Type of Article: MacTech Blog

This is part three of a six-part op-ed series in which I make my predictions for Apple’s product line-up for 2012. Today we’ll look at the company’s iPod.

The iPod no longer gets the big love and attention it once did. That goes to the iPhone and iPad, products that have evolved from the iPod and cannibalized some of its sales. Despite this, Apple’s MP3 player remains dominant in its market and has years of life left.

But there’ll be fewer models to choose from. Per my crystal ball, the iPod shuffle and iPod classic have seen their last updates and will quietly disappear in 2012.

An Apple patent (number 20110320814) for a system and method for authentication has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. It involves a means of providing authentication based on a process that utilizes, in one aspect, a physical theory or a physical value such as time and in another aspect, a random value.

This is part two of a six-part op-ed series in which I make my predictions for Apple’s product line-up for 2012. Today we’ll look at the company’s tablet, which I think will evolve into a family of products.

The iPad 3 will arrive sometime between late February and early March. The design will be the same, though just slightly thicker to accommodate more storage and a high-res screen. The iPad 3 will come in a model with 128GB of solid state storage; the iPad 2 tops out at 64GB.

Today I’m launching a six-part op-ed series in which I make my predictions for Apple’s product line-up for 2012. Today we’ll look at the company’s smartphone.

We’ll see the iPhone 5 arrive no later than June. I predict that will sport a redesigned form factor with a four-inch, 960×540-pixel qHD screen and an ARM 6 processor with a quad-core.

The good news: it will be screamingly fast and the screen will look great. The bad news: all those iPhone cases you have — and some accessories — will no longer fit.