.0, I’m wishing big and hoping they double the storage available in the 16 GB iPod Touch that I’m currently using (and have completely filled). An iPhone with 32 GB would finally get me to leave my iPod at home, and allow me the mix of music and video I want to carry.

iTunes – Greater control for multiple devices: A lot of people, including myself, have multiple iPods. I’m sure this is a trend Apple would like to encourage. But they absolutely must devise a sync control scheme that allows finer control when selecting content to be automatically synced. If I have a 4 GB Nano and a 16 GB Touch, I’d like to be able to load different sets of music to each from the same library, while still automatically syncing. I’d also like greater granularity in podcast syncing. For some podcasts, I want to keep all shows on my iPod, but for others I might just want the unplayed episodes. One size never fits all.

Amazon Kindle – Concept proven, now make it pretty: I was in the first wave of Kindle owners. And I really enjoy it. But there’s no denying that it looks (and sometimes handles) like a device from another decade. For version 2 of this eBook reader, I’d like to see a color touch screen, sleeker design of the case, and richer graphical content in the software. A few of the publications available have images included, but I’d like to see more, and I’d like to see a wider array of fonts available to give each publication a more unique look. I love the experimental web browser and hope they mature it and bring it forward into a new version, but if they do, it needs better navigation. That’s where the touch screen comes in. Once you get used to touch-enabled devices, everything else seems underserved.

Apple TV – DVD and computer independence: I’m almost surprised to hear the rumblings that there will be another version of this one, as it’s seemed rather neglected in the dust kicked up by the iPhone. But the Apple TV fills some very specific niches in delivering content to a television in a simpler and less expensive way than a media PC. There are two simple changes I’d like to see here: Add a DVD player, and make it capable of contacting the iTunes Store regardless of whether the computer with the synced iTunes library is currently available. This could work just like the wireless iTunes Store does now: Download to the device and sync to the library when it’s available.

Nokia N810 successor – Make it cellular: I absolutely love the N810. It’s probably the best mobile Internet experience I’ve ever had. The fact that I can do essentially all of my web and e-mail activities from it, with virtually no compromise (except a little squinting), is fantastic. That I can link it to a wireless keyboard for easier writing makes it even better. Just one problem: I need to have access to Wi-Fi, or run it through my cell phone (which can be a bit problematic). I’d love to see a nice cellular radio added to the next Nokia Internet tablet. I don’t really need to make phone calls from the device, I just want much broader coverage for Internet access.

So there they are. If I get even a couple of these wishes fulfilled in 2008, I’ll be pretty happy. What about you? What would you like to see offered in the next year? Leave a comment and let me know.