What a difference a year makes. 2008 saw the introduction of iPhone SDK, iPhone 2.0, App Store, MobileMe, and iPhone 3G, the latter two of which were announced at WWDC and prefaced a worldwide rollout that broke Apple’s conservative goal of shipping 10 million units.

We’ve seen iPhone 3.0, the changes to the SDK and App Store, and now on the eve of WWDC 2009 it’s time to think about what else we just might see one year later, and — according to Apple — lightyears ahead.

No one knows exactly what Apple is going to do. They make the cold war Kremlin seem positively chatty by comparison. That doesn’t mean we don’t have rough ideas. See, Apple likes their patterns. They like showing iPods off in the fall, for example, and they seem to like June for showing off the iPhone. So, based on WWDC 2008, the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview, and the more consistent rumors since then, we might be able to draw some educated guesses as to how WWDC 2009 might play out…

Schiller Time

Last year Great Balls of Fire filled Moscone Center and Steve Jobs took center stage. This year Phil Schiller, Vice President of Marketing, will be headlining the keynote, as he did the last — and final — Apple keynote at Macworld in January.

Jobs announced a sellout last year. They had a faster one this year. Schiller will no doubt mention that, and cover the WWDC session housekeeping before the fun begins.

Whether Schiller elaborates on the “three legs” of Apple’s business – Mac, iPod, and iPhone — before singling out the iPhone, or just singles it out right away, the predominance of iPhone over Mac signage seen so far, and Snow Leopard being more of an internal update to Mac OS X, leads us to think this year will be every bit as iPhone-centric, if not more.

Special caveat: if the outside rumors are true, if Apple intends to delay announcement of new iPhone hardware for an event later in the summer, when Steve Jobs is back in the saddle, we expect Schiller will start off by saying something to the effect of “we’re not here to discuss iPhone hardware today” so as to immediately re-set expectations. To not mention it in advance, and then not announce it, would blot out anything else Apple could say.

We don’t expect that, however. Apple has shown they’re no longer a one-man-show. They don’t need to wait for Steve Jobs to return. So, we expect no early re-set. We expect Schiller to jump right into–

iPhone 3.0 Review

iPhone 3.0 will no doubt lead off the show. We’ll get the perfunctory State of the iPhone Development address. The numbers should be staggering. 4,000 developers had been admitted this time last year. No doubt that has been eclipsed by a wide, wide margin. Same for App Store numbers. 47,000+ apps, 1.x billion downloads. We’ll hear just how big Apple’s monster has become.

A rundown of the OS details, likely similar to the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview event, will kick us off. It’s a fairly massive list, so hopefully Schiller will stick to the highlights.

Last year, Exchange and Enterprise were a large part of iPhone 2.0, and Jobs spent a good bit of time on showing off Fortune 500 and higher education participation in the beta. If Apple is serious about continuing their push into IT, maybe we’ll get another video. We’re guessing we don’t. The SDK peripheral access via USB tether and Bluetooth looks to fill that role this year, so just like we saw blood pressure and diabetes apps and accessories at the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview event, we expect to see even more impressive demoes of that kind of functionality at WWDC.

Demo Time

Cue Scott Forstall, Vice President of iPhone Software. Forstall handled the SDK element of WWDC 2008, and the lion’s share of iPhone 3.0 software at the Sneak Preview event, and he’s likely to do the same at WWDC 2009. No doubt his technical overview will “blow us away”.

1000 new APIs, and developer demos, June’s show should again repeat quite a bit of March’s show, though we beg you, Apple — please don’t draw the demos out as long as you have the last few times. Please.

Still, Push Notification, in-app purchases, P2P gaming, and the aforementioned peripheral access will take up more than their fair chunk of time.

Speaking of Push Notification, Forstall spoke about it a year ago — introduced it to us in fact, and promised it for September 2008 release. It was delayed until 3.0, when we saw it again at March’s Sneak Preview. He’s spent time poking fun at other platforms’ multitasking solutions, their management complexity and battery drain. We’re not sure he’ll do that again now, in a post Palm Pre “Cards” smartphone space, but if any company is ballsy enough to blaze ahead with that strategy, it’s Apple. Still, we expect to see the final, polished version of Push Notification, nothing more. No multi-tasking surprises, at least not yet.

iPhone 3.0 New Features

It’s possible minor additions, things that Apple doesn’t believe make a major impact on 3rd party developers, such as further tweaks to the built-in apps could be shown (like last year’s landscape scientific calculator). Apple showed an awful lot of that kind of tweak back in March, however, and they certainly have enough on their plate already. So we don’t expect anything earth shattering. Again, at least not yet.

