It's only a couple of hours until one of my favorite times of year — an Apple keynote, that launches new products. Not much has leaked this year, other than the fact that there won't be any new hardware announcements (well, at least no new iPhone, anyway). If you want to read some general speculation on what will be announced, John Gruber and Jesper have two interesting takes.
As for me, I think that this photo is pretty-much going to "sum up" the proceedings:
While I think that the individual MacOS X Lion and iOS 5 software releases will be covered, what is really going to matter will be iCloud, and how MacOS X and iOS are going to be integrated with it going forward. As an owner of multiple Macs and iOS devices, one constant pain point is how each device is basically a data island. Sure, I can sync my iPhone and iPad over USB to iTunes, but it's annoying, and totally breaks down when I'm away from my home Macintosh. And more importantly, it's not the way technology is trending. People are shifting their data to servers, not because it's faster, but because it's way more convenient. This is an area where Google and Palm are way ahead of Apple, and so I think that the pressure is really on for iCloud.
Apple's track record for server-based solutions isn't very good (don't get me started on MobileMe), so I don't think iCloud is another sure-fire hit. Not by any stretch. The only thing that's been keeping me sane with all of my devices has been Dropbox, and that service is so utterly fantastic, that they are really setting a high bar not just for Apple, but for the rest of the industry. So, I'd say that I'm hoping for the best for today's keynote — that iCloud not only let's me stream my music and movies, but that it will seamlessly sync settings, apps, data, and documents between all my devices as well.
But given Apple's track record, I'm also prepared for the worst. But you can bet that whatever happens, I'll be watching intently. :)
-Andy.