With just a few hours to go before Apple kicks off WWDC, some analysts are rushing to make predictions right up till the last few moments. London-based research firm Ovum, for example, delivered a list of three things that its Chief Telecoms Analyst Jan Dawson feels are essential announcements that Apple needs to make during the WWDC keynote later today.

Dawson’s assessment breaks ranks with many other analysts who have insisted that Apple must unveil its own HDTV at the event or sometime later this year but does think Apple needs to bring apps to the TV experience. The remainder of his comments focus on iOS and changes that a wide swath of iPhone and iPad owners, developers, and tech journalists have suggested since Apple released iOS 5 last fall.

It’s a pretty good bet that iPhones and iPads will be responsible for 3G/4G traffic spikes around the Moscone Center in San Francisco this week as Apple developers lucky enough to score a ticket attend WWDC. Beyond this week, however, it seems that iPhone users have a tendency to gobble up a large amount of data – more so than other platforms including Android.

On average, iPhone owners represent about 20% of smartphone customers for mobile carriers worldwide. You might expect that those customers would amount to around 20% of data usage. That isn’t the case as  iPhone users account for an average 45% of carrier data traffic and data use by iPhone users is more consistent than data consumed by Android customers.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference has spawned some huge lines this year, with many waiting outside San Francisco’s Moscone Center a full nine hours before the keynote will begin — as we showed you earlier. But it isn’t just Tim Cook and co. who will be enjoying all of the attention; the local Starbucks is struggling to keep up with thirsty attendees.

Source: saschasegan on Twitter

Tyype, a new ultra-simple text-editing app for the iPad, could point the way to better text manipulation in iOS 6, due to be announced today at Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco. And while we don’t think for a moment that Tyype’s gestures will make actually be in the new OS, it certainly shows that not only is Apple’s way not the sole way to do things, it isn’t even the best way.

It’s almost here, folks. One of the biggest events of the year for an Apple fan is today, June 11th. Tim Cook, Phil Schiller and others will be taking the stage at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in sunny San Francisco at 10 A.M. Pacific/ 1 P.M. Eastern.

We’re expecting a whole lot of announcements from Apple tomday, so stay tuned to Cult of Mac for breaking coverage all day, and especially starting at 10/1 Pacific/Eastern, when our live-blogging coverage of the keynote will commence.

Thousands of developers will be crammed into the Moscone Center this morning to watch Apple talk about new products like iOS 6, Mountain Lion, and possibly some new Macs. It’s going to be a very busy, exciting day. We can’t wait!

Don’t expect Apple to stream today’s keynote live, but keep hitting refresh on Cult of Mac for breaking news stories all day, plus post-keynote reactions. Apple usually posts a video recording of the keynote a few hours later, and we’ll have that live as soon as it’s up, along with a 90-second video recap for you impatient types. To whet your appetite, check out our complete roundup of what to expect from Apple at WWDC 2012 and our history of Apple product announcements at WWDC from the past decade.

Image: James Martin/CNET

Today at 10AM Pacific, Tim Cook will take the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Apple’s annual WWDC keynote, and if the rumor mill is to be believed, he’ll be hard pressed to fit everything Cupertino is ready to announce into its 90 minute presentation. We’re looking at massive upgrades to the entire Mac line, the official unveiling of iOS 6, loads of new apps, and maybe possibly even our first glimpse of the iPhone 5 and Apple HDTV.

Here’s what we think Apple will (and won’t) announce today, ranked in order of likelihood.

Noteshelf — the best writing and scrawling app available for the iPad — has at last gotten a Retina update for the new iPad. And boy was it worth the wait.

Tim Cook gave his first major interview since becoming Apple CEO at the AllThingsD conference last month, and the full video interview with Cook has now been made available.

Clocking in at 1 hour and 40 minutes, Cook’s interview with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg tackles all kinds of topics, including the state of Apple post-Steve Jobs, upcoming products, China labor practices, and more.

Apple’s online store has gone down ahead of the company’s keynote presentation at WWDC in just under four hours. We’ve had our suspicions that the company will be refreshing a number of its Macs, and this almost confirms they’ll be available to order today.

Apple’s unveiling of its next major operating system, iOS 6, is right around the corner. Scott Forstall and Co. are expected to announce the new OS to developers at WWDC next week. Very little is actually known about iOS 6, but there have been some rumors that made headlines over the last few months.

iOS 6 looks to be an evolutionary upgrade from iOS 5, rather than a revolutionary jump forward. Here’s what we expect to see.

Most of us have considered moving out iTunes library to an external hard drive to save space at one time or another. If you use a MacBook Air, you know how squeezzed for space you can feel after using a laptop with a much bigger hard drive. Heck, we’ve even written about saving space via iTunes migration.

But what about iPhoto? True, pictures take up less space than iTunes videos, or even MP3 tracks, but more and more these days we’re taking photos with huge pixel counts with similarly large file sizes. And what about all the movies we use our iPhones or cameras for? They eat up a lot of space, too. So, you might at some point want to move all the photos and home movies you manage in iPhoto to an external drive to save space. Here’s how.