By the same token, while we’d love to hear Apple tell us they’re solving the App Store review problem, making more transparent processes and guidelines, improving the Ad Hoc and beta testing process, we’ve learned a little helplessness in that regard. (Surprise us Apple!)

iPhone 3.0 Release date

Apple will announce it, of course, but there will be a couple of factors at play. If they’re planning to release the OS update independently from any hardware update, they’ll likely give us the date right away. If, however, they plan on once again doing a coordinated release, they’ll make us wait until the end of the keynote.

Our bet? Sooner rather than later. Coordinate release last year hammered Apple hard. Maybe they could handle it this year, maybe not. But they don’t need to. With iPhone 2G 24-month subscription accounting period ending June 29, with Palm Pre getting a lot of technorati attention, Apple can release 3.0 either after the keynote or right after WWDC and then update to 3.0.1 or 3.1 later in the summer.

MobileMe

Phil Schiller is the star of the show this time, but he was relegated to a supporting role last year. And that role was introducing MobileMe. Could we see a MobileMe 2.0? We know developers have found strings for a new MobileMe WebApp, Find My iPhone in the 3.0 firmware, so if nothing else we should see that. With most of its growing pains behind it, however, there’s certainly room for Apple to begin expanding the service.

Regular updates via the MobileMe News blog for things like File Sharing (which were actually promised at launch but not delivered until later) suggest that Apple might be content simply rolling out new features as they finish them. If that’s the case, while we won’t see a whole new version — certainly nothing as ambitious as Google Wave — we could see whatever other new features are ready, or will be made ready during the summer.

Notes sync, given the new iPhone 3.0 desktop functionality, certainly makes sense. We’d love photo sync as well. Task sync would really round things out, but unless a built in task app is one of those extra new features, there’s little chance of that this time. Online backup would be competitive with Microsoft’s MyPhone and Palm’s new Pre features. Server-side calendar subscriptions would also mirror on-device functionality, and server-side email rules would just make life so much easier, as would the ability to pull in other email services, a la Gmail. Speaking of which, Apple has already integrated Google into iCal and Address Book on the Mac, why not in MobileMe? And with FaceBook and Flickr living in iLife, could they also find some form of integration into MobileMe?

Heh. We doubt it. Our prediction is minor, evolutionary improvements for MobileMe, with one or two new features like Find My Phone thrown in for good measure.

iPhone International

Last year Steve Jobs presented a list of what the iPhone still needed. 1st on that list was 3G, followed by Enterprise support, 3rd party apps, and more countries. The middle two had already been addressed earlier in the keynote, and since then both 3G and a worldwide rollout have come to pass. Sort of. There’s still the small matter of China.

It’s a big deal in terms of market, and rumors have persisted about Apple trying to make deals with China Mobile and China Unicom, and even making a special Chinese CDMA iPhone to better fit that market’s needs. They may do just that, but ultimately Apple is a US company and WWDC is a US show, so while it may get a mention, it won’t be the main event. The third generation iPhone will be.

Third Generation iPhone

We predicted an iPhone HD back in October. Turns out we’re getting a Zune HD instead. (Hey, maybe next year?). What Apple looks to be focusing on this year is an iPhone with video. And a fast iPhone at that.

Consistent rumors point to speed. Faster CPU, more RAM, faster 3.5G or 3.75G and 802.11n Wi-Fi networking. And a 3.2 inch, auto-focusing, video-recording camera in front of it.

If last year’s model was named iPhone 3G to highlight last year’s killer feature, iPhone video, as many rumors are now suggesting, could certainly highlight this year’s.

The casing could see cosmetic changes, the digital compass could get some demo time, but shooting video, editing video, and sharing video — all of which have been found in the 3.0 firmware screens, will be the star of the show.

And like with web browsing in 2007 and apps in 2008, Apple will bring ultra-mobile video production and publishing to the masses in 2009.

If they can take a page from iMovie and include direct upload not only to MobileMe but to YouTube as well — well, the next set of TV commercials have just written themselves, haven’t they?

(This is also where we’ll see those previously undisclosed iPhone 3.0 features, of course).

