Well, another Worldwide Developers Conference is upon us, with the much anticipated Steve Jobs Keynote tomorrow morning. Something a lot of folks may be wondering is what they’re going to announce: this is their flagship conference, and in the past they’ve proven to make some major announcements during the Keynote. Well, the folks who might actually know are all under very tight NDAs, but since I’m under no such obligation, I’m going to offer up some prognostications based on nothing more than a gut feeling and a familiarity with Apple’s products and history. Let’s see how many I manage to get right.

First up, I think we’re going to see some major announcements involving Leopard. I think we’re going to see a retooled interface, and a completely rewritten Finder. The Finder has been a mainstay of Apple’s interface for decades, and has remained relatively consistent throughout: while it may be quite different from, say, OS 7’s Finder, you can still absolutely see the evolution that brought it from point A to point B. Seriously changing or updating this would be huge, and certainly something they would keep close to the cuff. There are a few reasons I think this may be the case: when Steve showcased an early build of 10.5, he made it absolutely clear that they had several major features they were keeping quiet about for now, and have been promoting the fact that the “feature-complete Leopard Beta will be available for the first time” at this year’s WWDC. All those developer seeds they’ve released, even as recently as a few weeks ago, were apparently just warm-up.

Next, I think we’ll see an upgrade to the iPhone, before it’s even officially released: nothing too big, just more storage (8 and 16gb instead of 4 and 8gb). This will also be accompanied by new iPods using the larger storage capacity. Solid state storage solutions have been growing in size and dropping in price steadily, and with the iPod due for its annual refresh, I think this is a reasonable idea.

While we’re on the topic of hardware, perhaps I’m just being hopeful, but I think we’ll finally see an official Tablet Mac, utilizing their new Multitouch technology ala the iPhone, and using the embeddable version of OS X they developed for the iPhone. I don’t think it’ll be full-size: I suspect it’ll serve a niche, acting both as a tablet and as the much-rumored sub-compact laptop. Probably approximating 8.5″x5.5″ in dimensions, give or take.

And finally, I think we’ll see several major updates to the iApps, both iLife and iWork, including a spreadsheet app, and a nice spate of new features throughout. Also perhaps wishful thinking, but I hope to see an additional app within the iWork bundle: a fully functional Sketch program. For those not familiar, Sketch was originally part of 10.0, and was a rudimentary vector based illustration tool. You can still find it along with the source buried in the Developer Tools, but as part of my Tablet prognostication, I think we’ll see a new, updated, more robust drawing solution included in one bundle or another. Apple does create a lot of useful technologies that they offer for use to developers, but it’s not entirely altruistic development: their primary development purpose is for Apple’s use. Given the work done on Core Image and Core Animation, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect another set of Apple graphics applications.

I hope everyone enjoys the Keynote, and feel free to post your own prognostications in the comments here!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 12:56 AM and is filed under AppleTalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.