By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
San Francisco - A few hours away from the 2011 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference and expectations are running high on what the upcoming announcements will mean for Apple and for the technology sector. iCloud, Apple's new streaming delivery service is expected to be big news, specially if it can deliver an entirely new model of content distribution to its hundreds of millions of existing iTunes users. Here's what we expect today.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to boost confidence just by heading the WWDC 2011 KeynoteiTunes, Apple's main software conduit for music and video content on iPods, iPhones and the iPad as well as AppleTV is 10 years old. It grew from a singular application focused on managing music, to a virtual store to a multifaceted behemoth that managed contacts, calendars, applications, video queues across multiple devices. I expect iCloud to be both a streaming service as well as the evolution of iTunes.
One of the biggest stories will be the presence of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Currently on medical leave, having Jobs kick things off means a number of things to a number of people. To investors, Apple insiders, developers and competitors, it is a good sign that Apple's CEO is in good health and that he's once more at the helm, at least for this announcement.
Jobs is known to make an appearance when the company needs it most or when the product or announcement is something he has some intimate personal involvement with. That Jobs has his fingerprints all over the look, feel and character of the desktop and mobile operating systems is a given which we are sure he is going to demonstrate.
iCloud is a bit different, this is an entirely new ecosystem that will play off millions of existing devices and computers (through the browser) which gives it a grand, game changing importance. It is also something Apple has to get right from the very beginning. All indications point to Apple announcing that iCloud would have bagged the major labels and music distributors who have been recalcitrant to pursue a content streaming model. Steve Jobs is the best person to go on stage and sell the idea to the public, specially since rival services from Google and Amazon have already been launched.
This also means that today's announcements are very significant to the company and its future. Jobs will be expected to share the stage with Apple's management team including COO Tim Cook, VP for product marketing Phil Schiller, VP of iOS software Scott Forestall and Craig Federighi VP for OS X.
For OS X Lion, we think we will hear that the latest version of Apple's OS, which now has a number of similarities to the mobile iOS, will be shipping very soon. This is expected to sell at a lower price than previous OS X versions and might be exclusively available in Apple's Mac App Store so users can buy, download and install right from their computers.
iOS 5 is expected to have some significant updates specially in the area of notifications, automatic app downloads and we're hearing a lot of buzz about improved Twitter integration. We're sure this is just the tip of the iCeberg and we will have more in a couple of hours right from the Keynote.