This month I’m going to consult my crystal ball and lay on you what to expect from Apple and the tech world in 2012. Hang on, this might be a bumpy ride!

No more CD/DVD drives—Optical Drives (CD/DVD drives) will disappear completely from all Apple laptops. They’re finished, gone, kaput, history, see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya! And I, for one, say good riddance. Real estate inside laptops is at a premium and I’m glad to see Apple leading the industry (as usual) by dropping these drives. In this world of ubiquitous high speed internet and $15 8GB flash drives, there is almost no need for a CD or DVD anymore. By dropping the optical drive in all their laptops, Apple can put something in that precious space. Maybe some cool new tech we haven’t seen yet or simply a larger battery. Adios, CD/DVD drives; we have some nice parting gifts for you.

7″ iPod touch—It’s gonna happen this year. I see it clearly. In March, I think, right alongside the iPad 3 we’ll see a 7″ iPod touch. Why do I see that? Because the only other tablets that are selling any numbers are the 7″ Kindle Fire and the 7″ Galaxy Tab, and Apple isn’t going to stand by and let that section of the market go unserved by the iPad/iPod line. The line-up will then be the current iPod touch, the 7″ iPod touch and the 10″ iPad. That will make for a damn impressive mobile team.

Apple TV—No, not the little set-top box, but an actual large LCD Hi-Def TV with the Apple TV functionality built into it. LG is doing it, Sony is doing it; it’s time for Apple to do it. And why not? They already make the product. Simply stick an AppleTV set-top box into a nice large LCD and bam, there you are! You say, What does Apple know about making TVs? I say, Have you seen an iMac lately? I also say that Apple knew nothing about making cell phones until they did.

Tablets Rule—Most people don’t need a computer. There, I said it. Joe and Jane average don’t need a full-on computer with mouse, keyboard and monitor. They don’t need a big hard drive and to know how to install software and organize their files into folders and to backup their computers to another hard drive. Most people don’t want to do that stuff, and they will embrace any technology that takes that burden from them. That technology is the tablet. Whether it’s an iPad or Android tablet, a tablet device is all that most people need. Why? Because most people aren’t creators, they’re consumers. They read online articles and e-books and they watch videos, listen to music, play games and use a few apps. But aside from a few emails or Facebook posts, they don’t generally create anything. So a tablet is perfect for them.

So I see in the year 2012 that desktop and laptop computers will continue to decline in sales and tablets will continue to rise. Most households will have two or three tablets. The only ones who will have actual computers will be students and people who use their computers for work and the people who create all that content that is consumed on tablets.

Cable War—The cable companies, with Comcast leading the way, will fire a shot across the bow of the tech industry to let them know that they’ve had it up to here. For the last three years or so, early tech adopters across the nation have been canceling their cable television service in favor of set-top boxes such as Roku and AppleTV. With the availability of Netflix streaming, Hulu Plus, Amazon video and the countless other great, and FREE, content channels that these little boxes offer, the writing is on the wall for Comcast and their buddies . . . and they’re pissed. So I look for Comcast to attempt to either get some legislation passed to hamper the set-top box companies or for them to appeal directly to the movie and TV studios to stop providing content to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. It’s another example of an outdated business model waging war against technology instead of trying to find a way to remain relevant. And it’s gonna get ugly.

And that’s the way it’s going to be in 2012, ladies and gentlemen. These are exciting times to be alive and technology is going to continue to do some amazing things for us. But there will be some growing pains along the way as we let go of old technologies.

Now let’s see what this crystal ball has to say about the PowerBall drawing tonight . . .

This month I’m going to talk to you about a variety of Apple stuff, their products, their culture and their future.

AppleTV is due for an update and rumors say it’s coming soon. Expect it to include Bluetooth for the remote instead of the current IR system. It’s sure to have the iPad’s and iPhone 4S’s A5 dual core 1GHz processor, and more RAM. What I’m waiting to see in AppleTV, though, is the ability for it to run apps and games, basically turning your TV into a really large iPad. Now that would be cool.

iPhone 4S is out, and it’s the best selling iPhone yet. On the outside it looks almost exactly like the iPhone 4, so all iPhone 4 cases and accessories will continue to work with it. Inside is the aforementioned A5 dual core processor, though it’s throttled back to run at 800MHz, most likely to keep battery life comparable to the previous model iPhone 4. It has a beefed up camera, the Siri personal assistant, and iOS5. Siri is pretty damn cool and I think Apple is going to push themselves and others to really refine voice commands and turn them into a viable replacement for touch on our mobile devices. In other words, the future of how we interact with out computers and handhelds is here, folks, and it’s about time!

OS X Lion is now at version 10.7.2 but my question remains—will Apple ever give me the ability to turn off a few of the things that I don’t like in Lion? That would include Versions, the monochrome Finder icons, the placement of drives and external storage at the bottom of  the Finder sidebar, and a myriad of other small things. Yes, I know that there are hacks out there that revert some of these things to their pre-Lion behavior but I want it to be an option in OS X that I can move on to the future or stay grudgingly mired in the past. What can I say? I’m a sucker for nostalgia. Don’t get me wrong, though, progress is good. But changing things just for the sake of change . . . well, that’s a very Microsoft-like thing to do.

What does Apple’s future look like without Steve Jobs is the big question right now, and rightly so. It should be obvious to everyone that Steve was not just the CEO of Apple; in many respects, he WAS Apple. From his sense of style, his extraordinary ability to see the future and guide technology there, to his unwavering sense of how Apple should perform as a company, Steve was the real deal and his importance to Apple the company cannot be overstated. How many other CEOs can you remember that saw such an outpouring of emotion, not to mention press coverage, upon their deaths?

On Oct. 5, the day Steve died, the Apple home page was set to a large photo of a healthy Steve and the words “Steve Jobs 1955-2011.” It remained on the home page until Oct. 20, the day after Apple held a memorial at the Cupertino campus for all Apple employees and beamed to all Apple stores, which closed for a few hours to join in the celebration of Steve’s life.

As I wrote last month in a Boro Mac Shop blog post, after Steve stepped down as CEO:

“I don’t think we’ll see how Jobs’s absence will affect Apple for at least 3-4 years because a company the size of Apple already has their next four or five products in the pipeline. One tech pundit has said that we might even see an Apple that takes more chances and tries different things because there won’t be one man through whom all ideas must flow. Whether that will be good or bad for Apple, of course, remains to be seen.”

On a personal note, I’m sad that Steve is gone, but damn glad he was here. I always thought of him as the Willy Wonka of the tech world—a benign dictator who reigned over his kingdom, churning out wonderful and exciting tools and toys for us, and pushing us all to imagine something greater and showing us how to achieve it. Steve was one of the crazies. He changed things. And he put a dent in the world.

Now that, my friends, is the way to leave a mark.