What The WWDC 2013 Logo Hints About The Future Of Mac & iOS

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Screen Shot 2013-04-24 at 9.24.25 AM

This is the new logo for this year’s WWDC, which is scheduled to kick off on June 10th. WWDC logos tend to forecast in a round-about way what Apple thinks is the “kicker” of the conference: last year, it was the debut of the MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

So what does this WWDC 2013 logo mean? It features a bunch of rounded rectangles of varying colors, stacked a top each other, with a flat font reflecting WWDC into the year in Roman numerals. Here are our guesses:

Rounded rectangles — These are in the shape of app icons, so it’s possible these shapes indicate a new function of the iOS operating system. A literal interpretation could be that Apple is bringing OS X’s Stacks to iOS, but another possibility is this: all of those app icons are semi-transparent, and can be seen through each other. To me, this suggests iOS is finally getting Services, allowing apps in iOS to directly communicate with each other like in OS X. Apps are no longer sandboxes, but sandboxes with transparent sides. Get it?

Colorful icons — Killian thinks that these icons look flat to him, and suggests that it could mean some major visual changes in iOS 7, perhaps adopting a flatter, more contemporary style under the direction of Jony Ive. Another possibility is that rumors are true, and Apple intends on launching a colored range of iPhones in June. Previous rumors pegged this colored iPhone as the 5S, but Tim Cook in last night’s earnings call openly said not to expect major new products from Apple until fall, so if it were to be anything, it would likely be a colored iPhone 5 variant.

WWDC MMXIII — Killian thinks it is odd that Apple, which has used Myriad as a font in all previous WWDC announcements, is using an entirely different stylized font this year for the WWDC portion of the icon. He suggests it’s another hint that Apple is going to adopt a flatter, more modern design across iOS. I’m less convinced, but I do find the choice to make WWDC ‘reflect’ MMXIII interesting: to me, that implies second screen stuff, indicating to me that Apple might significantly beef up AirPlay, announcing new ways for your Mac, iPad, iPhone or Apple TV to communicate with one another.

Those are our best guesses right now. What do you think? Let us know your theories in the comments.

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