It will be Phil Schiller pulling it from his pocket this year, not Steve Jobs. Sure, we’d love Jobs to be the “one more thing…” that comes on stage, triumphantly returning, iPhone video in hand. We’d love for a special iChat Mobile demonstration with Steve Jobs on the other end. Heck, we’d settle for hearing Steve Jobs over the phone or being sent a video clip while on the phone… Anything.

But realistically Apple has always said “end of June”, and if Steve Jobs looks anything less than Greek god-like, history shows Apple takes a stock hit.

So, yeah, Phil Schiller will be waving the new iPhone high over Moscone, going over the battery details (please let John Gruber’s 15-20% bump in battery life be correct), doing the demos, and announcing the price…

Pricing and Availability

Apple was aggressive last year in hitting $199/$299. Given the current competitive landscape, we can’t see them being anything other than the same this year. You’ll get more iPhone for your money, but it will cost the same money. $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB (given the availability of the double-density NAND Flash chips of course — with Palm Pre only coming in at 8GB, Apple may think video alone is enough until component costs are sufficiently low).

The $99 iPhone? That’ll be the iPhone 3G, on clearance, while supplies last.

Color will stay the same as well. No aluminum unibody iPhones this year.

Availability… we’re hoping the same as last year — as close to simultaneous release in all major markets as possible (especially Canada!).

Release Date Take III

Tomorrow just sounds too soon to us. If it really was going to be in Apple stores before the keynote, we’d have expected to see some leaks by now — mysterious packages arriving, back store pictures, etc.

FCC clearance will no doubt be announced as quickly as possible (it was same day as WWDC last year), and while it’s possible online ordering or even shipping to Apple Stores could be announced immediately, there’s one huge reason we doubt it:

AT&T.

The iPhone is a two-part show, Apple and carrier. AT&T, and other carriers, will need to announce MMS plans and tethering plans. They’ll have to announce upgrade paths for users still on contract for iPhone 3G. Unless AT&T is up on stage with Apple at WWDC and announces everything with crystal clarity right away, it’ll be a customer support nightmare.

No, we think Apple will announce the date, but that the date will be some reasonable period of time after WWDC. Maybe a week, maybe a month like last year.

Unless Apple has secretly been shipping over new internals in iPhone 3G casings for a while now, they’ll need to fill the channel and organize a huge, splashy launch just like they did last year and the year before.

June 26 would be close to the 2 year anniversary. July 10 to the 3G anniversary.

We’ll take a risk and go for June 26.

Ad

The only thing we don’t know is if we’ll see a new ad for it to close out the show. Last year they shut down the flagship Apple Store to film one. This year, nothing so obvious. We hope so, it’s a very Apple thing to do.

Conclusion

So that’s it. That’s our predictions for how the WWDC 2009 keynote will roll out tomorrow. Now all that’s left is for us to watch tomorrow and find out!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb’s WWDC 2009 iPhone Predictions

Today brings Let’s Rock. You know, Apple’s yearly pre-holiday event. The one that the entire tech-verse has been chomping at the bit for since roughly 0.001 seconds after Steve Jobs left the stage at WWDC 08. The one that will answer: “What’s next?”

But that’s all we know: Let’s Rock, September 9. We don’t know what, exactly, Apple will announce, or even if Steve Jobs himself will be announcing it (though we certainly think so!) — or more importantly for the end user: whether or not “OMG new firmware can has stability!!11″

However, that won’t for one Jobs-forsaken minute prevent us from guessing!

Will There Be New iPhone Hardware?

This one has been almost completely off the radar. No leaks of a 32GB iPhone, or of the chips Apple would have to switch to so that 32GB would even be possible given it’s current NAND configuration (which, due to more space being taken by radios, is half what an iPod Touch can hold).

Our prediction? The reason we haven’t heard anything is that there’s nothing to hear, here. It would be too expensive to switch to the 16GB NAND Flash chips needed for 32GB, and no other hardware tweaks really make sense yet.

On the color side, (Product?) red was rumored back when black and white were leaked pre-WWDC, and that’s a relatively easy differentiator for Apple to make in order to have a new holiday iPhone offering…

Will There Be a New iPhone Firmware?

2.1 is hawt, what with the rumor of secret special features and all. But we’re going to swim against the stream on this one. 2.1 will get shown, but it won’t be made available immediately. They’ll announce a date for it, perhaps, but to soothe us over in the meantime, 2.0.3 will drop on or soon after event day to squash yet more bugs.

