To many, this year's World Wide Developer's Conference will be the most exciting and future defining Apple event to date. When Apple unveiled the iPhone 3.0 software on March 17, I knew that the iPhone was going to go beyond the existing lead it already held over its competitors.
Before the unveiling of the iPhone 3.0 software, I was absolutely certain that the Palm Pre and the Android platforms were going to give Apple a run for their money. Boy was I wrong. I always preach the idea that if a company doesn't keep a heavy eye on its competitors, it will begin to fall short. When Apple set a goal to sell 10 million iPhones within the first year, they stuck to it and sold well over their desired mark. This is simply because they have an ingenious R&D department that knows exactly what needs to be done to stay ahead of the game.
Okay, enough about the software. The iPhone is close to hitting the 2-year mark and we have only seen 1 hardware update that wasn't too significant (addition of 3G, GPS, and a flush headphone jack). Rumors around the web are going nuts trying to predict what the next major hardware update is going to be like. The original iPhone set a new industry standard for the things that should be expected in a smartphone. There have been no major performance upgrades in the last 2 years, yet the iPhone still outperforms most phones of its kind to this day. If the next version of the hardware is unveiled come the 8th, I cannot imagine how ahead of its game it will be.
Now to talk a bit about what's to come for the Mac OS. More after the jump...
I think Apple couldn't have said it better when making a statement about Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" on their Snow Leopard page:
"Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality."
Apple will be expanding the 64-bit technology to tremendously increase performance and increase RAM support up to a theoretical 16TB (yea, I know!). They will also be optimizing the Mac OS to take full advantage current multi-core and multi-processor technologies by advanced allocation of tasks, and so forth.
This is fantastic, in my opinion, but when Apple announced this about a year ago, they didn't know that Windows 7 would be stepping up their game in the OS wars. I am certain that Apple is going to throw in a thing or two to even things out (high hopes, yes).
What's upsetting is that people aren't as excited about Snow Leopard as they should be. Imagine getting twice the performance out of your exisiting machine just by upgrading your OS! That's equivilent to buying a brand new computer, which is something people don't really want to do these days. All in all, I can freely state that I am ecstatic about all that will go down at WWDC 2009.
