TechPulse 360

The Apple rumor mill has been strangely silence.

Of course there is some chatter. Pundits expect two new iPhones by midyear, one, a cheaper model with less storage and the other perhaps an upscale version with a video camera. Snow Leopard, the next version of the Macintosh operating system OS X, will almost certainly be the focus of the June developers’ conference in San Francisco.

Jobs probably still has his fingerprints on new products, but where are they?

And new iPods should hit the ground in August, when the line is normally refreshed, with the iPod Touch perhaps getting a camera.

But what about the bigger questions? How will Apple capitalize on the rapidly expanding netbook market? How will the company respond to Amazon’s Kindle? And what is its next step into the digital living room?

With CEO Steve Jobs at home recuperating, Apple needs to show it is firing on all cylinders, as the Wall Street analysts love to say. Apple insists Jobs is playing a role. But the company needs to show it can find the next category killer, or creator, at a time when its leader is not 100 percent.

Tom Bajarin, the president of Creative Strategies, says Job’s fingerprints are likely on any product in the pipeline – now and for at least the next two to three years.

“Remember, they started work on the iPhone in 2004 and it did not come to market until 2007,” says Bajarin. “So his influence is still far reaching and could extend for many years, even if he is not involved full time.”

Any yet the rumor mill has dug up no solid report of a netbook, or mobile device that would change the current thinking about mobile computing.

Bajarin reasons that Apple may not enter the netbook market with a low-cost product that cannibalizes their laptop sales. “That is why I think that if they do respond to the netbook threat, it could be in some type of form factor that is very different than what we have now,” he says.

We are waiting. And we are anxious to see what product perfectionist Jobs and his crew unveil.