Rating Your Apple WWDC 2010 Predictions
By Harry McCracken | Monday, June 7, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Another Apple WWDC keynote has come and gone. (Here’s a transcript of our live coverage.) As usual, I cleverly avoided making any predictions of my own–if you don’t predict, you can’t be wrong–and instead invited you to participate in a survey which formed the basis of collective Technologizer predictions.
Hundreds of you took the bait. And you were right a lot more often than you were wrong–including on one point where I felt positive you’d be proven incorrect this morning.
After the jump, your predictions and today’s upshot.
Will Apple announce a new iPhone at WWDC 2010?
You said: Yes, in a landslide.
Steve said: Yes, in a keynote.
How you did: This one was a cakewalk, no?
What new features will the iPhone have?
You said: It’ll have a higher-resolution camera, a faster CPU, a front-facing camera, longer battery life, a larger/higher-resolution screen, iChat with video capability, and more storage. It won’t have a thinner case, 4G wireless, or an IPS or OLED screen.
Steve said: It’ll have a higher-resolution camera, a more advanced CPU (although he didn’t emphasize speed as a benefit), a front-facing camera, longer battery life, a higher-resolution IPS screen, the iChat-like FaceTime with video capability…and a thinner case. Oh, and a gyroscope. But the storage still maxes out at 32GB.
How you did: A little less than great, but not bad.
What U.S. carriers will the iPhone be available for?
You said: AT&T, and only AT&T.
Steve said: AT&T, and only AT&T.
How you did: Perfectly.
What will the name of the iPhone be?
You said: iPhone HD.
Steve said: iPhone 4.
How you did. Well, 19 percent of you did predict the right name. But far more guessed wrong.
Will Apple announce any lower price points for iPhones?
What you said: No.
What Steve said: Same pricing tiers as before–without the standard double-the-storage upgrades.
How you did: Perfectly.
When will the new iPhone be available?
What you said: Later in June.
What Steve said: June 24th.
How you did: Admirably.
What other new products, if any, will Apple announce?
What you said: None. Which surprised me–I figured there’d be one or two, at least.
What Steve said: Nothing about any new products, unless you count third-party items such as Netflix for iPhone. Weirdly, he didn’t even mention Safari 5 for OS X and Windows, which Apple released today.
How you did: It’s like you had access to today’s script or something.
Will Steve Jobs make any references to the lost iPhone prototype?
What you said: He will.
What Steve said: Well, the rumors outside the auditorium of John “I’m a PC” Hodgman appearing in a Gizmodo satire of some sort turned out to be fantasy. But Jobs did tell attendees several times that even if they thought they’d seen the new iPhone, they hadn’t seen the new iPhone.
How you did: Right again.
Will Apple announce that the Beatles are now available on iTunes?
What you said: No.
What Steve said: He didn’t mention the lads one way or another.
How you did: Flawlessly.
Will there be any other major announcements not mentioned above?
What you said: Yes.
What Steve said: Hmmm. One Appplewatcher’s major announcement is another one’s minor footnote, but he did announce that Apple wants its FaceTime video chat to be an industry-standard protocol. That’s news beyond the new iPhone
What else might happen?
Individuals among you predicted:
Free version of Mobile Me (no.)
Apple search engine (sorry.)
A completely different iPhone design than what leaked (that would have been a hoot, huh?)
FM radio (no.)
New monitors (not that I recall.)
App Store for OS X (nope.)
Safari 5 (it was released today, but not mentioned at the keynote.)
Touch-screen MacBook Pro (definitely not.)
Wi-Fi synchronization (no.)
A smaller-screen iPad (if so I missed it.)
A new A4 processor in the Apple TV (not really.)
Jobs will mention something about privacy to send a jab at Zuckerberg and Facebook (he didn’t even throw serious jabs Android’s way.)
Merger of Mac Mini and Apple TV lines (nifty idea for future event!)
Boot Camp for iPhone –allowing those who want Android, Windows Mobile/Phone or Meego to run that in a dual-boot environment on the iPhone hardware. (you wish.)
OS X 10.7 (not mentioned.)
Okay, enough of the individual prognostications–you do a lot better when I ask you to vote as a bloc than when you go it alone. Thanks to all for participating in this idiosyncratic experiment…
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June 7th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
In a way we got a smaller iPad. The A4, IPS screen, micro-SIM, Wi-Fi n, Netflix, and 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing in iPhone 4 are all iPad features. It’s an iPad nano.
Obviously, they spent the money for this year’s storage upgrade on everything but storage. That’s the only thing that didn’t change.
iPhone 3GS is also an amazing $99 phone.
Special nod to the Wired writer who said micro-SIM in iPad was a dirty trick by Apple to keep you from using you $80/month iPhone SIM in iPad instead of its $30/month micro-SIM. It was obvious that the smaller device was also going to get a micro-SIM in the next revision. Duh. The iPad and iPhone 4 guts are the same.
June 8th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Sadly, for me, no: iMac, Mac Pro, 27-inch display, Mac Mini.