Tag Archives | Conferences

The Next Version of iOS: Predictions, Please!


[UPDATE: I’m closing the survey and compiling the results. Thanks, folks!]

At 10am PT on Monday, June 6th, Apple will hold its WWDC 2011 keynote, with news about OS X 10.7 Lion, the next version of iOS, and something called iCloud. I’ll be there in person at San Francisco’s Moscone West  for Technologizer’s live coverage, joined by Ed Oswald and Techland’s Doug Aamoth for color commentary.

You can join us on Monday at technologizer.com/wwdc11, and I hope you will. (You can also head there now to sign up for an e-mail reminder.)

With less than 48 hours to go, time is running out to make predictions about what we’ll learn. We already know most of the details about Lion, and iCloud remains fairly enigmatic. So let’s focus in on iOS 5, or whatever the next version of the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad operating system turns out to be called.

I’ve put together a survey that’ll let you make predictions about iOS 5 features and enhancements, (It’ll take you a minute or two to complete.) I’ll report on our aggregate predictions as a group before the keynote–and after Steve Jobs and company have spoken, we can see how accurate we were.

Click here to take the survey.  Thanks for participating, and see you on Monday.

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Coming on Monday: WWDC 2011 Live Blog Coverage

On Monday June 6th at 10am PT, I’ll be at San Francisco’s Moscone West for Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote. It sounds packed, packed, packed–we’ll get our last big look at OS X 10.7 Lion before it ships, and our first big looks at the next version of iOS, and the long-rumored service now known as iCloud. And rumor has it that there are occasionally surprise announcements at these events. (I’m told Jobs likes to keep them until the end.)

I’ll blog the keynote news as it happens, with color commentary from special guest Doug Aamoth of Techland. Tens of thousands of folks attended our last Apple live coverage (the iPad 2 announcement), but we’ll save room for you. Join us at technologizer.com/wwdc11–and go there now to sign up for an e-mail reminder if you like.

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The WWDC Keynote is a Go–and It’s About Software

We pretty much knew this already, but now it’s official: Apple’s WWDC event next week will begin with a keynote on Monday. The big news at the keynote will be OS X 10.7 Lion. And the next version of iOS. “And iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.” Steve Jobs will host the keynote. (Okay, that part we didn’t know.)

Last week, one site said that it had learned that Apple’s UK PR team was urging journalists over there to make the trek to San Francisco for the event. That site came to the “obvious conclusion” that Apple must have been planning to announce the next iPhone at the keynote. I never understood what was so obvious about that conclusion. New hardware is neat, but the biggest opportunity for any phone or tablet platform to make great leaps forward lies in in its software and services. So WWDC has the opportunity to be a huge deal even if not a single new device is announced.

I’ll have more thoughts between now and Monday morning, but in the meantime: What features would you like to see in Lion, the next iOS, and/or iCloud?

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Google I/O Keynote #2: Join Me Live This Morning

At yesterday’s Google I/O keynote, the company announced Android Honeycomb 3.1, another upcoming Android version code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, a home-networking platform called Android @ Home, a system for building peripherals compatible with all Android devices, a plan to deal with Android fragmentation, a movie service, a music service, and several things I’m forgetting about right now. But there’s more news to come–presumably including non-Android developments like Chrome OS netbooks you can rent for twenty bucks a month–at this morning’s second-day keynote. I’ll be covering it live from San Francisco’s Moscone Center, with guest color commentary from Techland’s Doug Aamoth. You can join us at technologizer.com/googlekeynote2, and I hope you will.

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Google IO 2011: Join Me for Live Keynote Coverage

Google is holding its annual IO developer conference this week in San Francisco, and while there are no guarantees about what it’ll share–the company apparently won’t have any big social-networking news, and I ran into a Google staffer who told me not to expect an avalanche of announcements–it is planning keynotes on both Tuesday and Wednesday. And I’ll be at both and will provide live coverage.

Keynote one in on Tuesday, May 10th at 9am PT. Go to technologizer.com/googlekeynote1 for coverage.

Keynote two is on Wednesday, May 11th at 9:30am PT. That one will be at technologizer.com/googlekeynote2.

See you at either or both of these, I hope!

