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Today is the start of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Connference 2008, and the highlight of this is always the keynote from Steve Jobs, as he inevitably has product announcements. Given Apple’s innovation record, they’ve always been important in much of the tech community (where Apple has led by innovation, others have eventually followed), but since Apple entered the consumer marketplace with the iPod, and more recently the iPhone, the announcements have become even more widely watched. The event is always enjoyable given Apple’s intense secrecy (which doesn’t seem to have been particularly good this year!) about the products, Steve Jobs famous thoroughness, standard jeans-and-turtleneck outfit, and – of course – that he is a extremely accomplished speaker and presenter.

There are lots of predictions and rumours about what might be announced, but most attention is focused on the iPhone. It’s widely expected that iPhone 2.0 will be announced, and maybe even launched later this month, with the 3G technology and perhaps built-in GPS. Whilst that sounds attractive, it’s the launch of third party applications that I’m particularly excited about: Being able to run applications that help me do my job (OmniFocus for the iPhone is what I’m most excited about), and fill gaps in the toolset on the iPhone (where are calendar todo’s and central contact management?). Rumours also abound that Apple may relent at let mobile networks subsidise the iPhone, which together with 3G, could really help it’s adoption in Europe.

As for non-iPhone products, there are rumours of Mac OS X 10.6, although it seems too soon after Leopard, with no particularly key features being talked about yet. And a re-branding of Apple’s .mac, to make it focused more on the mobile user, is as overdue as it is welcome. I’ve never been particularly impressed with the pricetag or feature list of .mac, so will be intrigued to learn what they have in mind.

Certainly looking forward to it, and perhaps even watching (via the official video PodCast that now exists) the keynote on the train tomorrow morning

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Apple, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.