“With the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) quickly approaching, the Mac rumor scene has been buzzing with rumors and reports. As usual, MacRumors provides this Rumor Roundup as a summary of major rumors circulating around the Mac Web before the big event,” arn writes for MacRumors.
MacRumors covers the following rumors and the speculation about each from various outlets:
• Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
• Mac Pro (Power Mac desktop/workstation replacement)
• iPhone
• iPod+iTunes: iPod nano, “true” video iPod, iTunes Movie Store
• Xserves
• Displays
• Other updates
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” and “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Forget iPhone. Will not arrive before 2007 earliest… But what about a proper media center with DVD-burner, dual-TV-tuner and wireless functionality? Thats what I am waiting for!
First post!
Prediction: Steve will announce OS X 10.6 just to freak out the Redmond spies trying to harvest ideas for Eventualista.
I don’t really see what iPod has to do with Developers. So to me, it doesn’t seem logical..
However, there was an iPod on the WWDC banner…
10.5 MacPro, Xserve, they all make sense…
Amazing Apple can keep the lid on their product offerings as much as do. Do they lock their employees in a closet at the close of business?
Rumors…rumors…rumors. “I want the facts Ma’m, just the facts.” Rumors listed here are rather weak. How about some photoshop type pictures to add substance to this creative guessing game?
It’s macrumors.com my friends. Get is it wrong 99% of the time.
“I don’t really see what iPod has to do with Developers.”
That’s easy. Leopard will only ship on new, wireless 100 GB iPods thus ensuring huge iPod sales through to the winter holidays.
Very clever, Steve!
P.S. And system upgrades 10.5.1 to 10.5.9 will only be made available on preloaded nanos.
Jeff,
Not entirely true. Macrumors.com got it right about the Intel switch the day before WWDC last year.
I think the changes to the underpinnings of 10.5 will be a bigger deal but won’t be talked about much by Uncle Steve in the keynote. He always shows off the consumer-oriented flashy features but it’s the geeky stuff that gets me hot and heavy.
Can’t wait – it’s Christmas Eve today, folks!
Ampar,
“Eventualista” – great one! Giving you credit for that one each and every time I use it.
Thanks, Cubert!
“Do they lock their employees in a closet at the close of business?”
shhhhhhhhhh! ! ! (Yes, but they get to sit on piles of stock option certificates which is surprisingly comfortable.)
You people need to think big.. I mean Apple-type big….
Imagine a complete telecommunications system using a Vonage-like system for video phone AND television. The core component, a central data center, need only be connected directly to your cable/DSL modem… much like Airport on steroids. It would work via Wi-fi to all of its components such as media centers for audio and video recoding/playing, computers and an iPhone that automatically switches from in-home wi-fi to cell phone when out of range. This way there are no cell charges while at home. 911 calls can be made as the base unit transmits its own GPS location.
Apple could greatly simplify all of a home’s and business’ communication needs. Such a wi-fi base station could support multiple independent wi-fi (iPhone) cell phone numbers, computers, and media centers. RendezvousMedia would instantly network all types of devices, not just computers. It would even work seamlessly with other RendezvousMedia networks over the internet making all types of combinations possible such as programming video shows at home from a computer at work… watching recorded videos from anywhere to anywhere.
With the power of its bandwidth management, the new iPhone video phones would be no larger or complex than existing cell phones, would be as smooth as any other QuickTime streaming, and incorporate all of the functions of the iPod w/ wi-fi file transfers. No need to store large video files, they can be streamed from your own computer or media center device. All data would be safe using Apple’s existing AES-128 on-the-fly encryption.
If Apple provided the iChat-to-landline/cell phone as a service of .Mac THEN I might consider continuing my $99/yr subscription.
Apple already has the technology in place to stun the computer and telecommunications industries by bringing them together in Apple’s usual seamless style.
Anybody want to buy a fully-loaded Power Mac G5 Quad, cheap?
I got to have me the latest hardware. Don’t want to get left behind!
After the raptures, can I have your Mac?
a lot of people keep mentioning that there will NOT be an iPod nor an “iPhone” released tomorrow because WWDC is a developer conference NOT a consumer conference.
HOWEVER
what if apple opened up the iPod to developers? for games, utilities, etc… Perhaps something in XCode (for Leopard) to quickly develop iPod apps?
and for the “iPhone”. a blackberry type device could easily be seen as a business/developer type product. businesses use the blackberry to increase productivity among employees. i could see developers being very interested in using an iPhone to increase their productivity. AND perhaps the phone would be open in XCode in a way to easily create apps/utilities as well.
just wondering.
