Predictions for WWDC07 in San Francisco

Sun, 10 June 2007

Less than 48 hours before the WWDC 2007 kicks off, here is the last minute prediction of what’s going to be announced by Steve jobs.

Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) - full preview, including the ‘top secret’ feature Steve mentioned before. I still think it will be something to do with Windows, either support to run Windows applications from OS X (Crossover style) or some kind of virtualisation that is built into the operating system (is Parallels for sale?).

iLife 07 announced and previewed, available only for Leopard and on sale when 10.5 is released, late this year.

New iMac. It’s been almost three years since the G5 style iMacs have been released (09/2004), and according to the rumours all over the place, the new brushed metal style iMac is about to hit the market. And why not, one thing I hated about my G5 imac was the big fat white plastic area just underneath the screen.

New iMac will have a look identical to the current Apple Cinema displays, only be one inch thick, to accomodate the computer behind the screen, iSight camera at the top and the set of speakers at the bottom. Two sizes - 20″ and 24″ only.

Some folks have indicated that Apple may drop the “i” from iMac and call it simply “Mac”, I don’t believe that will happen. The term Mac is used for all Apple computers, so wasting it on one particular model would be crazy.

With the 17″ iMac being discontinued (another rumour) and possibility of MacMini going as well (yet another rumour), I’m not so sure what happens with the education. There might be some development here, possibly yet another new product.

Google alliance - Steve will announce that Google will drop the Flash and use H.264
for their YouTube service, which of course will work like the charm on Apple TV and of course on your Video iPod.

And … one more thing… .Mac. This will be another thing where Google and Apple come together, .Mac will be essentially “Google applications for your domain” on Mac, integrated into Leopard with two options:

• free, ad supported service with 2GB storage, and
• $99 per year, ad-free and 10GB storage service.

There will be some talk about iPhone but I think Apple will send invitations for yet another event on 29th June, titled One last thing. No new iPods on WWDC 2007, though.

Stumble it!

• Macworld 2008 predictions
• Running OS X and Windows at the same time
• Name the ‘iPhone’
• MacWorld San Francisco 2007 prediction

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