It’s June now and we’re just few days away from WWDC. There’s been talk of a new flat interface for iOS 7, a further iOS-ified OS X 10.9 with a new wine-based codename Cabernet, an iTunes music streaming service, and possibly a replacement for the aging Mac Pro. I’m going to give you a little preview of what we expect to see and what we really want to see from Apple on the 10th. Keep in mind, this is based on rumors and intuition. Don’t take this as any kind of definitive guide to Apple announcements at WWDC.
What WWDC Is
Like Google I/O, the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference is, as the name suggests, a developers conference where programmers in Apple’s ecosystems come together to get help and tips from both Apple and their fellow developers. WWDC is almost as old as the Mac itself, but had been forgotten for most of its history as a pure developers conference. While there was a keynote, it focused on the direction of Mac software.
A change happened in 2003 after IDG moved the east coast Macworld conference back to Boston and Apple pulled out. While still OS-focused, the WWDC took the MWNY’s place for hardware announcements with the introduction of the PowerMac G5. Since then, especially with Apple pulling out of MWSF as well, WWDC has become the most important event of the year in the Apple community with major software and hardware announcements. There are guaranteed to be iOS and OS X announcements, but when hardware shows up can be spotty.
iOS 7
In its 6 years, iOS, and the iPhones, iPads, and iPods running it, has come out of nowhere to displace the Mac as Apple’s primary focus and breadwinner. If rumors are true, iOS 7 could be the most significant update in the OS’s history since 2.0 showed up with the App Store. With iOS founder Scott Forstall out of the picture, the design of the OS is expected to have a flatter, less skeuomorphic design.
What We Expect to See
Other than the interface overhaul, the feature list for iOS 7 has been pretty much kept under lock and key. One rumored feature could be the Airdrop ad-hoc file sharing technology introduced on the Mac with OS X Lion. It’s a reasonably safe bet that improved versions of Siri and Maps will show up as well.
What We’d Like to See
iOS is six years old and starting to get stale in places. The OS could use some opening up in certain areas and tweaks in others. Chief on my wishlist is hardware controls in the drop down notification menu. Having to go deep into preferences to toggle the wifi, bluetooth, do not disturb, and airplane mode is counter intuitive. The ability to designature default programs such as web browsers, email clients, camera apps would also be welcome. iOS is a mature environment and saddling users to Apple’s own apps is no longer necessary. Combining Facetime and Messages into a single app would be nice as well.
OS X 10.9
The newest Mac operating system is a mysterious cat… if it’s even a cat all. The current codename associated with this release is cabernet, a french red wine. So far, the major rumor with 10.9 is that it may be released a bit later with part of its team repurposed to finishing iOS 7
What We Expect
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was announced to the surprise of about everyone early in 2012. We had a pretty good idea what to expect going into WWDC. 10.9 is the exact opposite. Other than the fact that most expect feature parity with iOS, we don’t know much about it all. Also, don’t be surprised to see Siri replacing the dictation feature.
What We’d Like to See
Touch screen support. After spending time in iOS, far too many of us are instinctively touching our screens. While it’s not a way to completely control a desktop OS, it has its points where it’s handy. For gamers and graphics professionals, it’s way past time to update OS X’s graphics architecture. The OS only supports OpenGL up to version 3.2 which was released in 2009; it’s not even the newest 3.x release with 3.3 coming a year later. Upgrading to OGL 4.3 would be welcome, if nothing more than to keep up with the OpenGL ES support on iOS which has been kept up to date for the most part. Other than that, I think OS X has pretty much gone as far as a traditional point and click interface can go. Apps for Maps, iBooks, and Podcasts be would be very useful. So would being able to use Airplay as a second display.
AppleTV
Could this be the year when Apple’s “hobby” is no longer a hobby?
What We Expect
There are no credible rumors so far.
What We’d Like to See
An App store of some kind. We’d like to see the AppleTV reach its full potential. It’s great for iTunes media, but for the most part, integration with third party services is still suboptimal and in the case of a lot of services like Amazon Prime Video and Redbox Instant, nonexistent. There needs to be a way to easily add channels and remove the ones you don’t want.
iRadio
Apple is rumored to be launching a streaming music service at WWDC with support from at least two labels.
What We Expect
Whether iRadio is closer to Pandora or Spotify and the recent Google Play Music All Access is the big question. It is expected that there will be a free component, supported by Apple’s iAd service. It’s not known whether there will be a paid subscription as well. It’s also unknown whether this will be part of iTunes or a separate entity.
What We Want
An all-access service with an offline mode would be nice. This would work best if there was an easy way to buy songs if you like what you’re hearing. It would also be nice if they took this chance to overhaul iTunes.
MacBooks
One year ago, the 15-inch MacBook Pro Retina launched, followed a few months later by a 13-inch model. Could it be the Air’s turn?
What We Expect
Apple laptop stocks are getting low and a refresh featuring Intel’s new Haswell chips should be imminent. At the same time, Retina-class windows machines are starting to show up. Increased production, and presumably lower-priced panels, would make an all-Retina MacBook lineup favorable with the non-Retina machines going away. Add to that, the Haswell chips have significantly decreased power consumption over the currently shipping Ivy bridge chips. New machines are coming and coming soon, but the question is whether they’ll show up as a part of the keynote or as a soft refresh. The other question is whether the MacBook Air will be among them.
What We Want
Touch screens would be nice if support is added to OS X. For the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros, a motherboard redesign featuring a daughtercard for RAM would be incredibly welcome.
Mac Pro
Professionals have been waiting since 2010 for a true refresh of Apple’s Pro tower and it’s been since 2003, with the launch of the PowerMac G5, that we last had a new case design. 2013 could be the year.
What We Expect
Something… Maybe. Pros are losing patience for sure as the Mac Pro is outdated and lacks Thunderbolt and USB3.0. The question is what form the next Pro Mac will take. The main possibilities are a high-end version of the iMac, perhaps along the lines of the HP Z1; a Mac Mini-like box with Thunderbolt expansion; or an all-new tower of some sort.
What We’d Like to See
I had to defer to our resident producer, Dave Curlee, for this one as he’s the target audience. Dave is happy with the current form factor, but would like the latest architecture based around twin-socket Sandy Bridge-EP E5-2600 series CPUs. Dave would like a healthy serving of USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports with legacy eSATA and FireWire 800 support as well. 4 Gigabit network ports that can be bound together would also be a help for those working with networked storage. There should be plenty of memory slots as Dave would like an option for 256-512GB. Lastly, The current arrangement of 4 PCI-E slots works just fine, but he would like at least two x16 slots for graphics cards.
Well, that about covers it
I’ll say this again, like I always do with these kind of posts, if you go in with this post as your gospel you might be sorely disappointed. The only people who know what truly is going to be announced are at Apple. The WWDC Keynote will be at 1pm eastern/ 10am Pacific on Monday. You can bet we’ll cover whatever does show up. What do you guys expect or want from WWDC? Please post below. If iOS products or Macs are not your thing, please be respectful to those who are in the Apple environment. We’ll see you all next week.
