The news came in on Wednesday that Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will take place from June 7th to 11th at the Moscone West Conference Center in San Francisco, California. A wide variety of items are expected to be on display at the five-day event, including the already announced iPhone OS 4 as well as a new generation of HD iPhone. While Apple has not commented whether any hardware will debut, it has used the WWDC to introduce the latest model of iPhone for two years running.
The official announcement from Apple PR reads, “The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is the premier technical conference for developers innovating with Apple technologies. Over 1,000 Apple engineers will be at Moscone West to present advanced coding and development techniques that will show you how to enhance the capabilities of your applications with the revolutionary technologies in iPhone OS and Mac OS X”.
Gizmodo published a detailed report along with pictures and video of a prototype iPhone model that it obtained thanks to a careless Apple employee who had left the phone in a bar. Gizmodo returned the phone to Apple at the company’s request; however, the district attorney’s office is deciding whether charges should be filed.
In terms of seeing the new iPhone, there are a lot of questions that haven’t been addressed. We don’t know its storage capacity, screen resolution, or name. Nobody knows if the new version will use the boxy flat casing, continue to be more rounded, or if the front-facing camera will actually make the new models. Gizmodo said that the person who found the iPhone reported that the front-facing camera kept crashing.
The WWDC will offer breakout sessions across five different technology sectors: application frameworks, graphics and media, developer tools, internet and web, and the core OS. There will be discussions about network apps for iPhone OS, creating secure apps, and I/O kit drivers for Mac OS X. In the internet and web sessions will be discussions about HTML 5, which Apple has been pushing hard as an alternative for multimedia developers over Adobe Flash. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has gone on record saying that he thinks Flash is too “buggy” and hasn’t included support in the iPhone or the iPad. In response, Adobe has accused Apple of building a closed platform system.
The new iPhone OS 4.0 was given a sneak peek back in April amid fanfare. Apple has usually kept a few surprises for WWDC, with PC World contemplating that iChat for the iPhone might be in store this June. Part of the new operating system is the game center, which acts as a social network. This feature can tie iPhone gamers together and include features like a matchmaking service, leaderboards, and overall achievements.
Another big platform that is expected to get a lot of attention is iAds, which is Apple’s own advertising network. Apple showed some of the mock-ups for this network, but there are a lot of questions that remain about the potential feature for software developers.
Registration to the WWDC is $1,599, with tickets having sold out quickly over the past few years. Developers are already in scramble mode to get their tickets and secure their spot at the conference. Many people, including Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, speculate that there will be a heavy focus on iPhone and iPhone OS 4.0 during this conference and that Mac OS X 10.7 will not be previewed.
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