Let’s start with the easy evidence: Apple hired Richard Teversham from the entertainment division of Microsoft. The 15-year Microsoft vet most recently headed strategy for the Xbox group in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

That’s on the heels of hiring Bob Dreblin, the creator of Nintendo’s Game Cube CPU, from AMD, as well as former top IBM chip design manager Mark Papermaster, and former AMD graphics chip CTO Raja Koduri.

Apple’s has tried at least once to enter the hardware gaming market, and has even made a number of other software attempts, such as Game Sprockets SDK, and even started to sell a handful of games for the “click wheel” iPod, but it wasn’t until the iPhone and its App Store came along that they managed any serious traction.

And with the growing emphasis Apple has been putting on gaming during their iPhone OS new release demonstrations, it’s getting harder to ignore that they’re gearing up to make a big strike here.

The idea is real simple: excitement thrives on suspense and anticipation.

The members of the audience expect to be led through a flight of experience — they want ups, downs, twists, and turns. Nothing is more boring and tedious than a predictable sequence of events that lead to some obvious outcome that had been aniticpated all along. Interestingly, in fact, even when an outcome is known in advance (say, as is the case for a narrative based on historical events), the audience can still find the thrills and delight they seek, if the “show” can offer them something they weren’t necessarily specifically expecting at the start.

The capacity to offer the unexpected boils down to managing reveals.

But this isn’t just a technique for playwrites and novelists; it’s also a powerful tactic that can be leveraged in business. Advertisers use it all the time, in designing ad campaigns aiming to generate business for the clientele.

One of the masters at this game is — you knew this was coming — Apple. Though they have received much criticism at various times through the years over their hallmark practices of tight secrecy, it’s impossible to deny just how much anicipation and frenzied suspense they’re able to stir up — every time. They’ve got the formula down.

This is why I contend that Palm’s recent leaks stand to be so detrimental to the Pre’s success.

The fact is that Palm is entering a battlefield against a very well-situated competitor who is a master of this art. I’ve chosen to go with the “battlefield” metaphor for a very particular reason, too — the Reveal is also a vital tool in strategic engagements. Consider what would have happened if the Achaeans built their stories-tall wooden horse at the foot of Troy’s walls.

Of course, we don’t truly know that these “leaks” have any truth to them.

My instinct — and that’s all it is — is unfortunately telling me that there is. As Tahero had commented yesterday:

[T]he threat of impending doom has a way of making one’s actions irrational…. Palm is just trying to cover its bases while throwing a Hail Mary…. If the Pre or Pixie don’t work for Palm they will probably go out of business.

That’s in perfect harmony with what the majority of industry watchers have been saying. And Palm’s dire situation is exactly what makes me believe they are, in fact, working on this lower-end Pre.

Palm seems to have, so far (and to their credit), remained silent on the issue, and I sure hope they don’t change that; this news has to be stonewalled, and the team working on this thing — if it truly is in production — need to be silenced. They must be made to understand that continuing to leak this stuff may land them jobless.

The remaining difficultly, however, is that if this lower-tier Pre really is in production, there’s also just so much Palm will be able to do to control information about it from leaking further.

With or without this story, Palm has already been looking at an uphill battle: they’ve been teetering on the verge of collapse, having survived only by the virtue of some venture capitalists; they’re coming to market with a new, unproven product against competitor whose product and services are not only powerful and established, but this competitor is furthermore in the process of ascending with accelerating momentum; and they’re partnering with Sprint (at least in the US) to do it.

Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Collins Stewart, has expressed doubts of his own about the Pre’s chances at market success (though unrelated to the potential existence of this lower-tier phone). John Biggs, of TechCrunch, wrote an article responding to Kumar’s assessments, concluding:

Not to go all fanboy, but the Palm Pre is a compelling phone. Unless they completely fail in manufacturing, they can’t do much to break the momentum they’ve thus far gained.

While I do agree emphatically that the Pre is a compelling phone, I must disagree with the latter part of John’s statement; there’s plenty Palm can do to break their momentum. Let’s hope the Pre team keep on their game.

As I’d advised yesterday: poker faces as you enter the battlefield, gentleman.

