Apple WWDC 2012 Predictions

The Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) for 2012 is now a month away. Time to start making predictions.

WWDC takes place every year during June in San Francisco and is the venue for Apple to speak with their faithful developer community, so it tends to be focused on operating systems and software rather than product announcements. That said, some fairly large hardware products have been announced some years. Among them, the switch to Intel processors in 2005, the Mac Pro in 2006, MacBook Pro in 2009 and new versions of iPhones in three of the last five years.

Just about every year includes a big MacOS announcement, or at least a great many details of an upcoming version. This year, for example, we can expect to hear a lot about MacOS 10.8 Mountain Lion. In recent years, WWDC has also been a stage for details on upcoming versions of iOS, the operating system that powers iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch devices. It's reasonable to guess that we'll hear about iOS 6.

Here are some possible things we might hear, and my estimation of the probability of each:

• Details of MacOS 10.8  – (Probability 1.0) : This is the one and only sure thing. Apple will speak to their developers about upcoming features of MacOS.
• Announcement and details of iOS 6 – (Probability 0.9) : This is about as close to a sure thing as we can get. iOS is the operating system on more of the devices that Apple sells than any other and iOS will figure heavily in their message.
• Announcement of the iPhone 5  – (Probability 0.2) : Probably not gonna happen. Expect to see the next iPhone in October.
• A new Mac computer model  – (Probability 0.4) : Always a possibility.
• Minor updates to existing Mac models  – (Probability 0.7) : This is quite likely. I'll go out on a limb and make a specific prediction: I think we'll see the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines converge.
• AppleTV software updates  – (Probability 0.8) : Software updates come from time to time to Apple's "hobby". If we don't hear about updates here, it'll only be because some recent updates already have been released. 
• Standalone Apple Television device  – (Probability 0.2) : This one will remain a rumor.
• New iLife versions or modules  – (Probability 0.8) : New version of the iLife software

Those are my predictions at this early date. Maybe I'll refine them as the date gets closer. What do you think we'll hear about? Leave a comment and let us know!


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