WWDC 2007 Predictions

Well, WWDC '07 is this coming Monday and it should be pretty interesting. Here are my predictions:

iPhone Widget Development:

• Yes, I believe Apple will allow developers to make stuff for the iPhone, but for now, I think it will only be the Widget environment. That's a pretty simple sandbox that's easy to support and should please developers for now. Eventually, down the line, Apple will probably finish up standardizing and documenting their API's and will probably announce iPhone development sometime next year.

Mac OS X Leopard Features:

Ever since Apple announced that, along with the delay, all WWDC attendees will get to see and take home a feature complete developer preview of 10.5 Leopard, everyone knew that the developers conference would be almost entirely focused on the new OS. What might the new features be?

• Brand new UI. Okay, I don't mean something radically different that doesn't conform to current usability standards, but something far more than just the unification of the OS. As I talked about in a previous post, from the recent developer builds, it seems pretty clear that Apple's setting the stage for a pretty nice revamp of the OS' GUI. Regardless, the Mac OS X UI needs to get a revamp; it's almost in shambles as it is right now.
• Filesystem change from HFS+ to ZFS. The only reason I'm predicting this is because Marc Hamilton of Sun said it. Of course, he isn't saying that now.
• New Finder. Okay, this one's been predicted over and over. Maybe it'll finally happen this year...

Of course, there will be more features than that in Leopard, but hey, I'm not Superman.