Apple: What we really need on Monday

It is a sure thing that the iPhone will be updated from Tuesday, and will even be available in a bunch of new countries, including Australia and New Zealand.

I know this for sure not just because of the persistent rumours everywhere, but also as I couldn’t even follow Rowan’s advice and buy an iPhone when I was in the USA 2 weeks back – they were out of stock at Apple stores.

There are certain to be other product launches, but what I’m really (forlornly) looking for is a jolt of globalisation from Apple.  Their beautiful products are geo-centric, and often uesless to those that run around between countries. Meanwhile I’m also struggling with keeping two active computers and a back-up drive in sync.

So here are the 5 things that I believe we really need to hear from Steve on Monday:

1: Buy one iPhone, use it anywhere. Global Roaming is now here, and your iPhone will come with local numbers for each markets where the iPhone is on offer. Calls to any of your numbers will be directed to your phone where ever you are, and callers and you will pay local fees only. Meanwhile you will be able to call out at local prices from and to any of the supported countries. If you call a US number from  Australia, then the receiver will see your US number pop up on their caller-id, and will be able to return your call as a cheap local call.

2: Global data roaming for one price: That’s right – forget about $30,000 per GB pricing, from now on it’s all you can eat data anywhere in the world, for the price you pay at home. Vodafone is offering global roaming for all it’s customers (regardless of their phone), while iPhone owners can also roam to any of the other iPhone providers.

3: Preloaded iPods at a reasonable price: We at Apple have teamed up with the MPAA and RIAA to offer you pre-loaded iPod iPod Classics, Nanos and iPod shuffles, right from iTunes. Want the top 100 tunes from April 2006? We have them. How about all of the Beatles hits? Yup – we have those to along with the top 20 movies of 2008. Buy preloaded and you pay just 30% of the regular price.

4: Globalisation of iTunes: That’s right – no longer do we have one iTunes store for every market, offering a crippled selection of video and music in some territories. Now everybody will get the same content at the same time and at the same price. We call it “Fair Trade: Apple everywhere” approach. We’ve worked with the RIAA and MPAA and industry and will never release new music or video unless we have secured the global rights. It’s the right thing to do for artists, and it simplifies the music industry.

5: iHome: Tired of multiple iTunes and Mail libraries? How about iPhoto albums in 3 different places that are out of sync? Now with iHome, the Mac Server for the home, you can load photos, music and email onto any of your computers, iPods, iPhone or iWhatevers and they will be automatically synced with everything else.
Don’t have much room on that MacBook Air or the Nano? Simply set the maximum amount of space you allocate to photos, music, videos and mail and iHome will automaticaly reduce the size of the files to fit. You can select whether iHome does this by reducing picture or song file size, by setting the number of months of email to keep and by selecting which iTunes, iPhoto or Mail folders you want to copy.
Of course it will all be automatically and intelligently backed up using Time Machine  – no need for three back up copies of a file that is replicated three times – Time Machine will back up the master file and you can rest easy