Sadly, it's just a mockup, but it's gorgeous anyway
Well, not long to go now until WWDC 2009. The rumour mills are once again chugging away, and the general gist of them is as such:
- Apple will almost certainly announce a new iPhone, probably with video conferencing. iPhone OS X 3.0 will certainly be putting in an appearance.
- Snow Leopard’s final preview build will be released (we know this) and we can expect speed improvements, improved memory management and 64-bit optimisation, a brand new Finder written in Cocoa (really? it took nine and a half damn years?) and possibly a new UI, codenamed Marble. It’s known that QuickTime is getting a major upgrade, and is also getting a revised silver icon.
- This isn’t really a rumour, but it’ll be interesting to see, in the coming months, how Apple reacts to Palm’s move to make the Pre fake an iPod (and therefore sync with iTunes). They could do one of three things: they could update iTunes to remove the sync functionality with the Pre, they could leave it as it is, or they could offer an olive branch to third-party hardware developers and start offering an iTunes API. I think the third would be the wisest, but the second is the most likely.
- And finally… the Dear Leader. He took leave from Apple until sometime in June, and we know that his minions, Phil Schiller and Tim Cook will be doing the WWDC keynote. Although Schiller ain’t bad, he’s not as confident and doesn’t have as much charisma as Jobs. Tim Cook is like watching Dick van Dyke trying to read the news—it’s painful. However, if video conferencing on the iPhone is one of the features that will be announced… well, I wouldn’t be in any way surprised if he made a surprise appearance, say, calling from a fresh iPhone in the audience.
- Someone, somewhere in the WWDC audience will need fresh underpants at some point during the keynote, because the previous set will have melted.