People may think they want new features, but what we need is a stable platform. Fix the foundation first, then build the high rise.

Yeahbuwhat If 2.1 Gets a Demo? What Will It Show?

Apple’s push notification service, which it’s offering in lieu of background processes for applications like AIM, was pulled from the last beta, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still see it. Video recording might still be a battery problem on an already hungry device, and MMS is an old technology to a company that cut disc drives (iMac) and now optical drives (MacBook Air) way ahead of the curve.

So… we’re going with cut/copy/paste as an easy offering to calm 3G-dropout, App crash-burnout users, maybe with something from left field thrown in just so Apple can remind us what Apple does best (give Steve Jobs his “Boom!” moments). On the far outside chance, maybe a clipboard mechanism extended into a full shared file space to enable actual document editing on the iPhone?

Hey, we can dream!

Will There Be any New iPhone Initiatives?

Last year saw Starbucks come on board as an iPhone partner. Could Apple be keeping any initiatives in their back pocket for this year? Rose run rumors have it iTunes 8 will move from Smart Playlists to Genius Playlists, not only sorting our music but actively recommending new music based on what we already like (a la Pandora or Last.fm). Could Apple strap its own tag-and-buy service to it, like Microsoft is about to do with the Zune 3? No built in FM radio, and the Powers That Be seem intent on killing Internet Radio just to watch it die, so this doesn’t look likely.

But what about the rumors of the Starbucks model being pushed further? Buy not only music, but beverages, and why not other retailers, like movie tickets, cheeseburgers, Apple Store gear? It would require massive infrastructure investments from retailers before it could go live, of course (remember how long the Starbucks roll-out it taking?), but it’s not impossible we’ll see another collaborative announcement along these lines. And, hey, there’s always Nike…

More likely? A partnership announced with a GPS company to enable real turn-by-turn navigation while sidestepping the licensing issues Dieter brought up last month. That seems like a match made in liability-avoiding heaven!

iPods, MacBooks, and Tablets, Oh Why?

iPod Nano we pretty much know. Taller, widescreen, bigger capacity up to 16GB and more colors than you can shake a bag of skittles at. This is Apple’s bread and butter player, after all, and it’ll get the Jobs-bump big time.

iPod Touch has rumors of GPS and a new form factor that could fit the chip… or a bigger battery… or a mind-numbing 64GB set of NAND flash that would allow Apple to finally but the Classic/Micro HD line to pasture? Doubtful, for the same reasons outlined about for the iPhone, but Apple is expert at cramming a lot into a little, so I wouldn’t be surprised.

MacBook Touch/iTablet is rumored every time Steve Jobs sneezes. And it always will be. As a possible extension to the Mobile OS X family, we’d have to see a pre-announcement just to get developers revved up to working on a similar device with a quadruple (or whatever) resolution screen and possibly additional hardware (USB ports, etc.) Apple TV was pre-announced a couple years ago at an event just like this, however, and it would certainly allow for similar a follow up at MacWorld 2009. If it runs full Mac OS X, the same holds true for getting devs up to speed on multi-touch, but a much richer software ecosystem would already be primed and portable. Still, I think Apple has had this device ready and waiting for so long, they’d just as soon keep it waiting until they think they could sell 10 million of them, and that’s probably not now.

MacBook, Pro, Air are all in need of Intel proc bumps. Last year we saw the iPod Touch debut alongside the new aluminum iMacs, so it’s not like Apple minds mixing and matching. Case designs have already leaked for the Pro, looking a lot more like the Air, so I’m guessing these babies are ready to drop as well. A real Air, sans cobbled chipset, would be fantastic. New MacBooks likewise. For the Pros, we’ll probably not see them at a consumer show, but at a higher-end event, or increasingly as an “Apple Store Down!” Tuesday surprise along with new Cinema Displays and other pro gear.

One More Thing?

Well, that’s it for our peek into the Let’s Rock Crystal Ball. How about you? Any prognostications? What will we see? What won’t we? Let us know here, and remember to join us at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT for our Live Meta-Blog of Apple’s 2009 pre-Holiday “Let’s Rock” event!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

A Look Inside the “Let’s Rock” Crystal Ball

Monday we asked you “What’s the iPhone 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?“. Tuesday it was “What is the iPhone 3G Going to Look Like?“. Wednesday brought “What Surprises Will There Be in the iPhone 2.0 Software & Services?”. Thursday questioned “What 3rd Party iPhone SDK Apps Will Be Available Launch Day?” Friday we ended with “What Will the iPhone 3G’s Hardware Features Be?“

Now we’re done with the HUGE roundups. The epic’s over. And it’s time to be honest here: roughly 0.01 seconds after Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his pocket back at Macworld 2007, and it was us at TiPb who put aside our childlike sense of wonder long enough think: “Nice! What’s the next gen going to be like?” And we’ve been thinking about it ever since!

