Always bet on black

With five days until the big event, the tubes are abuzz with speculation: will there be an iPhone? Will Apple scuttle Microsoft with an ahead-of-schedule Leopard release? What color mock turtleneck will Steve wear?

And then there are the givens. iTV will be announced. The Mac Pro will get a couple of shiny new Core 2 Quads (the rumored name, "Mac Pro octo," has a nice ring to it). And, as with every January, Steve will show us how iLife and iWork '07 will rock our worlds. It is regarding this very last product that I would like to make my sole MacWorld prediction: Apple will announce the addition of a personal finance application, not a spreadsheet, to iWork.

I'm putting my money on the table because:

1. I believe the average home user has little use for a spreadsheet application. They do, however, have a strong need for a personal finance application, and unless I missed something, Intuit has yet to announce a Universal Binary version of Quicken. Even if they do, it's bound to be a slightly more polished version of the same turd they churn out every year.
2. To my knowledge, no one else has made this prediction. I have no insider information, just a gut feeling. If I'm right, I'll look like an effing genius.

I look forward to gloating on Tuesday.