On the eve of tomorrow's big WWDC keynote from Steve Jobs, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring and make some predictions.
At this point, some things are pretty well known. Apple is going to introduce a new iPhone, and along with it, version 4 of the iPhone OS. Based upon all of the leaks, I would say that the new iPhone hardware is done, and in manufacturing. As for iPhone OS 4, however, I'm not so sure. There have been 4 betas, and I guess that it might be reasonably stable? But is the new OS ready to go, or is Apple just going to ship it anyway, so as to not hold up the new hardware? My guess is that iPhone OS 4 will be "mostly finished" at WWDC, and be available to download and upgrade iPhone 3G and 3GS devices towards the end of June (alongside general availability of the iPhone HD).
So, some decent chunk of the WWDC keynote will be taken up by showing the new features in iPhone OS 4 — including some features that we've already seen (folders, multitasking, iAds, etc.) as well as some previously unannounced features (iChat). But all in all, I don't know that the new iPhone, or iPhone OS, will be the centerpiece of tomorrow's talk.
I also expect Apple to announce some new Macs (the Mac Pro and Mac mini are the most likely candidates), as well as some new cinema displays (21.5" and 27", the same sizes as the iMac, are my guess). And as always, they will give a state of the union, and talk about how well the Mac, iPhone, and iPad businesses are doing.
But none of that will be the centerpiece either.
And while there have been rumors of Mac OS X 10.7, a revamped Apple TV, enhanced Mobile Me (including a free option), cloud syncing for iTunes, subscription iTunes, etc., etc. I don't think we're going to see any of those things tomorrow.
And hence, none of those wild rumors will be the centerpiece of the keynote.
So, what is going to be the centerpiece? What is going to be the one thread that runs through the entire keynote, and ties everything together? I think that it will be HTML5.
Tomorrow, Steve Jobs will take the stage, and the main point that he's going to attempt to drive home is that HTML5 is "done", and ready for business. One of the most annoying things about the whole Apple vs. Adobe Flash news coverage is that whenever a journalist mentions HTML5, they quickly follow that up with the "fact" that it isn't finished. Well, while it might be true that some parts of HTML5 aren't 100% buttoned down, large swaths of it are done, and have been shipping in browsers for years.
So I fully expect Apple to announce Safari 5 tomorrow (available immediately in beta form for Windows and Mac OS X), that moves the state of the art for HTML5 forward. And yesterday the Mac blogs reported this very fact, including these leaked specifications:
Images courtesy of MacGeneration
That all sounds pretty plausible to me. And I am especially intrigued by the "Safari Reader" feature. If it's anything like Readability or Instapaper, I think it could be a big hit (and an interesting way to screw with Google). I expect that there will be lots of cool HTML5 demos (much like what Apple put on their website this week), and a big push to get developers to start adopting HTML5 features like the canvas tag, CSS3 transforms, and video tag, instead of Flash. Apple might even bring up some web developers, to talk about how they ditched Flash in favor of HTML5.
The real dark horse, that would like to see, would be the announcement of some developer tools, to help with the creation of HTML5-based content. Because I think that's what's really lacking right now — most people focus on the browsers, but they seem to be doing pretty well in terms of implementing the HTML5 spec in a performant fashion. One of the main reasons why there is so much Flash on the Web is that Adobe has created some decent tools for authoring Flash-based content. And instead of waiting around for Adobe to do the same for HTML5, Apple might step in here an offer their own tool.
Does anybody remember Dashcode? I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine Apple putting some effort into this, and extending it so that it can author full HTML5-based websites, not just dashboard widgets. Apple could even change the name, to something like "Webcode", and release it as part of their developer tools.
Now that would be a "one more thing" that would really have people talking. A good chance that it won't happen, but I really hope that it does. ;)
-Andy.