My Predictions for the WWDC 2009 Keynote

I’m cutting it mighty fine this year, Phil Schiller gets up on stage in a matter of a few hours to deliver the WWDC 2009 keynote, but I still want to get a few predictions in beforehand. First and foremost, I expect this to be a very two-sided affair, iPhone, and OS X 10.6 SnowLeopard. I don’t expect we’ll see anything else, except maybe, just maybe, a pre-announcement about some sort of tablet device.

Lets start with the tablet, none of the rumours seem to suggest it’s going to be ready before the autumn at the earliest, and they’re probably right, but before the device is ready, I think Apple will want developers developing for it. WWDC is a developers conference, since the focus is probably going to be on all forms of OS X (iPhone 3.0 and Snow Leopard), perhaps Apple will also announce that there will be yet another class of device running OS X soon. I’m expecting the tablet to run a version of the iPhone OS, so if that’s true it would make sense to talk about it now. It’s a long-shot, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Also, IF the tablet is announced, I think it will be Steve Jobs who does it. If there’s nothing as earth-shattering as a tablet to announce, I don’t think we’ll see Steve on stage.

What would surprise me? Any talk of Mac hardware would surprise me, any talk of the “Pro Apps” would surprise me, any talk of iPods (except mentions of the Touch when talking iPhone OS 3.0) would shock me. Like I said, this is an audience of developers, so the keynote is going to focus on the things that are important to developers, and that’s Apple operating systems and their associated technologies and APIs. I also expect them to announce the next model of iPhone hardware today, and also the accompanying APIs to access what ever cool new features they contain.

Speaking of the new iPone, what do I expect? TBH, nothing too dramatic. More speed, more RAM and a better camera about covers it I think. I also think the camera will do video. I really hope Apple have a big surprise up their sleave here, but I’m not expecting one.

As for SnowLeopard, I think Apple will have some surprises here. The last time we heard about SnowLeopard Apple told us it would be mainly a performace update rather than a features update. I see this going one of two ways, either it really does turn out to be just a performance update and they’ll give it to us for a very low price, or Apple will have a bunch of new features to surprise us with, and charge us the full price. Apple being Apple could of course go the middle road and charge the full price for what is basically just a performance update, but lets hope they don’t go there. That would lead to slow adoption, which would lead to developers not wanting to rely on the cool new APIs in SnowLeopard for quite some time to come, which would suck.

Sorry for leaving this post so late, it’s a little rushed and not up to my usual standards, but I hope you found it better than nothing at all. Enjoy the Keynote!