Monday, June 09, 2008

How did I do?

So WWDC has begun, the keynote is over, and we've got a slew of stuff. How did I do on my guesses?

iPhone 2.0 - yep, nailed that. It'll be called the iPhone 3g, and the pricing plans will change a little - along with more traditional carrier subsidies coming along. No more activation at home? Epic Fail. Simultaneous voice and data? Win.

iPhone software 2.0 - Win. Got that.

Mobile Me? - Got it, upgrade done, same price as .Mac.

10.6? Say hello to "Snow Leopard", due in "about a year". Minor improvements to Leopard (hence the name as a derivative), but smaller size, better performance, and more stability. Haven't seen yet if it's x86-only or not.

No new hardware, no new surprises.

The only place I seriously missed was timing - I expected the iPhone 2 to be available this week, but it will be in-stores on 7/11. And I wouldn't be surprised to see a minor hardware tweak or two tomorrow (Tuesday is traditionally New Hardware Day at Apple). The other alternative is that they may do weekly updates of products from now until the week of 7/11 in order to keep the drums beating.

WWDC predictions

Although Blogger lets me change times, this is actually being posted at about 10:30 EDT on June 9th - 2.5 hours before the Jobs keynote at WWDC. I wrote this for a client last week and I figured now I'd share it:

Here's what I'm expecting to see announced in order of likelihood:

iPhone hardware 2.0: 100%. New phone, with 3g and GPS support, maybe video calling as well. I think they will add AT&T's OTA TV service as well.

iPhone software 2.0: 100%. Same software as on new phone, but minus the features that depend on new hardware (like video, GPS, and 3g radio stuff).

.Mac goes away, replaced with "Mobile Me" service: 98%. It'll support Exchange-like features for regular users and have new stuff over .Mac. It'll probably be announced and then live in a week or so, when 10.5.4 is released.

Preannounce Mac OS 10.6, shipping sometime next year: 75%. I think they'll announce it since Leopard's now about 9 months old. They'll try and ship it in January, and it'll be Intel-only.

New hardware of any sort: 50%. I don't think there's any major stuff from Intel that warrants an announcement next week. Maybe the mini will get an update, but I think that isn't worth announcing at the conference.

"One more thing..." - 50%. Steve likes to pull surprises out of his sleeve. But he does it more often at MacWorld than at WWDC.