WWDC 2011 software only event - what it means

It is now official, WWDC 2011 will take place June 6th thru June 10th. Entirely focused on software: iOS and Mac OS X. Here is why this could prove to be a smart move.

A lot of people thought that Apple would be unveiling new iPhone hardware this year. After all, this has been the case for the last three years. But Apple has nothing to do with traditions. Apple is about disrupting trends. Right now, Apple offerings are much more mature. No matter how you slice it, the iPhone 4 is still and will stay competitive for a while without major hardware update. I can only see minor things to upgrade on current iPhone 4 but this would make the new device look like what iPhone 3GS looked compared to iPhone 3G.

What makes the hardware stand is the software running on top of it: iOS. iOS is a mature OS: since 2007 we've seen major updates to iOS: 2.0, 3.0 and now 4.0. In between these releases, we saw incremental changes mostly to add end user features or support new hardware (iPad, AirPlay, iPod refreshes, etc.). I expect iOS5 to continue the trend of major additions to the APIs as well as end user features. But what is still missing beside a better notifications handling? What does Apple want to show us, developers, that make both iOS and Mac OS X converge? After all, Apple like clear messages. They don't like sending too many pulses at the same time on the market. This is confusing. If they want to send a clear message about something, they may decide to skip a few things for later announcement. Here is the answer: This year, Apple want to offer serious cloud-based services and personal assistant APIs in their platforms. 

There is one thing that we didn't see from Mac OS X Lion so far: integrated cloud-based services APIs. Expect the same for iOS 5. When a company has a giant customer base like Apple does, it can try to build infrastructures and services that leverage upon that. Apple first step was Ping but I don't think they will stop there. They could build on top of this by providing new APIs to interact with Ping. What about opening sync services to sync objects with the next revision of MobileMe cloud services? Steve Jobs said that MobileMe would be a lot better in 2011. Offering cloud-based music storage is one thing but could this be in part through the proposal of new APIs in iOS tied with yet unknown new services on MobileMe? I think so. Finally there is Siri, a company Apple bought a while ago. They will eventually reuse this personal assistant technology into the core of its mobile operating system. That is a no brainer.

As you can see, iOS 5 could bring very cloud centric new APIs that ties together a revamped MobileMe with iOS and Mac OS X. I can wait for iPhone 5. Another great take on the subject: WWDC 2011 may be all software, signaling change in iPhone strategy.

Finally, what is your take on iOS5? There is a poll for that.