Apple has just announced the dates for this year’s World Wide Developer Conference. This Apple-sponsored event has always been big when it comes to product announcements, and this year is sure to be no different.
The tagline for the event, “It’s the week we’ve all been waiting for,” doesn’t really lend us any information, so the question of which new Apple products we’ll see is still totally up in the air.
Of course, the first thing that came to my mind when I heard this news was the iPhone, and for good reason. The iPhone 3G was announced at WWDC in 2008, the 3GS took the stage in 2009 and the 4 followed suit in 2010 – new iPhones are no stranger to the WWDC stage.
That being said, as much as I’d like to see a new iPhone this June, I just don’t know if it’ll actually happen. The iPhone 4S wasn’t announced at WWDC but got its own event in October of 2011 and, as much as it pains me to say it, I think it’s more likely that the iPhone 5 announcement will continue with the Fall timeframe.
Now that doesn’t mean we won’t see anything iPhone-related. There’s a chance we could get a demo of the next iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6. Steve Jobs showed off iOS 5 at last year’s keynote along with iCloud and OS X Lion, so a new version of iOS certainly wouldn’t be out of place.
It’s important to remember, though, that even if we do get a peek at what iOS 6 could offer, it probably won’t see a public release until the iPhone 5 hits store shelves.
Another possible product to consider is the MacBook Pro. Apple’s laptop line is due for a refresh and the company has used the WWDC venue to announce new MacBooks once before in 2009 when the unibody design debuted.
There’s a lot of speculation that the next round of MacBook Pros will take a lot of design cues from the super-slim MacBook Air – a rumor that’s supported by the release of Intel’s new Ivy Bridge chip which is reportedly going to play a large part in keeping the performance of Apple’s new notebooks up to snuff.
And you’ve always got to assume that Apple’s got a few tricks up its sleeve as well. WWDC is primarily a software event, so we could see some updates to iCloud or iTunes and there’s also been talk of a redesign for the App Store. There’s no way of knowing for sure until Tim Cook steps on stage and starts talking, but we do know that it’ll definitely be an exciting event.
What do you think will come out of the WWDC keynote this year? Do you agree that iOS 6 and new MacBook Pros are probably on the agenda, or are you holding out hope for a glimpse at the next-gen iPhone? Let me know in the comments section below
