Dead Ink Vinyl

Welcome to my first publicized predictions for an Apple conference.

Preamble

To understand my predictions for WWDC 2008, you need to understand where I think Apple is going in the next 24 months. To view the iPhone as a stand-alone product is to miss the point. The point of the iPhone is to create a development ecosystem around Objective-C and Cocoa. This ecosystem will have spill-over benefits for the Mac, since more developers will be familiar with the platform’s development technologies, but the real point is to create a large population of developers already familiar with application development for Apple’s next device: a touch tablet. This is why Apple is suddenly pushing “OSX” instead of “Mac OSX” and “iPhone OS”—Apple wants to impress upon developers that the skills for developing on any OSX device carry over to the other Apple devices as well.

With that out of the way, on to my predictions!

Next-Generation iPhone

3G: Yes

This seems like a given.

GPS: Yes

With all of the concentration on 3G capabilities, discussion about GPS seems to have died down a bit. While GPS technology takes away space and power from other solutions apple could provide in the iPhone’s form factor (such as video conferencing), I think that improved positional capabilities will create many 3rd party developer opportunities.

Faster Processor: No

I think there are so many other bells and whistles going into this revision that Apple will be happy to use a processor with the same speed and power consumption as the current model.

Video Conferencing: No

With 3G network speeds, this becomes possible and it is an intriguing possibility. But supporting (1) video capture, (2) video encoding before sending, (3) bi-directional communication over 3G (or WiFi), (4) video decoding what you’re friend is sending you, and (5) continual screen updates to display the video—all at the same time—will simply kill the battery life.

Thicker (face-to-back): Yes

Since the current iPhone is a 1.0 product, I’m willing to believe that Apple learned a lot during its development and—knowing what they know now—could redesign the current iPhone to be smaller with lower power consumption. Starting from that assumption and adding 3G, GPS, and a larger battery to the mix, I believe that the new iPhone will have to be more voluminous. It can’t get much wider without becoming uncomfortable to hold, and it’s current height seems about right, so I believe that the phone will grow a little thicker.

iPhone mini: Yes

Take the current 8GB iPhone, make it a little smaller, and offer it in a variety of colors for $350. Offer a 4GB model for $250. Pesto! You have a device that may attract the interest of my wife. Since I didn’t understand the point of the iPod mini until I witnessed my wife’s reaction, I’ve come to trust her judgement over mine for products Apple targets at non-technophiles.

Higher pricing: Yes

Components: there are more of them and they are more expensive. With the addition of the iPhone mini at a lower price point, Apple will have a little breathing room on the high end. I expect the 8GB model to retain its current pricing and the addition of a 16GB model for $100 more.

SquirrelFish: Yes

Squirrelfish helps the iPhone in two ways. First, Squirrelfish is fast, provides users with an improved Web browsing experience. Second, it is more efficient—getting the same end result accomplished in fewer clock cycles, so it requires less power to run JavaScript.

iPhone widgets: No

In the latest episode of The Talk Show, Dan and John kick around the idea that iPhone widget applications may make a comeback: applications for the iPhone written entirely in HTML+JavaScript+CSS, facilitated by a DashCode development tool specific to the iPhone. There is a lot of sense to this from the perspective that it would invite everyone skilled in Web design to be an iPhone developer. However, as I stated in my preamble, I believe Apple can use the popularity of the iPhone as a means to push Objective-C and Cocoa, thus building a larger community of developers skilled in the technologies that underlie all of Apple’s “software-expandable” offerings.

Apple Software

OSX 10.6 Will Be Announced: Yes

Steve is quoted (somewhere—sorry, no link) as stating that he wanted to be releasing updates to Leopard on a more frequent schedule than was indicated by the delay between 10.4 and 10.5. Announcing 10.6 at WWDC with it’s release due at MacWorld seems about right to me.

10.6 Named Snow Leopard: Yes

Sure, why not?

10.6 Will Specifically be for Atom Devices: No

This was posited by Josh Bancroft and I think he’s generally right that OSX is being pushed as its own brand to allow for OSX on a new device, but I don’t think it will be announced at WWDC.

OSX 10.6 Will Drop PPC Support: Yes

This completely sucks for PowerMac G5 owners. You’re the losers of an unexpectedly rapid and successful migration to Intel. As a life-long loser myself, I sympathize.

OSX 10.6 Will Drop Carbon Support: Yes

Apple wanted to drop Carbon support long ago, but the old-time Apple developers complained and—probably more importantly—Microsoft and Adobe were unable (and perhaps unwilling) to migrate off their Carbon code bases. Reading the tea leaves, Carbon’s now a goner. Apple used the Intel migration as leverage to push developers toward Cocoa, then Leopard didn’t include support for 64-bit Carbon. If the rumors that 10.6 will be 100% 64-bit are true, that rules out Carbon. Good bye.

New / Improved / Revamped .Mac Services: Yes

Please! I’ve had .Mac service since I purchased my first Mac and it was fine for a while—I didn’t mind the premium price at first because it “just worked” and that’s what I wanted. But each of the last three years I’ve been really close to canceling my membership and Apple would announce something that would make .Mac just barely worthwhile enough to continue holding onto. This year, though, if I’m not blown away, I’m canceling it. Or whatever they will call it.

