Every year Apple holds its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. It’s the only time out of the year that third-party App Store developers can meet with Apple engineers face-to-face. For the indie dev making apps out of his home office, WWDC is Mecca. Besides the knowledge that can be gained, the conference holds tremendous networking value for many who make their livings from selling apps on the iPhone and Mac.
WWDC 2013 sold out in under two minutes this year, and about 5,000 developers will be descending upon the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the week-long conference in June. Some new information shows how WWDC attracts quite the international audience.
Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek is our favorite know-nothing analyst, having been proven hysterically, horribly wrong on about every major Apple prediction he’s ever made. He’s probably safe on this prediction, though: even Misek doesn’t think Apple’s going to surprise us with a new iPhone in June. But he’s still kind of an idiot, since it directly contradicts his own prophecies back in December.
Over the last few months developers and websites haven’t seen much iOS 7 beta traffic coming out of Apple’s set of IP addresses in Cupertino. However, over the last few days traffic from devices running iOS 7 has increased for a number of websites and apps.
Onswipe has reported that it has seen a big spike in traffic on its partner sites that run its HTML5 optimized mobile websites. Cult of Mac has seen the number of visits from iOS 7 users increase in our traffic logs, starting around April 29th as well.
The iPad mini is the best iPad Apple has ever released, except for one damn thing: the screen. Even if you love your iPad mini, everyone agrees that the inferiority of the screen compared to other tablets like the Nexus 7 — let alone the 9.7-inch iPad — is the only thing that is holding it back. The iPad mini needs a Retina display.
Sadly, hopes of getting a Retina iPad mini this year have recently been dashed by reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who poured water on the rumor of a Retina iPad mini launch by saying that that the Retina Display needed for a higher-res iPad mini won’t even start manufacturing until later this year, ruling out an October launch.
So what’s Apple’s plan? According to a new report, pretty much what you’d expect: they’ll release a spec-bumped iPad mini in the second half of this year, possibly at WWDC, then follow it up with an iPad mini with Retina Display in Q1 of 2014.
Six months after taking responsibility of software design, Jony Ive is hard at work overhauling Apple’s upcoming iOS 7 operating system. And according to sources for Bloomberg, the changes he is making are so significant that they run the risk of delaying the update’s release.
Apple’s not expected to show much at WWDC that isn’t software. Tim Cook himself pretty much precluded seeing any major updates to Apple’s hardware line until fall. That doesn’t mean, however, that Apple won’t bump the specs of some existing Mac models, and it’s now expected by one of Apple’s more reliable activists that Cupertino will do just that, unveiling upgraded MacBooks across the line at the beginning of June.
Japanese telecom provider KDDI’s mobile branch is planning to kick off its iPhone 5S pre-orders on June 20 ahead of a launch in July, according to an internal document that has been making its way around the web. The carrier expects the device to offer a 13-megapixel camera as well as Apple’s latest iOS 7 operating system.
With all the brouhaha over the 2-minute sell-out of Apple’s upcoming World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) this June, it’s not too surprising that the Cupertino-based technology company has taken a few steps to support those developers who weren’t able to get a ticket to the popular event.
Apple has already decided to offer video of the WWDC sessions, and has contacted some developers who were unable to get a ticket due to the online ordering system overload.
Today, however, in a post on its News and Announcements for Developers page, Apple has announced that there will be a traveling tour, dubbed Tech Talks, making its way to various cities around the country, perhaps like the ones held in 2011 for the launch of iOS 5.
This time around on CultCast: why we need $150,000$230,000 $500,000 for coffee with Tim Cook; Mr. Cook talks iPhone with a 5-inch screen; and with mobile products like the iPad taking over, could Apple eventually stop selling Macs? Plus, we’re finally getting a new Xbox console; the next iOS and OS X at WWDC; and the current Apple hardware drought needs to end!
All that and more on this week’s CultCast. Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Didn’t get a ticket to WWDC this year? Don’t worry, you’re certainly not the only one. But if you were looking forward to a week out of the office, then there is another event you can attend instead.
It’s called AltWWDC, and it’s a free, open alternative to Apple’s prestigious conference that encourages Mac and iOS developers to meet up and mingle and discuss the latest software from Cupertino. You won’t get your hands on OS X 10.9 or iOS 7, but you will get free lunch for a week.
