What Does Apple's Steve Jobs Have Up His Sleeve?

Apple's (AAPL) annual world wide developers conference opens this morning at San Francisco's Moscone West center and the town is abuzz with speculation about what secrets Steve Jobs will reveal in the keynote speech scheduled to start at 10 a.m. PT.

Among the published predictions:

Leopard surprise: Apple's long-awaited update of OS X won't be released until October, but Kaster Jade at AppleInsider expects the bulk of the keynote to be devoted to Leopard, and says Jobs will use this opportunity to reveal the "Top Secret" enhancements he promised when he introduced it at last years' WWDC. (link)

Multi-touch and more:  Lepton's Blog speculates what those secrets might be in some detail, including a new, flatter look, a new default disk format (ZFS) to speed up Spotlight and integrate it with Time Machine, and multi-touch controls shown off to best advantage on a new remote wireless screen available immediately. (link) For a handy summary of Leopard's known features, see Gizmodo here.

A software developers kit for iPhone: The New York Times' John Markoff reports that "a person briefed on Apple's plans" says Jobs will use this occasion to announce that Apple will make it possible for developers of small programs written for the Macintosh to easily convert them to run on the iPhone. (link)

A Google back-end for .Mac:  Fred Vogelstein at Wired offers one announcement he's "almost sure of": a partnership between Apple and  Google to replace Apple's laggard .Mac service with a "cloud computing" model supplied by Google. (link)

A thin notebook: Harry McCracken at PC World says he'd "like to think" that Jobs will reveal at least one new piece of hardware, perhaps as his trademark "one last thing." Because the MacBook line has already been updated, McCracken is hoping for that rumored ultrathin flash-drive subnotebook. (link)

A brushed-metal iMac: Chris Davies at SlashGear is also expecting new hardware, but he's holding out for an upgrade of the iMac line, with brushed-metal casing and a new, thinner look that more closely resembles Apple's Cinema Display. (link) Most observers dismiss the possibility that Apple will introduce either a new iMac or a thin notebook at this event.

Windows and Mac side-by-side: MacRumors digs out a prediction from Digitimes last March and speculates that Apple might replace Boot Camp and do Parallels one better by offering a system that runs Windows apps on the same screen as Apple apps. (link)

There's lots more. One German site has even put together a detailed, item-by-item transcript of the speech Jobs hasn't yet delivered, offered in translation by DailyTechTalk here. It begins:

Greetings
Sales figures and market share of the Macs
Apple net curtain:
new Retail store in Italy,
first store on European mainland,
new stores will open shortly, among other things Munich, Barcelona, Paris
iMac:
Core2Duo selling great!,
New Generation...

And if you happen to be in Moscone, you're invited to play Keynote Bingo. John Siracusa at Ars Technica has annotated the version pasted below, but if you want to play the game competitively you should use one of the randomly generated boards offered here. The rules are simple: print out the card, make a check in each square as the described events occur, and when you've filled a row, column or diagonal shout "Bingo!" loud enough to be heard by everyone in Moscone's great hall -- or at least by Steve Jobs.

[Jobs photo courtesy of Engadget]

Comments

[Al Feldzamen]

In view of its several (and severe) disadvantages (limitation to Cingular/AT&T, no voice dialing, high price, small memory for audio and video, etc.), the forthcoming iPhone would truly be aided by a KILLER APP.

And the best new app for this device would be DICTATION SOFTWARE -- since a microphone and OS X are already present -- that would permit a user to dictate an outgoing Email, or dictate a text file into a simple word processor, like TEXTEDIT, that could later go to a printer or a file on a Mac.

[nimble_books]

What are the chances that an iPhone dictation app would be bulletproof enough to withstand the inevitable high scrutiny? not good, unless Apple has figured out a clever way to put constraints on the possible input/outputs.

[jim]

i hav feet

[bill]

i hav toes AND feet!!!!!!!!!