What to expect from Apple at WWDC 2012? New MacBooks, more Siri.

Apple's annual developers conference, WWDC, is right around the corner. And analysts are already lining up to predict what products Apple will introduce. 

|
Reuters
Apple's WWDC conference begins next week. What does Apple have in store? Here, a man takes a photograph outside an Apple store in China.

Next week, a small army of tech journalists will descend on San Francisco for the annual Apple worldwide developers conference, or WWDC. Apple typically uses the event to roll out a new product or two – last year, for instance, it was OS X Lion and iCloud. Tickets for the 2012 WWDC are already sold out, although Apple has promised to post video from the keynote, a small consolation for diehard fans. 

So hey, what does Apple have on tap this year? Almost certainly a rejiggered line of laptops. For months, rumors have swirled around a revamped version of the MacBook Pro, which hasn't seen a significant aesthetic overhaul for years. Signs point to a more svelte machine, with a high-resolution "retina display," and a next-generation processor. And over at CNET, Scott Stein, for one, says it's high time for a new MacBook

"I own a 2008 MacBook at home: unibody, the first one, an aluminum 13-incher back when it wasn't called a 'Pro.' Place it side-by-side next to one of last year's 13-inch MacBook Pros, and you couldn't tell the difference," Stein writes. "Yes, the performance and battery life have improved, but cosmetically, it's time for Apple's laptop hardware to see some design changes." 

Need some hard evidence that an overhauled MacBook is on the way? Navigate over to The Next Web, which has the skinny on a bunch of retina display-optimized apps already hitting the Mac App Store. 

Of course, it's possible that Apple will introduce not only a new MacBook Pro, but a new MacBook Air, to boot. The team at Laptop Magazine speculates that a new Air would likely pack the retina display, a new Intel Ivy Bridge processor, and an even more streamlined shape. 

"Although the Air is already the best-designed ultraportable we’ve used – and Apple now has a patent on the shape – we wouldn’t be surprised to see the company shrink the footprint of the Air by minimizing the bezel and the area around the keyboard, similar to the Dell XPS 13," staffers at the magazine write. "The idea: squeeze a 13-inch notebook into a 12-inch chassis." 

Another possibility: More Siri. Horizons readers will remember that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, recently promised that Apple would "double down" on Siri. Cook also hinted at the future "breadth" of Siri – a hint that Apple is looking to expand the purview of the voice-activated personal assistant. 

"Apple's Siri voice assistant is available exclusively on the iPhone 4S," notes Thomas Claburn of Information Week. "That's likely to change, if only because Apple wouldn't have invested in speech recognition as a single product's differentiating feature. Apple sees strategic value in voice input – not just because it messes with Google's search revenue stream –and can be expected to make it more widely available sooner or later." 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to What to expect from Apple at WWDC 2012? New MacBooks, more Siri.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0608/What-to-expect-from-Apple-at-WWDC-2012-New-MacBooks-more-Siri
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe