What Does Apple Have in Store for WWDC?

By 11:30 or so on Monday morning, Steve Jobs' keynote at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference here in San Francisco will be over, and we'll all know what transpired. As of Sunday afternoon, though--which is when I'm writing this--all we can do is puzzle out what's likely to happen or not happen in the world of Macs, Mac software, iPods, iPhones, and related gizmos, applications, and services.

So without any further delay, a few musings...

Leopard: The big question about the next major release of OS X is whether there are any truly major surprises we don't know about yet. (I'm guessing that if there are, we'll learn about them tomorrow, since developers will reportedly receive a "feature complete" pre-release version of the OS.)

There's been some intriguing buzz over the past week about Apple's Core Animation technology resulting in a Leopard with a UI that's more dazzling than we expect. Sounds plausible. But I tend to doubt rumors that Apple will ship Macs with Windows pre-installed, include Parallels-like virtualization in the OS, or even give Leopard the ability to run Windows apps without Windows--I still can't see Apple betting the Mac platform on Windows compatibility, and I especially can't see Steve Jobs dwelling on it at a conference for Mac developers. (Actually, if the last of these rumors comes true, I'll eat my hat--which is easy for me to say, since I don't wear one.)

Of course, if Leopard includes any truly surprising features, we might not be able to guess what they might be. And Steve Jobs has said that some news was being held back. So it seems entirely possible that something significant will be known as of tomorrow, especially since Leopard as it stands is fairly spare when it comes to gotta-have features (the Time Machine backup utility excepted).

iPhone stuff: You can't have a Steve Jobs keynote right now and not mention the iPhone, at least a little. But the room will be full of developers, so I'd only expect major iPhone news if Jobs can tell those programmers news about their ability to write programs for the iPhone. (At first he said it would be a closed platform; more recently, he's said there'd be some sort of possibility of third-party programs, but we have few details.)

A lot of people--me included--would love for there to be news involving the iPhone being available without a two-year contract with AT&T. Some have noted that the new ads don't have fine print about a contract being obligatory. We'll see, although if the iPhone is $500 to $600 with a contract, it would presumably be really expensive without one...

New iPods that aren't iPhones: Really, really unlikely; the iPhone is the next-generation iPod, and no truly new iPod is going to steal its thunder before it's even available. (Prediction: The day will come when the majority of iPods are also phones--and it may not take all that long.)

New Macs: One thing's clear: We won't see a new MacBook or new MacBook Pro--at least not a direct successor to any of the current models--since all the current ones got incremental bumps in the past few weeks.

But I'd like to think that some new Mac will be onstage tomorrow, perhaps as Jobs' "one last thing." It's been a long, long time since Apple released a strikingly new Mac. (Er, scratch that--every Intel Mac is strikingly new on the inside, but except for the MacBook, the industrial designs haven't changed much.) There are rumors that fourth-generation brushed-metal iMacs may be in the offing. There's also persistent speculation about a Mac subnotebook--up until now, it's involved a model with no optical drive, but with Toshiba's 2.4-lb Portege R500 packing a DVD burner, I don't see why Apple can't release a really light MacBook that's similary equipped. And perhaps it will.

Mac software and services: It's about time that Mac users got a new version of the iLife suite, and maybe iWork, too. And the .Mac service is pretty darn archaic, especially considering that it costs $99 a year. If there's no news about new versions of any of these services, it'll be disappointing.

Wild cards: It's hard to imagine that Apple will announce any truly major products that aren't Macs or highly Mac-related. But it would make perfect sense to spring news relating to the whole iTunes/iTunes Store ecosystem. Either something minor (more content providers selling downloads) or major (some sort of subscription offering to complement the per-download pricing).

Those are my Sunday-afternoon thoughts, anyhow. I'd love to hear yours--especially if they disagree with mine. I'll be at the keynote tomorrow and plan to blog it here as it happens, EVDO willing...