I hear that Apple is planning to introduce “The Banner”. You will be able to have all the Apple products in each room to look at and dream about and worship. It will be a “Banner” year.
Predictions:
Apple announces 10.5 is ahead of schedule, and will be available Sept. 1st (along with new Mac Pros).
Software to run Windows apps will be bundled. Performance touted as “better than native”.
OS X 10.6 announced, availability in late 2007.
A regional run on Charmin occurs as MS collectively goes brown.
Wouldn’t it be sweet…
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I don’t really see what iPod has to do with Developers. So to me, it doesn’t seem logical..
I dunno, maybe Apple will finally open up some iPod API’s.
Maybe we’ll see an advanced new form of iPod, with widespread appeal to developers.
We’ll all know soon enough.
prediction___Apple will not release Leopard right away but in the interim will release Bobbysox into a live audience.
Damnit, whatif, you stole my post! Your exactly right, though I posted the idea months ago on MDN. Apple needs to create support an SDK for iPod development, which would absolutely explode the iPod ecosystem (in the same sense as the Cambrian explosion — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion). This would lock in the iPod market even more securely and lock out the competition (Zune and the other losers).
And of course, that would make any additional iPod hardware announcement properly fit into the main theme of WWDC.
Apple won’t release Mac Pros with Leopard installed. Tiger will ship on the Mac Pros for several months before Leopard is released. This way, the early Mac Pro adopters will also pay for the $129 upgrade once Leopard is released.
I want Steve to get up on stage and demonstrate voice recognition on a Mac.
There’s no big reason, it already exists and has been there for years, but I just want him to successfully do it and show that it works on a Mac, but when Microsoft recently did it for Vista it all went hilariously wrong and they had to make up implausible excuses about noise from the crowd – who we could hear were silent until they started laughing at this latest failed demo.
It would just be a great way for him to demonstrate the difference between Apple’s ‘it just works’ approach and Microsoft’s ‘we hope it might work one day’.
Anyone know of who will support us with live info from the WWDC? Links or webstreams?
I want Steve to get up on stage and demonstrate voice recognition on a Mac.
Why merely demonstrate?
Steve should drive his whole keynote via VR, in over-the-top proof that “it just works”.
Apple, DO it!
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Steve is going to save his ‘surprise’ arrows for MWSF, and will do nothing to interfere with focus on Leopard.
WWDC is not the right venue for radically new products that aren’t related to the OS.
What we will see at WWDC is Leopard demo’d (but no release date), a Mac Pro (nee: Power Mac) and possibly a Mac Serve (nee: xServe).
Leopard will be king here because: “It’s the OS, Stupid”. It’s just that simple.
Macrumors said at the end of the article they’ll be live-blogging the keynote…will Apple make the keynote available on their website later in the day, like they do for the MacWorld keynote?
(I’m hoping there’ll be some decent conferences this year at MW07, so I can justify a conference pass just to get the keynote again…)
Ah…Just checked in for WWDC.
iPods? I doubt it. As I’ve said, Apple has no problem getting the press to pay attention to an iPod announcement and they don’t need to go “off message” at WWDC. About the only iPod thing I could see would be something like an 8GB iPod nano–fairly minor bump. Have 2, 4, and 8GB iPod nanos for the price of the old 1, 2, and 4.
New Displays are a possibility–I brought a colorimeter just in case–but the more I think about it, the less likely it might be. One of the alleged big new cool features of Leopard is resolution independence. So I don’t think Apple wants to push new high-resolution displays before Leopard because they’ll look tiny on Tiger. So new monitors might wait. But there are a lot of good reasons for Apple to do something with their monitor line-up (price being the most obvious).
One reason I could see for a new set of monitors would be the Macintosh Pro (Please Apple–spell it out!) in a non-metallic case. Apple makes great hay over the fact that the monitors look like the computers–metallic monitors, metallic computers. If the Macintosh Pros use some form of different case, I’d suspect that Apple would retool the monitor housing as well to make the sure they match.
As for the Macintosh Pro, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple showed it and announced shipping dates. While the leading software for the Macintosh Pro (Photoshop, Xpress) won’t be available until next year, Xcode is available now. And developers buy lots of “Pro” machines. Will they be shipping at the conference? It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Will Apple discontinue the PowerMac G5? Nope. They’ll have a little section in the store and keep selling them until Photoshop and Xpress ship. Figure that at next year’s WWDC, Apple will have a ceremonial burial of the PowerPC chip.
iPhone? I doubt it, but I would love it if they did ’cause my cellphone went tits-to-the-sunshine last night, so I am cellphoneless in San Francisco. Way frustrating. If Apple built it this week, I would so be there.