FUTURISTIC GROOVES

Apple’s lead in digital music is growing even as an army of corporate powerhouses - Dell, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony among them - spends hundreds of millions of dollars to grab a slice of the business. And the financial transformation driven by Apple’s storming of the music stage has been profound: On its knees when Steve Jobs (chairman) retook control in 1997, Apple is coming off a year in which revenue rose 33 percent and profits quadrupled. Its stock, not surprisingly, has been on a tear, up more than sixfold in the past two years and now hovering around $42 a share.

It has become a parlor game in some quarters to try to divine where Apple is going and how it intends to get there - and not just at the dozens of blogs that traffic in Apple rumors. Recently, Microsoft quietly hired a former Apple design executive whose mission is to help Bill Gates’s baby behave more like Steve Jobs’s. Business 2.0 has lay-down some interesting future designs of Apple products which are listed below, to make sure this are not offical announced future Apple products.

PODWATCH
A wrist-worn iPod would keep time and play music, using Bluetooth to wirelessly beam tunes to earbuds or headphones.

WIRELESS iPOD
A portable player would utilize Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and enable users to remotely connect to the iTunes store or the music kept on their computers. The dark color distinguishes it from today’s iPods, which require wired connections to download or listen to songs.

vPOD
A digital image/iPod combo would feature a camera for still photos and video and would wirelessly sync with iPhoto, iMovie, and iTunes. A low-power color screen would serve as a viewfinder when the vPod is closed and as a larger display when it’s open.

iHOME
This Wi-Fi-based home network and media server would be the ultimate digital appliance, managing everything from music and photos to TV recording and office tasks. Shown here are the system’s hub, an IP handset for Web-based calls, an iSight device for videoconferencing, and a single iRemote to control it all.

iPHONE
A simplified wireless phone married to an iPod would feature Apple’s signature scroll wheel for navigation and a slide-out keypad.

In many ways, for the first time in more than a decade, Apple has a chance to become a commercially powerful company - not just a very cool place with a superstar CEO and brilliant designers, but a leader in new markets that are exponentially bigger than the very computer industry it pioneered.