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What Will We See at Apple’s WWDC?

Apple has announced that its Worldwide Developers’ Conference starts June 6th in San Francisco:

“At this year’s conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “If you are an iOS or Mac OS X software developer, this is the event that you do not want to miss.”

WWDC is one of the most important weeks in the Applesphere–the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4 were all announced during previous editions of the show, as was Apple’s move to Intel processors–but it’s not a given that Apple will announce any new hardware at the event. In fact, The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, who has one of the best track records of any Apple reporter, says there won’t be any new devices. Of course, that doesn’t rule out new Apple hardware being announced before June 6th. And if all WWDC does is spell out the next version of iOS in detail, it’ll be really interesting.

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Technologizer at SxSW

I’m getting ready to head for one of my favorite tech conferences, Austin’s South by Southwest Interactive, which starts this Friday and goes well into the next week. I’ll mostly be hanging out, meeting interesting people, and looking for cool companies to write about–but I’ll also be part of two official events at the show.

Official event #1: On Monday, March 14th at 12:3pm in room 12AB in the ScreenBurn section at the Austin Convention Center, I’ll moderate a panel called “Platform Success: Earning Developers’ Trust, Hearts, and Minds.” Panelists include Peter Hoddie of Marvell, Brandon Watson of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 team, James Keller of iOS developer Small Society, and Ben Satterfield, the CEO of TestFlight.

Official event #2: On Tuesday, March 15th at 3pm at the SxSW Block Party, I’ll be doing my darndest to fare well in a competition called Das IronGeek, which pits a few folks against each other in a tech tournament including a typing race, a build-your-own server competition, and other challenges, including at least one they haven’t told me about yet. (I competed last year, in the inaugural edition, and didn’t do so well–but this year I’ll prevail. Or at try not to embarrass myself.)

Hope to see some you at one (or both) of these events, or just around town.

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So How Was Macworld This Year?

I had fun speaking at Macworld about the future of the mobile market last Wednesday. (Below, for no particular reason other than that I like it, is an image from my presentation–making the point that Android is less like Windows and more like Linux–actually, it is Linux under the skin.) I had even more fun listening to the guy who spoke after me–Bill Atkinson, who was one of the principal creators of the Mac in the early 1980s and who’s now (among other things) an iPhone developer. And I enjoyed walking the show floor Thursday morning.

When Apple announced in December of 2008 that it was puling out of Macworld, there were plenty of folks who predicted that the show would be dead within a year or two. And it did go through a great downsizing in 2010–but it may have found a new, more modest equilibrium. The show had 270 exhibitors this year and conference organizer IDG says it went into the event expecting 25,000 attendees; last year’s edition had “over” 250 exhibitors and “more than” 20,000 attendees. (The 2009 show, the last that Apple was present for, had 400 exhibitors and more than 28,000 attendees.)

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Eight Things I Liked at CES

I liked CES 2011. I found it useful and fun. I’m glad I went. None of those reactions were a given–I understand why some folks question the show’s very reasons for existing, and I’ve been known to accentuate the negative myself.  This year, however, there was a critical mass of interesting stuff, in multiple categories.

From Tuesday afternoon of last week through Saturday, I spent so much time learning about new products that I didn’t cover all that many of them here while the show was going on. So here’s a catch-up post with a few of the ones that made this CES one of the best ones in my memory–despite the insane crowds, the aisles and aisles of lookalike phone covers, and the jingling case of  slot-machine tinnitus that I still can’t quite shake.

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Me at Macworld Expo

About twenty years after I attended my first Macworld Expo, I’m tickled to be speaking at one. Week after next, I’m part of a new Macworld feature called the Industry Forum, which consists of quick presentations by a bunch of folks–other speakers include Macworld Editorial Director Jason Snell, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, Mac founding father Bill Atkinson, and others.

As usual, Macworld is at San Francisco’s Moscone Center; I go on Wednesday, January 26th at 10:40am. (The conference sessions run from January 25th-29th and the show floor opens on the 27th.) My topic is “Thoughts on Mobile,” and I plan to spend twenty minutes exploring the current state of competition between iOS devices and their competition and mulling over where it may lead in the months and years to come.

Hope to see you there!

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