Complementary, contradictory, obvious, confusing, all but confirmed or from left field via outer space, the rumors have flooded the internet and we’ve done our best to keep track of them all.

Just two days from today Steve Jobs takes Moscone Center stage for the sold-out WWDC keynote, and according to everyone and their newsfeed, announces the iPhone 3G. In eager anticipation, every day this week, TiPb asked you to tell us what you think the next generation iPhone will be, from 3G to GPS, release dates to price points, colors to casings, 2.0 software to .Mac .Me services.

Now it’s TiPb’s turn.

So come on, let’s get in on!

WWDC -2 and Counting: A Look into the iPhone 3G Crystal Ball

Name

iPhone 3G. iPhone Black. Second Generation iPhone. iPhone (2008). What’ll it be called?

iPhone.

Of course. Apple is all about the simplicity. The Zen. Tech support and refurbished sales will call it the iPhone mid-2008 (or something to that effect), but for Steve and the rest of us, it’ll be called the iPhone.

3G Chip

Despite Intel’s eagerness and its existing presence in the Mac, Atom just doesn’t seem ready for primetime yet. Likewise, the curveball that was the PA Semi PowerPC purchase would take another generation or two of development at least before it has anything real-world to add to an iPhone class device. Infineon already provides the current generation iPhone’s brain, and Foxxcon/Hon Hai already put it all together, and I personally don’t see that changing any time soon.

Maybe iPhone 5G will be an Intel Quad-Atom with PA Semi co-cores, but iPhone 3G will be an Infineon S-Gold-3. HSPA, and not the weak-sauce certain-regions-only HSPA. This’ll be the kind that works in all the markets the iPhone has been announced for.

Shipping Date

If there’s anyone left on the planet who doesn’t think Steve Jobs will announce the iPhone 3G during the WWDC Keynote, it could only be Jobs himself, acting on insider info. Everyone else considers it a done deal. But shipping date is trickier. While all those boxes popping up everywhere would make an immediate release possible, Apple has time and again proven themselves masters at manipulating the press cycles, and anything that didn’t allow for a period of intense media buildup — and the millions in free advertising that comes with it — seems unlikely.

June 9 would have the Boom! factor, June 29 the anniversary appeal, but somewhere in between makes the most sense: the iPhone 3G will ship on June 19.

Casing and Form Factor

Bigger. Smaller. Thicker. Thinner. Fatter. Skinnier. If the rumors could run 10 dimensions they certainly would. 3G, GPS, and the ever-increasing demands for ever-increasing talk times make a bigger iPhone for a bigger battery likely. But Apple prides itself (to the point of Air-style feature folly at times) on its ability to ship razor thin product. Could it split the difference — and the product line — and release both an iPhone Nano and a beefier iPhone Pro?

Aluminum, glass, and glossy black define the current iPhone, but with antenna demands favoring plastic, and consumer phones being susceptible to more fashion trends than high end computers, could Apple do an iPod Classic-like black and white? Toss in a (Red) for U2? How about matte or glossy?

The risk-taker wants to go for the gusto and say iPhone + iPhone Nano in blond, brunette, and redhead. But Apple tends to do things in a certain sequence: 1) Revolution, 2) Tweak, 3) Evolution, 4) Tweak, 5) Revolution. We can go from long-neck iMac to White all-in-screen in one leap, but it takes a proc-bump, PowerPC to Intel transplant, and more-proc bumps in between before we get to Aluminum iMac. Likewise, the iPhone has already had its 16GB tweak, so by my timeline, we get evolution next: iPhone Black, with high manufacturing quality, super fit-and-finish black plastic, matt finish back, and glossy front with a slightly less trimmed and less rounded shape.

As to size, it will be both thicker and thinner. No, not Nano and Pro, but like the MacBook Air where clever design makes it seem thinner than it is. 22% thinner at the edges, maybe, but a lot more curve to the back, with a little reshuffling of width and height, will give the room for more juice under the hood.

