WWDC 2008

Lots of anticipation for this year’s premiere annual Apple-related developer conference, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which runs June 9-13, 2008.

Like the Macworld Expo 2008 earlier, this is a venue for Apple [AAPL] and Steve Jobs to wow everybody with their upcoming, their latest, and improvements to their greatest– in a people-friendly way during the keynotes and techie ways during the sessions.

Of course, this year’s conference is a bit more special:

• The iPhone controversy and the highly anticipated upgrade for the platform’s eponymous mobile/convergence platform;
• The upcoming Macs;
• OS X 10.6;
• Is Apple going to make a bigger play for LB’s (using its expected revamped iPhone and new Macs with OS X) and try for a piece of the SMB pie that has been a mainstay of Dell [DELL] and Microsoft [MSFT] for so long?

This year’s stock markets have been pummeled with rampant oil speculation and massive financial company failures in the face of improprieties with crazy mortgages… Are we going to get the happy-shiny news that will put the fire back into our bellies?

Some business and convergence questions to (try to) answer during this conference:

1. Will the next generation of the iPhone become affordable and ubiquitous enough to become that ever-elusive digital communicator device (much discussed and promised back in 2000)?
2. Does Apple’s iPhone still have the momentum to push past the Google [GOOG] Android SDK and GPhone implementation roadmap?
3. Will Sun [JAVA] bring its JVM to the iPhone quickly enough to force a major disruptive innovation for corporate, consumer, and professional audiences, heralding the start of the Third Age of Java?
4. … Or will Google bring its own Java-Android VM implementation to the iPhone, making the iPhone the first practical GPhone implementation?
5. Will OS X become an independent entity from the Macs that have long supported it, or will it remain one of the chief differentiators of Apple computers?
6. Does OS X’s ease-of-use for developers translate well to server suitability and optimization, as a native deployment and/or virtualization platform?
7. How will the stock markets react to announcements from the Other Steve on his new offerings?

These questions, and more, will have to wait until the start of the conference on June 9.

Tracking the WWDC Keynote

MacRumors announced that it plans to track the keynote via blogstream, so you can follow along. The keynote is expected to start around 10:00 AM Pacific Time on June 9.

I’m sure there will be plenty of other blogs and streams available for the event. Good times, folks!

Tagged as: Apple, iPhone, Mac, OS X, WWDC