Many Mac users like to wonder and dream about what Apple will offer to us around the time of WWDC and Macworld. The rumor sites abound with both the believable and the completely far-fetched. In the end we won’t know until Steve unveils it on stage. Unfortunately I won’t be able to see it in person and will need to fight for a feed with everyone else. (Incidentally I agree with Michael. Why can’t Apple give paid ADC members a bit of a leg up here?) I’ve only had the pleasure of attending WWDC once and it was the first glimpse of Tiger. Compared to JavaOne which I had attended at least 3 times WWDC was incredible. It was what a developer conference should be and I learned a lot. Maybe I was just more interested in the topics or maybe it had something to do with paying my own way 
. Regardless it was a worthwhile trip and I would love to be there this year and see the live demonstration of Leopard.
Perhaps I’ve missed it in years past but I find it interesting that many people are talking about UI changes, particularly unification, instead of guessing about new technologies. I suppose this shows how mature the operating system is at this point. I have long been bothered by the lack of consistency in the look and feel of the different applications released from Apple and the unavailability of those UI elements for use by third party developers like myself.
So what are we going to see?
- A new Look and Feel – I agree with the general consensus that brushed metal is going to go away. Some may mourn it’s passing but I will not be among their number. I do however hope that whatever look and feel is offered that Apple provides a complete set of UI elements for it. Perhaps brushed metal has complete IB palette support but Apple do not restrict themselves to those elements. For example, the segmented control in iChat is not an NSSegmentedControl. It looks better in a brushed metal window, but it isn’t available to developers. What this means of course is that we must “roll our own” if we wish to present a consistent look and feel. Spending time to write your own segmented control takes away from the time you can be providing innovative new functionality. I don’t believe that brushed metal will be magically replaced by the new iApp look and feel because it isn’t possible. I do think (hope) they will deprecate it and Apple will cease to use it. As a result people will move away from it or run the risk of their apps looking dated. Here’s hoping the HIG gets a major facelift.
- iChat expansion – Judging from past keynotes Steve Jobs really likes iChat and any chance to talk to that guy in Paris is something he’ll probably take advantage of
. Seriously though I do believe iChat is due for a re-vamp. It may only be a visual upgrade, but I think we’ll get more. The most interesting idea I’ve read is SIP support (and I regret I don’t recall where I saw it). I’m not completely sold on the idea though. I’ve been using Gizmo for about 8 months and the people I speak too often found it difficult to hear me while I could hear them just fine. Probably due to my laptop microphone. iChat’s existing audio and video calls do seem better. - Mac Pro – We will absolutely see the new Mac Pro and that will complete the hardware transition to Intel processors. This was such a shock last year and again at Macworld when Apple released Intel-based machines ahead of what we expected. Sometimes I am convinced that my old PPC-based machines multitasked better than my MacBook Pro. Maybe Leopard will remedy this in some way.
- Wireless Backlit Scissor-key keyboard – I can dream can’t I? I know I’d love to see Apple release this. It would essentially be a MacBook Pro keyboard including the backlight. I so much prefer a laptop keyboard these days and while I use a Macally ICEKey I really want the letter-based backlighting of the laptop keyboard. This actually might not be that far-fetched given that Apple will release the new Mac Pro.
- Resolution Independence – Also known as more work for developers. In a way I hope we don’t see this in Leopard but I won’t be surprised if we do. Many believe Apple will offer new displays with higher pixel density. In order to provide this without users of such displays going blind the applications need to be able to capable of rendering themselves at a usable size instead of being fixed with a 72dpi assumption. This may mean that bitmaps can no longer be used to construct things like buttons. Of course the Dock does some interesting things with scaling bitmaps, but it still requires multiple image stages. More likely we’d need to start using vector-based UI elements and start drawing in world coordinates instead of by pixel. If there is to be a bomb dropped on developers this year resolution independence will be it.
- Automator 2.0 – One of the sleeper technologies of Tiger will be updated. Perhaps Automator will receive branching and looping? I’d really like to see Apple do something like Sun tried to do back in the late 90s with Java Studio. And in a way Automator is a very basic version of that product. In order to provide branching and/or looping the UI will need to change. Even if it doesn’t gain such functionality I think the UI needs to change to make it easier for people to find the action they want. In the meantime, check out my actions.
- RIP Cocoa Java – Between not keeping the APIs updated in Tiger and the lack of automatic Universal Binary support there is very little incentive for developers to utilize Cocoa Java. Unfortunately converting the codebase to Objective-C is not trivial. It is unlikely Apple will bother removing Cocoa Java support but it is effectively dead anyway.
I’m confident that we’ll see many other changes. Some of them will be “under the hood” like CoreData and CoreImage from Tiger. Others will be more prominent like changes to the Finder. We can expect some knee-jerk reactions and some well thought-out responses. Hopefully what we will all receive is the inspiration to create great technologies with the new toys we’re sure to see!