2.0 Software

Is it even fair to call this a prediction, what with 6 beta firmware releases and more deep code inspections than you could shake an iPhone at? Sure, Apple could have been holding something back. Apple could surprise us. But will they?

You bet!

I don’t see much with SMS or MMS. The iPhone will be part of an ongoing trend away from phone-specific protocols towards universal, and more computer-like, and more standards-based systems behind them. They’ll eventually remove the device-lock and let us send anything to anyone anywhere, regardless of provider or platform. Sure, legacy users, people who grew up with interim technologies, will be upset, but Apple has historically not given this flying forethought.

Bye bye floppy, bye bye CD, bye bye MMS.

Hello Mobile iChat.

And this is where push gets shoved in as well. Messaging, calendaring, and tasks with instant accessibility. ActiveSync will cover this for corporate users, and the new (I can’t believe I’m going to call it this!) MobileMe will cover consumers. It won’t be competitive with Google or even the full range of Microsoft Live services yet, but Apple knows how big the cloud will be in the future, and MobileMe will be the foundation they want to build their own services on.

We’ll also get over the air data sync for push users of any flavor, with Bonjour-style (zero-config for Windows users) WiFi sync for media. (Hey, I can dream for now but it’ll be in 2.x sometime!)

YouTube, as an app, may remain, but will get subsumed by MobileSafari’s plugin. Likewise Weather and Stock widgets, maybe not in 2.0 but in 2.x, will merge with WebClips and become more like the dashboard, where users can choose their own, still Stocks and Weather for some, Movie Listings and Wikipedia for others.

In addition to YouTube, MobileSafari will also get the bump that desktop Safari 3.1 enjoyed, CSS animations, HTML 5.0, and the SquirelFish (if its ready) turbo-boost to Javascript, which will be even more meaningful on a mobile, AJAX-centric device.

Notes will get some much needed love, integrating into the MobileMe offering the way they do on the OS X desktop Mail.app. Synced at last. And To Do’s at last. Thanks to Jobs almighty, full PIM functionality at last!

MobileMail in general will get its mass move, mass delete fix on. Unified inbox, though I wants it, probably won’t show up (Apple has a history of leaving out one or two things just to drive us crazy, after all), unless competition with RIM really drives them. And the ActiveSync/MobileMe updates will, of course, be included, as they will in Calendar, and the To Do applet.

No Flash. No Java. No Silverlight. But maybe, just maybe, iTunes iController integration for not only interfacing with Front Row or the Apple TV, but browsing and “get info”-ing streaming content as well. iPhone Wi-Fi remote FTW.

Settings for all the above, and especially all the business features already shown, will be present and accounted for, including the ability to toggle off (or more likely switch from automatic to off) battery-hungry functions like 3G.

Big news: Cut and Paste! But shown only briefly, as a minor toss-away during one of the demos. “Here I’ll just cut and paste some text into this awesome new Mobile iChat…”

And, of course, we’ll get the App Store…

Third Party Apps

This here is the tricky one. There are always less brilliant engineers around than you need, and Apple probably doesn’t have enough to really do everything they want, when they want it. Depending on key software houses to get apps ready on time can be even worse (how long was it for Microsoft and Adobe to go Universal Binary again?).

Apple will certainly want some real killer apps — the kind that sell platforms — ready for its Keynote (probably whether they’re actually ready to download come launch day or not). Some will probably be big names, and come as a total surprise, as will many smaller apps actually being ready but not given the spotlight…

Confession: this is the real wild-card category. Developing for a new platform ain’t easy, even if you’re a seasoned Mac veteran. Bugs pop up and deadlines slip. But we promised you predictions, so here they are:

John Carmack debuts a 3D game that, while still in beta, gives Sony’s PSP division a collective heart attack. EA and Sega likewise show off Nintendo DS-inspired fare, but its an indie game house out of nowhere, finally clear of NDA, nails the platform with some touch accelerometer revolution that really blows the interwebs away.

Apple shows off Mobile iLife and hints at a future Mobile iWork for iPhone OS X, while a dozen or so other “office apps” flood YouTube with their demos. And just to prove how trendy they are, Apple has some big uber-Social Network apps on display while at the same time delaying Twitteriffic long enough to get a full page diatribe out on DaringFireball.

iFund will get their darlings a mention, of course however no 3rd party Flash, Java, or Silverlight either (but yes, Dieter, it will finally be a smartphone).