From the article:

Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute two new iPhone-like devices, BusinessWeek has learned. Apple has created prototypes of the devices, and discussions reaching back a half-year have involved Apple CEO Steve Jobs, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Interestingly, the devices are described thus:

One device is a smaller, less expensive calling device described by a person who has seen it as an “iPhone lite.” The other is a media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos, the person says. It would place calls over a Wi-Fi connection.

This seems to dovetail with predictions made by commenter Richard Monson-Haefel.

I think they’re on-point with respect to the tablet form-factor, as well as the fact that it will certainly be a fabulous platform for media consumption, and the like.

But I just don’t know about this Verizon business. My salt grain here comes from Apple’s insistence that GSM is the way to go for mobile, whereas Verizon’s networks are CDMA. Then again, that comment was in direct reference to the iPhone itself.

See also:

• Audaciously Premature Apple “Netbook” Conjecture
• A Bit of Apple “Netbook” Follow-up

Rather than get carried away nitpicking on specific features that will or will not be announced, however, I will instead offer a prediction about what I anticipate to wind up being the the common thread to them; their long term purpose.

My prediction:

Apple’s 17 March 2009 iPhone OS 3.0 event will essentially announce a collection of new capabilities that will largely aim to position the OS as a suitable for use in netbooks.

I’m wagering that iPhone OS 3.0 is to iPhone OS what Snow Leopard will be to Mac OS X. In fact, I’ll even bet that the brunt of the development that will ultimately ship in Snow Leopard will ship first in iPhone OS 3.0.

From the Snow Leopard product page:

Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in [2009] — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos. [Emphasis added.]

Streamlining the codebase of the OS and reducing its footprint are admirable goals for any desktop OS, no doubt — bloat anywhere sucks — but as of this writing, there are no Macs that ship with a hard drive smaller than a 120 GB hard drive, or with less than 1 GB of RAM. These pursuits, however, really become a critical when you’re looking to use that OS to run on smaller mobile devices that have dramatically lower hardware resources to offer than a desktop or even a laptop.

We already know that Mac OS X and iPhone OS share significant parts of their code base, and offer many of the same developer APIs.

With a release date currently expected for this summer, little stretching of the imagination is necessary to expect this iPhone OS release to indeed include the majority of the optimization efforts that will ship with Snow Leopard.

So what does this mean with respect to the features that will be announced tomorrow?

For one, I’m pegging a system clipboard as a certainty. Not because there seems to be strong consensus on the internets [sic], nor because the writers of countless blogs, forum posts, and comment threads have been moaning about its absence, but rather because it would be a glaring omission from a netbook.

I’m also wagering that rumors of the ability to run multiple applications concurrently will pan out, again because a netbook would need it.

Finally, I’m anticipating — albeit with less conviction — a new application launcher, because Gruber’s right; the UX for organizing apps has totally become a pain in the ass, once you exceed three or four screens of icons.

But even if all these features are useful in a netbook, why should Apple necessarily decide to develop and ship them now?

I can think of two reasons:

1. the release cycle fits, and
2. competitors on the horizon

The release cycle is an important consideration. First, as features go, these are each ones that — as a software product manager — I would certainly decide to schedule into a major release cycle (eg, a “something-point-oh” version). Since Apple are clearly attempting to consolidate their engineering efforts behind the Mac and iPhone versions of their operating system software, there seems to be enough evidence to imply that they’d aim to synchronize their release cycles, as well.

Apart from production planning and resource coördination concerns, it’s important to remember that some seemingly formidable competitors to the iPhone are about to hit market. One that is likely to have Apple genuinely attentive is Palm’s Pre.

Being that Apple is unlikely to pump two major releases of the OS out before the Pre ships later this year, I’m wagering that they will attempt to ship (or at least announce) these features with 3.0.

I’m also expecting that we’ll see some features that are more focused on iPhone’s “mobile phone” user experience, which is why I’m also going to buy into the scuttlebutt that cites MMS as a likely inclusion. Although it’s less interesting with respect to the platform, I — and countless others — will certainly be glad to be rid of having to deal with AT&T’s awful viewmymessage.com site.

So, that’s it! Let’s see what the heralds of Apple will announce tomorrow morning.