So on Monday, June 8, 2009, it is once again time for Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) at 10:00AM PT at Moscone West in San Francisco. With that there will be a Keynote and I’ve been hearing some rumors of what might come out of said keynote.
Some of these predictions include:
- iPhone OS 3.0 being released.
- New iPhone Hardware.
- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release date
- Steve Jobs making an appearance.
- Mac Tablet.
Let’s go through these and I’ll let you know what I think.
Table of Contents
iPhone OS 3.0 being released
I do not see this happening on June 8th. Will they talk about iPhone OS 3.0? Yes, definitely. From what I’ve read about the iPhone OS 3.0 betas, I do not think the software is fully ready to ship. There are still some rather major bugs that need to be fixed. Additionally, from other blogs who have gotten tips, the last iPhone OS 3.0 beta was just over a month ago, yet the one before that was only about a week prior.
To many it seems as though such a long time without an update would be an indicator that it’s nearly finished, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The builds with that seemed to be coming faster.
My thought with iPhone OS 3.0 is that it is not done, and that Apple has something up it’s sleeve with regards to releasing a new beta. It seems to me that they are planning on introducing new features and have been pushing off releasing a new beta until WWDC to be able to announce the features so developers can implement them into their applications.
What does Apple have up its sleeve? I don’t know. It could be video recording, could be iChat (although Adium would be much better), could be any number of applications.
New iPhone Hardware
Rumors have been swirling about new iPhone hardware being released at WWDC, again I just cannot see this happening. Perhaps an announcement, sure why not. If there is an announcement it probably wont’ ship until Late July. I say late July based solely on the fact that the original iPhone was released on Friday, June 29th, iPhone 3G was Friday, July 11th (13 days later). So, I would assume they are going to stick with the tradition of 13 days after that, which leads us to July 24th;
I do not have any evidence of this, just seeing a pattern. My guess is that I will be wrong, but it’s my thought.
The second aspect of the new iPhone Hardware rumors is the 3.2 megapixel camera, front facing video camera, magnometer, and 32 gigabyte model. All of these seem plausible except for the front facing video camera. I do not see this happening, unless they announce iChat for video conferencing. Although, then it would most likely only be over Wi-Fi since AT&T’s network in the US sucks, particularly 3G coverage.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release date
We all know that WWDC will focus on software — it is a developer conference afterall. Last year, Steve Jobs covered Snow Leopard and had said that it will be available in ‘about a year’. Well, it is now a year later and we’re still waiting. I do expect them to announce a release date, at which point I might end up buying my Apple Server Maintenance for my copy of OS X 10.5, or maybe I’ll just buy a new copy of OS X Server so I can then have two copies.
The rumor mill has been quiet about OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as of late, possibly pointing to the product essentially being finished. I do hope that they show off quite a bit of Snow Leopard. I definitely do see a release date for Snow Leopard being announced.
Steve Jobs making an appearance
When Apple announced that Steve Jobs would be taking a medical leave of absence they have always maintained that he would not be back at Apple until the end of June. I do not see why they would change that date.
I do not see Steve Jobs making an appearance, at least not in public. He might be backstage at the keynote just for support for his management team.
Mac Tablet.
The Mac Tablet rumors have been swirling for quite some time. I’m going to use the term mac tablet, although we do not know the exact form factor.
I do not see them announcing this at WWDC, this would be it’s very own special event. If the form factor is that of a larger iPod Touch, then it would make more sense to me that they announce this with new iPods not at WWDC. They could just do the same thing that did with the Apple TV, just give a preview.
Although, my own thoughts would be that the so called ‘Mac Tablet’ would be able to dual-boot both Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and iPhone OS. Therefore, if you needed to get some longer term work done you could do so with Snow Leopard, yet if you want to watch video content, play games, surf the web, etc you could do so with the iPhone OS software. Just my own thoughts I guess. Maybe it is just what I want to see in a Mac Tablet.
Final thoughts
These are just some of the rumors that have surfaced about Apple’s WWDC 2009 Keynote event. It won’t be too much longer until our anticipation is quelled and we can all go back to speculating on rumors for the next event. That is, of course, after the reality distortion field has been lifted and we digest the keynote for about a week.
