What's "In The Air" At MacWorld? WiMax? Or Ultra-WideBand?

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on January 13

Speculation around the meaning behind the “something in the air” language that is appearing on banners at the Moscone Center (image above borrowed from AppleInsider) in San Francisco has kicked the Apple rumor industry into overdrive, and left many like me guessing what it means. Clearly there’s something new on the wireless front coming during Steve Jobs’ keynote on Tuesday. But what?

The consensus appears to be that WiMax will be introduced in Apple notebooks, and the much-rumored ultra-portable product. WiMax, you’ll recall, is that next-generation wireless data connection technology that Intel so loves, and that Sprint has been testing under the name Xohm. It’s an interesting notion, and certainly plausible. But Wimax has had some setbacks of late, not the least of which was the parting of the ways between Sprint and Clearwire last year. As Valleywag notes, heading down the Wimax path would be a risky play for Apple. It could certainly be the type of move that sets the entire computer industry on a new course that the PC vendors are forced to follow. Or the service could suck, and the whole idea could conceivably backfire. Dan Frommer at AlleyInsider doubts the WiMax idea, and not unfairly.

There’s also a lot of chatter around streaming video for the iPhone, probably enabled via a Slingbox client for the iPhone. That would be something “in the air” too. Right? Sure. But given that SlingBox software is available for all the other major wireless platforms, from the Blackberry to the Symbian OS, this one is almost obvious.

But there’s another option. One of the rumor sites, Macmegasite suggested that the new wireless technology could be something called “Beam,” which it describes as file sharing technology that’s faster than Bluetooth. That got me to thinking, and suddenly while at the barber shop, a thought struck me: Could Apple be ready to deploy Ultra-Wideband technology? More after the jump.

The potential is very interesting. Imagine sharing files between two or more Macs through a wireless network that creates itself instantly on the fly simply when one Mac is brought within range of another. Of course there would be permission settings involved, just like Bluetooth pairing. You’d have to give another Mac permission to join your own in any instant network and then set the terms of sharing, but you get the idea. Apple’s Bonjour technology for sharing over the network would probably come into play as well.

I wrote about UWB at the end of 2005 and I think it’s time has come.

Essentially it’s a short-range high-speed wireless technology that is intended to replace the cables and cords usually required to convey big batches of data from one place to another. For instance, it’s suitable for pushing a stream of HD-quality video from a set top box to a TV without the need for a cable connection between them, so long as they’re within reasonable range of each other. UWB is already showing up in TVs announced at CES under the name “wireless HDMI from Philips and Westinghouse Digital among others.

So which will it be? WiMax or UWB? Assuming the weather in New York cooperates, I’ll be getting on a plane tomorrow for San Francisco and will be in the audience for the keynote on Tuesday. That gives us a little more than 24 hours to speculate. Leave your own thoughts in the comments.

Update:A little something called "MacBook Air" is being passed around as a possible name for the ultra-portable notebook product. The evidence is shaky, but here it is. The name is appears in the usage logs of the instant messaging program Adium. What it essentially means is that a machine type called MacBookAir signed into Adium at some point during the second week of 2008. Take it as you will, but it could be that we've just seen the first evidence of this new creature in the wild. Props to MacRumors.com for getting what little is known about the name in one place.

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