And from the outlandish, madcap, could never happen dept.: Gates-like on the big screen, and direct from Waterloo, RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis appears to announce BlackBerry Connect for the iPhone…

Hardware Features

Apple dropped the collective smartphone industry’s jaw with the original iPhone specs demoed at Macworld 2007, and they’ll be gunning to top that.

While I’m hoping for an HD screen at 480p (heck, 720p, but I’m a realist!), unless developers have all been doing resolution independence from the get go, or Apple has nailed them some scary-good upscaling, we may just be stuck with the same display. Still, I’m closing my eyes, lowering my head, and running full steam at the VGA 640×480 wall.

The camera will get a minor bump, somewhere between 3 and 4 megapixels, but Apple will have improved the software from terrible to only mildly disappointing (sorry Aperture team!). There will be a tiny front facing camera buried amid the other sensors, but only enabled for European and Asian markets that aren’t stuck in as shameful a technological backwater. When AT&T announces video conferencing on par with 2005 Japanese initiatives, Apple will turn on Mobile iChat AV for everyone (but especially for Kevin Rose).

Flush headphone jack FTW!

Very little in the way of Bluetooth enhancements, and no good reason for it, again to give the interwebs something to complain bitterly about (and give Apple something to add as a future update that should have been there all along). But we will get Wireless N, because the rest of Apple’s line has moved that way, and Apple’s engineers will want the network clean, dangit!

Storage-wise, we’ll get the bump to 32GB, allowing for a 64GB iPod Touch (which has twice the space for NAND chips as the radio-clogged iPhone).

Finally, GPS will be built in as a feature Maps, Camera, and other Apps can request, but that isn’t always on. However, there’s always a chance El Jobso will again want to torture the user-base by releasing it as a dock-dongle instead… (thanks a lot, MacBreak Weekly!)

One More Thing

Will it be the iPhone Nano? iFlip? Nope. The current iPhone will coast along as the low end for a bit. iTablet? Nope. That’s be shown off at a special event later in the year and released at MacWorld. New laptops or OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard? Maybe, but only in passing. Apple won’t want anything to steal the iPhone’s thunder. Will it be the near constant and colossal number of Engadget page-refreshes taking down multiple AOL datacenters and as Steve Jobs gets ready to break the Internet again? Well, that’s a given, but it’s not the One More Thing.

Chad dropped it like a bomb during the Phone Different podcast, and Dieter’s fleshed it out further since then. The one more thing will be this:

With so many countries and carriers announcing the iPhone, how will iTunes handle the activation? Simple: you buy your iPhone 3G for whatever the Apple Store charges and when you go to activate it, iTunes detects your country and offers you a rebate (down to free in the UK, rumor has it!) if you sign a long term contract. If you don’t, you just get activated at full price, contract-free.

Sound crazy? Maybe. And sure, some carriers have talked about retaining exclusivity or sharing co-exclusivity. But they’ve also talked about non-exclusivity as well. Let’s face it, millions of iPhone’s are already unlocked and in the wild, and Apple has a history of DRM, Apple TV Take 1, and other “Awe, shucks, now we’ll listen to our users” Jobs-a-culpas. Here’s their chance for a doozy:

iPhone. Unlocked.

Boom.

Our Turn!

So there we go, now it’s our turn — all of our turn — to wait.

But while you’re waiting, don’t forget to head over to our iPhone Blog’s super Wait-a-Thon spectacular where you could win an iPhone 3G of your very own, whatever it looks like, on the very day it’s released!

And join us back here on Monday for TiPB’s Live Color Commentary Blog!

Go back and read Part 1: What’s the iPhone’s 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?
Go back and read Part 2: What’s the iPhone 3G Going to Look Like?
Go back and read Part 3: What Surprises Will Be in iPhone 2.0 Software & Services?
Go back and read Part 4: What 3rd Party iPhone SDK Apps Will Be Available Launch Day?
What Will the iPhone 3G’s Hardware Features Be?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

A Look Inside the iPhone 3G Crystal Ball! Countdown to WWDC Predictions

Thursday brings the SDK. You know, the one that needs no other identifier. The one that the entire tech-verse has been chomping at the bit for since roughly 0.001 seconds after Steve Jobs slipped the iPhone from his pocket at Macworld 2007.

But that’s all we know: SDK Event March 6th.

