Let’s Get Ready for Boredom: WWDC 2005

Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference is scheduled to kick off with a Steve Jobs Keynote on June 6. Anytime Steve Jobs is talking and Mac folks are conferencing people expect something interesting to be revealed and, in general, people would prefer that something interesting to be awesome new hardware. Apple didn’t return calls requesting a little insight into what may be revealed during the keynote so to satisfy our craving for shiny newness we’re forced to take a historical look at what has emerged at past WWDCs.

1999
This was a big year for the WWDC
The G4 was discussed and given an October ship date.
A new PowerBook was revealed, the long rumored Lombard, featuring a G3 chip running at either 333 or 400 MHz.
OS 10.0 Scheduled for “Early 2000”
Steve says business is just dandy.
Other things that seemed important at time…
Macs being sold at Sears
Sherlock II! Wow that was revolutionary, I mean every time I fire up…uh never mind

2000
Boredom reaches warp factor ten
Attendance shoots up 40%
Plenty of OS X talk
No new hardware introductions.
Steve says business is fantastic particularly for Web Objects.

2001
As exciting as watching a learn to speak French educational show
iDVD 2
New G4 Towers (speed bumps)
New G3 iMacs (ooh, new colors!)
Steve calls iBook the true digital hub
Steve says Apple is doing great

2002
Faced with this and the long forgotten test pattern, you’d opt for the test pattern
Classic Mac OS given a funeral
Jaguar (10.2) previewed
5 million OS X users by the end of the year

2003
Cardiac Arrest WWDC!
The PowerMac G5 was introduced (speeds 3+ GHz within a year….yeah, sure)
iSight makes its debut
Plenty of Panther (10.3) talk
One million iPods shipped
Steve says Apple is great

2004
Thumbs in the middle
Lots of Tiger (10.4) talk
New Monitors (20”, 23”, 30”)
Steve says business is swell

Armed with the last five years of highlights we can now turn out attention to what we might expect from this year’s WWDC. The stone cold lock of the conference is Steve Jobs telling everyone just how great Apple is doing. This is no surprise, Apple could be preparing to file for bankruptcy and Steve Jobs would find something positive to say. Unfortunately that is the only can’t miss prediction. There is not a “killer” product invariably introduced in conjunction with the WWDC. On the other hand some years saw really revolutionary products introduced. Will there be amazing new hardware announcements? If you put a bunch of faith in rumor sites the answer is apparently “no.” On the other hand Apple may have found their version of Deep Throat and plugged the leak so to speak. Still, for the hardware obsessed, things look bleak.

Of course expecting exciting hardware introductions during a developer’s conference is a bit foolhardy. After all, the conference is aimed at developers and as such most of the focus should be on software. Software may not have the ability to generate the immediate excitement as heretofore-unseen hardware has but, as most folks understand, software is infinitely more important than hardware. So while this years WWDC may have huge hardware announcements it will undoubtedly have a large impact on software development and that, as boring as it may be, is a really exciting thing.