There’s two Apple events each year that fuel a flood of rumors and speculations about new Apple products and announcements, MacWorld in January and the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) mid-year.
This week, June 9-13, is the WWDC08 in San Francisco, CA, with three tracks of developer sessions, iPhone, Mac and IT.
The conference has been sold out and there is grand speculation about possible announcements of new Apple products.
Perhaps the most anticipated announcement is a 3G iPhone. A 3G iPhone would provide a wider range of more advanced services with greater efficiency. Services might include wide-area wireless voice telephony, video, video calls and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment.
There’s been leaked information these last couple weeks about a new iPhone and even suspect images of new models but nothing confirmed.
Update: The 3G iPhone was announced for availability on July 11th with lower prices of $199 for 8GB model and $299 for 16GB model. Will include GPS support.
Version 2.0 of the iPhone software could also be an announcement with additional functionality and third party applications.
Update: Version 2.0 software was demonstrated with many new features. Upgrade free for iPhone owners, $10 for iPod Touch owners.
It’s also being speculated that Apple will show the next version of OS X, 10.6, Snow-Leopard. This may be especially important because it’s rumored indicate that 10.6 will not support the older legacy PowerPC computers. I’d hate to see that happen but common sense says it’s only a matter of time till Apple drops support for the older platforms.
Update: Steve Jobs mentions that there would be a sneak peak of OS X, 10.6 during a session later today. No details as of now.
Other speculations include refreshes of Apples MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops and perhaps a complete update of .Mac to include a name change to Mobile Me.
Update: No other hardware updates or refreshes were announced. However, .Mac will become MobileMe with push email and better sync capabilities. Current .Mac user will be upgraded to MobileMe.
Whatever is announced, I’m sure there’ll be surprises as well as disappointments. At least that part is predicable.
Note: The WWDC08 keynote speech by Apple CEO Steve Jobs with be today, Monday, June 9th, at 10AM PST.