I miss it. I really do. I miss knowing that the whole technology world – hell, a non-trivial chunk of the real world – is focused on what my company is about to announce, about to release, about to do to change the game. I was there for the Intel shift and the iPhone announcement – hell, my co-workers thought I was going to be onstage in a bunny suit at one point.
That was then. Now I’m getting set to cluster around the live stream with the rest of the peasants. I’ve only even been up to WWDC once since leaving Cupertino Hexachrome Fruit Holdings, and the IT track sessions I need haven’t been on offer in some time.
So what are we expecting? On paper, realistically, there’s nothing we should expect beyond developer introduction to iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.9 (assuming the ‘annual updates’ talk from last year is real). The Great Mentioner seems to think new MacBooks and some sort of streaming radio product are likely, with a new or heavily revised Mac Pro behind that (an appropriate intro for a developer conference) and perhaps a goosed-up AppleTV. The non-tech world will howl with rage and grief when the new iPhone is not announced, because they are idiots and cannot read history or do math.
Personally, there’s only one thing I want out of iOS 7: a granular way to see what apps are slaughtering your battery. My brief experiments with Google Now and Saga are demonstrating that pervasive constantly-running location services are even worse to deal with than the constant screen-use-and-refreshing of Twitter that made me take it off the phone. Battery is the key. Battery is everything. Battery is why the first iPhone had no third-party apps or 3G radio or GPS. Make sure my damn phone will last all day and I’ll be happy enough.
One hour left. You better have something pretty damn slick up your sleeve, Auburn man.