We don’t know whether the SDK will be ready to code that very same day, who’ll be given access to it, how they’ll test for it, what type of approval process Apple will require, how apps will be distributed, how they’ll be priced, and most importantly for the end user: whether or not “OMG teh iPhone can has WoW!!11”

However, that doesn’t stop us from guessing!

Trying to predict what Apple will do at any given event is a little bit science and a whole lot black magic (of the 8-ball variety). Let’s face it: the Apple Campus at 1 Infinite Loop could teach the NSA a thing or two about how to keep secrets.

Why is Apple so close-lipped? Equal parts competitive advantage (Apple prefers that it takes Microsoft years and not months to copy their latest innovations), marketing strategy (how else to get the “faithful” lined up at 3am, and the ‘net brought to a crashing halt before every Jobs Note?), and making bloggers and pundits who write “prediction” articles look silly the day after.

In that spirit, here we go:

Will the SDK be finished and ready to code with on March 6th?

While I’d like nothing more than for Steve Jobs to take the stage, Tap Tap Revolution in hand and ready to ship on Day One, I doubt it. Rumors say the SDK will still be in beta, and while it may go out early to Electronic Arts-class partners, with a later drop to ADC members (who may be able to run tests via a “simulator”), I don’t think we’ll see it officially released until Apple’s Word Wide Developers Conference in June.

Chalk it up to limited resources meets high security demands (for a mobile computer storing all your personal data and documents), further complicated by Apple’s obsessive need to control every little aspect.

How much access will developers have to the hardware?

The l33t hax0rs want to write to the metal: their Guitar Hero axe plugged into the dock connector rocking out over Skype while VNC’ing to their torrent server. Apple wants certified developers writing superficial games and productivity apps that don’t for a single moment harshen the Zen-like beauty and user experience of their hand-held gift to the world.

We’ll likely see something in between. Developers will be able to access the same protocols already surfaced via custom links (i.e. the phone, the web, email, perhaps the QuickView-like functionality), as well as things like the accelerometer and camera to allow for more interactive gaming.

The mic would enable both voice recording and Nintendo-DS style cloud-blowing action, but would also open the door to VoIP, which would delight users but could make Big Telco grumpy (do it, Apple!).

According to previous reports, the dock cable will be off-limits, which would mean no hardware keyboards or other peripherals, but Apple already has an extensive dock licensing program in place where developers could explore those options, and if the Bluetooth radio is made available, the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard would be one sweet ultra-mobile option! (And if the WI-Fi radio is there as well, goodbye Apple Remote and hello iPhone to control Apple TV and iTunes!)

And I don’t see carriers letting anyone run wild over the EDGE radio.

Also, I agree with The Gruber that there will be different levels of developers granted different access to the hardware, from very close, very trusted partners (like the aforementioned EA) given very broad privileges, and free ADC members getting more limited access.

Bonus prediction: Longtime Mac developers will initially be given the “limited access” snub, leading to an explosion of blog-rage, resolved by a price-drop-esque Apple-a-culpa and policy change.

How will applications be made available?

Almost certainly via an initially very stringent Apple certification process and distribution exclusively via iTunes.

Let’s face it: Apple spent an incredible amount of time and money on the iPhone user experience and they’re going to demand just as elegant, easy to use, and (cough MobileSafari cough) stable apps from their 3rd parties.

Likewise, iTunes is the little store that could (pass Best Buy to become the #2 music retailer in the US, that is). If Apple could force Big Telco to hand over cell phone activation to iTunes, I don’t for a minute think they’ll let just any old Eastern European 11 year old install wild on their box.

Music sales have shown that there is a market for simple, safe, and secure online transactions with iTunes, and the $20 iPod Touch mail, notes, maps, stocks, and weather apps strike me as just that type of proof-of-concept.

That same $20 update also raises the question of whether or not there will be a way for developers to make their applications available for free via iTunes? I think so. Apple has shown they understand the benefit of provide free content with Podcasts, iTunes University, iTunes Free Tuesdays, and free promotional videos (recently for American Idol). 3rd party apps could and should benefit from the same type of enlightened thinking.

Anything else?

A handful of “booms”, three “the best”, and a “gorgeous”. One C-level 3rd party exec up on stage. Non-licensed Exchange support.

(Now go forth and, if past predictions are any indicator, enjoy watching Jobs bring a developer-friendly Balmer and much-relieved Carmack up to show off the ready-to-ship Mobile Office 2008 suite, and Quake running over EDGE via dock-connected rumble pad).

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Peering into the iPhone SDK Crystal Ball