What was missing from Apple WWDC 2010?
We all agree that the iPhone 4 is really nice (nice may be an understatement given the 600,000 preorders on the first day). Both the fresh look and the specs are attractive. But at the very iPhone focussed WWDC keynote there were glaring ommisions of whole product lines. Apple has become so much more than a computer company that they cannot possibly cover all upcoming product lines without diluting the iPhone message.
Here are some of the items that I thought were overlooked and may show up later this year.
Mac: Remember Apple makes Macintosh computers? What about a refresh to the Mac Pro should be coming soon. The mac mini got a quite update the week after WWDC. Do we get a peak at the next version of OS X? We did see many few core features added to Snow Leopard but will probably see these leveraged further in the next OS revision.
North Carolina server farm: They still have not announced what this billion dollar investment is for. This is reportedly a huge facility. Something equally huge must be planned for this. I expect some kind of web service, possibly to do with iTunes. Currently we all buy music, tv shows movies and now books from iTunes and store them locally. What if we no longer have to store these and have to worry about backup. Apple already has copies of these. And they already know who bought what (for DRM). Everything could therefore be stored in the cloud. Add some social media features to this and perhaps a web based iLife and iWork suite. Suddenly I could almost do everything from my ipad. Now we are talking.
iLife suite: This is due for an update. iPhoto has become much more than a photo organization tool with the added editing and publishing/ sharing features (flickr, mobileme galleries and facebook sharing are excellent). iMovie and GarageBand will probably get tweaks but the one app that needs serious updating is iWeb. It has too many limitations to be really useful. Some limitations include lack of editing capabilities from multiple devices including the iPhone. Inability to make iPhone compatible websites. No mobile me editing.
Apple TV: A long neglected category that officially is just a hobby for Apple. But with Google announcing that they are getting into this business, it cannot remain a hobby for much longer. Expect to see an iPhone OS version (current one runs OS X).
Updates to Apple built iphone/ ipad apps: Apples popular iPhone aps are still not ipad ready.
An updated Gallery app would make a great photo sharing, viewing device. iWeb updating to allow users to update their blogs from thier iPhones and ipads, iDisk app for the ipad to allow cloud access to the ipad. Will we see an iPad optimized version of the iPhone iMovie?
MobileMe: Updates to the mail app (their is currently one in beta), better file sync- akin to dropbox, how about a free version of mobileme?
New products: Large trackpad? There are rumors that there is another peripheral coming from Apple- no clear news on what it is supposed to do.
Is it possible that we may get an actual TV with built in Apple TV?

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