iPhone release at WWDC: surprises in store?
If you haven’t heard it yet, CNet News.com has reported that the iPhone will be released on June 11. The source of this date is a salesperson for Cingular, which makes this all rather puzzling. A front-line salesperson for Cingular is unlikely to have much inside information, so this could simply be a case of someone making something up to quiet a customer, but it could have just been a slip-up admitting the date.
Given the consensus that June is the month the iPhone will be released, a release at the opening of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference seems reasonable. The conference has become another venue for Apple to release even consumer products in recent years, and we all know how Jobs enjoys his keynotes.
There are still several questions provoked by this date, though. One is that it doesn’t seem that Jobs has even been confirmed to deliver the keynote, though that could certainly be coming in the next month or two. It’s also not exactly a rare occurrence to have Apple only announce a product at an event such as the WWDC keynote. Would anything build buzz like Jobs making a big deal out of just giving a firm release date at the event, instead of actually releasing the iPhone?
Assuming the iPhone is released on June 11, though, this could entail some very interesting possibilities. Up until this rumor, this WWDC was believed to be Leopard’s big coming-out party, with all eyes on the new version of Mac OS X. While Apple has essentially called the iPhone a closed platform, we’re wondering if that will turn out to be the case. Knowing that the iPhone runs a version of Mac OS X, and considering the audience of developers at WWDC, it’s not hard to imagine a discussion of development for Mac OS X Lite and Mac OS X using Leopard. This is pure speculation (or wishful thinking) on our part, but it also wouldn’t be a huge surprise if Apple discussed how to develop for the iPhone’s flavor of Mac OS X, in addition to Leopard. It certainly would be good news for those of us hoping to extend the functionality of our future iPhones.
Filed under: iPhone News, Opinion, Rumor
Then again, Macs weren’t even mentioned (other than being one item in a bullet list) in the “Mac”World keynote. I have nothing against the iPhone (other than the price and the Cingular exclusivity), but Steve Jobs seems to have iPhone on the brain. I hope someone jerks him back into reality so that the WWDC keynote is about something developers world wide can actually write software for, Apple’s forgotten step-child, aka the Mac.
I think surprises will come with the initial iPhone release, including, a possible doubling of storage, in light of Apple’s announcement about 256mbps AAC song files. Already, 4 and 8-MB players no longer cut it, and so I expect 8, 16 or 32-MB iPhones.