.Mac Rebranding: Yes

It’s hard to sell something called ”.Mac” to a person whose only Apple product is an iPhone. Explaining that .Mac doesn’t require a Mac must be a nightmare.

Apple Hardware

New Apple Device: No

I believe that 2009 will be the year of the tablet, so no new devices this year.

New MBP Designs: Yes

I’m just guessing here.

New Displays: No

I think that the displays will be revamped when the Mac Pro is redesigned.

Pie-In-The-Sky Prediction

Every good WWDC prognosticator needs to go out on a limb and make an off-the-wall or out-of-left-field prediction.

OSX 10.6 Adds Resolution Independence

Despite the rumors that 10.6 will be focused on stability and performance instead of features, I think that this will be on the short list of enhancements.

Up to this point, I have avoided learning Objective-C and Cocoa. My professional software development is almost entirely Web-based or client-server applications and I haven’t had a lot of itches to scratch when using my Mac. The excellent independent developer community that surrounds the Mac has delivered all of the software I’ve desired and done it at very reasonable prices. Then there is the Objective-C language itself. Explicit memory management and dealing with some of C’s quirks (for example, processor directives) really feels like a step backward from Java and .NET. So there’s never been a lot of incentive for me to embrace Objective-C and Cocoa.

Then the iPhone SDK was released. As it happens, I have several itches to scratch on the iPhone. And the iPhone is a fun platform, too—I mean, there’s got to be some way for stodgy business applications to make use of the iPhone’s 3D motion sensors, right?

So this weekend I joined the iPhone developer program, downloaded the iPhone SDK, dusted off my copy of Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX, and got down to business. Since I have a strong object-oriented programming background due to my time with Java and I’m comfortable with weakly typed languages due to my time with PERL and Ruby (I’m thinking of mix-ins), the single chapter on Objective-C was sufficient for me to grasp the major components of the language. I assume when I’m done with the book I’ll be comfortable with Obj-C’s idioms and familiar with Cocoa. However, my advice to people interested in learning Obj-C or Cocoa is to wait for the 3rd Edition of the Hillegass book.

First, there are several places where the page layout is off. For example, between pages 69-70 several paragraphs are lost. But don’t worry, between pages 71-72 you get a whole paragraph repeated! It’s not a huge deal, but it is annoying.

More importantly, the 2nd Edition is written for Xcode 2. Unfortunately, Xcode 3 is very different from Xcode 2, so many of Hillegass’ screenshots and instructions for using Interface Builder aren’t even close to accurate. The “Hello World” application from the first chapter can’t be constructed. I was more than happy to try slogging my way through anyway, attempting to convert the book’s instructions into Xcode 3 operations, but it was all too new to me. Fortunately, Matt Long has an excellent tutorial filled in the gaps sufficiently for me to progress further. However Matt Long’s solution involved writing the necessary Obj-C class by hand, so I had to read Hillegass’ introduction to Obj-C before things clicked.

I’m now a quarter of the way through the book and I’m really enjoying Obj-C and Cocoa. Writing applications for the iPhone is going to be a lot of fun.

Somewhere in the last six months, the iPhone overtook the MacBook Pro as my primary computer. I don’t know when it happened—it was an imperceptible, gradual shift in the way I organized my life. I intended my iPhone to be used as a lifeline for those times I didn’t have WiFi for my laptop. I knew this included all of the time I spent at work, but I’d gotten along fine for the prior three years being disconnected from my personal communications during the business day. I thought would be using the iPhone’s email capabilities for “emergency” communications: last-minute Toastmasters meeting coordination and the like¹.

Now, I use the iPhone every day and it handles my the majority of personal computing needs. It’s convenient and (generally) a joy to use. I don’t appreciate being sent to my secondary computer for tasks I should be able to accomplish on my primary device. I don’t like opening my MacBookPro to surf the Web. Or to read email, record appointments, update contact information, or even to tweet. In fact, I only look forward to using my MBP for coding, blogging, writing documents, and image manipulation. For my everyday online activities, I far prefer using my iPhone. When I have to use my MBP for an “iPhone activity”, I get irritated.

The irritation has been increasing over the last couple of months. Mostly, my irritation is incited by Web sites that don’t lend themselves to ease of use on the iPhone (for example, my beloved Highrise)—or worse, completely disrespect the fact that I’m on a low-bandwidth EDGE connection (for example, Grub Hub, which I saw advertised on the CTA but had to dismiss because the home page took more than three minutes to load).

With the release of the SDK, the iPhone is graduating to become a full computing platform. It will move beyond email and Web sites². I anticipate that the coming year will see the release of all the applications I need to avoid cracking open my MBP for any of the mundane stuff. Finally, I’ll get to use my iPhone for instant messaging, enjoyable Twittering, Highrise, and WordPress.com administration.

Even if I have to build those applications myself.

¹ Of course, looking back on it, I note that my first mobile phone was purchased “for emergencies”, but very quickly became my primary phone service. Perhaps this is a general pattern for adoption of new technologies.

² To be honest, Web applications have really carried the iPhone farther than I expected. There are some very talented and dedicated people out there who pushed the Web on MobileSafari far beyond what I imagined possible.