As we patiently wait for Tim Cook to kick off Apple’s WWDC keynote in just under five hours time, the last of the WWDC rumors and reports are spilling in. One of the more questionable pieces comes from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who believes the new MacBook Pro won’t get that thinner, lighter, MacBook Air-like form factor we’ve all been hearing about. But that a resurrected MacBook will instead.

Launch Center Pro from App Cubby on Vimeo.

App Cubby has made a little teaser video for the forthcoming new app Launch Center Pro. As you may remember, Launch Center is kind of like Quicksilver or Launchbar for your iPhone — you fire it up and tap buttons to perform actions. You can quickly compose a Tweet, or tap a button to open the Mail app with a new draft already pre-populated with a recipient’s address, or even schedule a message, say, to be sent at a certain time (this will pop up a reminder in the Notification Center).

Since iOS 5 was introduced last summer, our lock screens finally do something worthwhile, and that is present all of our unread notifications in one place, so that we can see what we’ve missed at a glance. However, when you have no outstanding notifications, the lock screen is stall a rather boring place.

AnimateLockscreen is a new jailbreak tweak that aims to change that, by breathing new life into your lock screen with gorgeous animated wallpapers.

Lines are already starting to form for the WWDC keynote at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. A Photo tweeted by iOS developer Glasshouse Apps (responsible for The Early Edition and Quip, among others) shows the beginnings of a line outside the glass-fronted conference center.

Apple rumor site 9to5 Mac says it has gotten its hands on the entire spec sheet for the Macs expected to be announced today. There will be a a pair of new desktop Mac Pros, along with a server version.

The site also claims that the current 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros will get a spec bump, and that there will be a new Retina-display 15-inch model.

We’re almost certain Apple will announce a new MacBook Pro at WWDC this week, but what we’re not quite so sure of is exactly what the new notebook will bring. An Intel Ivy Bridge processor and a high-resolution Retina display seem like the most feasible changes, but there’s also been much debate over a new design.

Some reports have suggested the device will sport a thinner, lighter form factor that will be heavily influenced by the MacBook Air. While others have claimed the design will remain the same as existing MacBook Pros. Now a leaked logic board for the upcoming device seems to side with the latter.

Having the ability to connect to the ‘net over a cellular network from almost anywhere is a huge asset, and one of the best things abput the iPad (if you have the 3G/4G version — which you should). But there’s nothing like the shock of suddenly discovering a $300 bill for data overage to make one extremely skittish about ever using data again — which completely ruins the whole point of getting a 4G iPad in the first place (unless, of course, you just bought it for the GPS receiver).

To banish this evil conundrum, you’ll need DataMan Pro for iPad ($4), an app that watches your data usage like a hawk and alerts you when you’re gobbling data too quickly. It’ll even tell you which apps are the most data hungry.

How do you organize all of your images? Not just the photos, which iPhoto is okay at doing, but screenshots, wallpapers, mockups, all the rest of the stuff? If you’re like me, you probably have either everything in your Pictures folder or in a cascade of folders on your Mac. I think we should be smarter than that, shouldn’t we?

Turns out, it’s not all our faults. There haven’t been great apps for organizing your existing images, without actually making them less accessible. Then came Sparkbox, things changed, and we’re happier. Which is good, because Sparkbox is today’s deal—Sparkbox – Cult of Mac Deals.

Chinese forum WeiPhone.com has posted alleged download links to Apple’s iOS 6 and Safari 6 developer preview files ahead of WWDC tomorrow. Apple is expected to introduce the software on Monday, June 11th and release a preview to developers. The links provided by WeiPhone are currently inactive, but they will assumedly start serving iOS 6 and Safari 6 beta downloads for supported iOS devices once Apple lifts the curtain tomorrow.

Heading up this week’s must-have apps roundup is Color Splash Studio, a terrific photo manipulation tool originally built for Mac OS X, which has finally made the leap from Mac App Store to iPhone. We also have a great music video mixing tool from Algoriddim, the guys behind Djay; a camera app that’s perfect for your kids, and more.

The lovefest known as the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference starts Monday. As with any such event that involves Apple announcing new products, the global outpouring of love will be matched by a rising outpouring of hate.

Some people hate Apple. Other people hate people who hate Apple. Many of these haters have turned pro, leading to a lucrative “hater industrial complex.”

I know, because I’ve been the target of hate from both sides. I’m on the hate list of both the most extreme anti-Apple haters and pro-Apple haters.

Passion in technology, flame-wars, fanboyism and its discontents are nothing new. But in the past couple of years, something new has happened: The loudest, most insistent hate is now coming from the anti-Apple crowd, rather than the pro-Apple people.

I’ll tell you why below.

Also, it needs to be said: Haters are rare. The vast majority of users — and the vast majority of bona fide fans — don’t fall into the “hater” category. But haters appear to be everywhere because they’re active and vocal, and their rants memorable.

But first, let’s understand once and for all who hates, how they hate, and why.

You have an idea for the next great app. The app that will become essential for all iPhone (or iPad) owners. But there’s a problem, you don’t know how to make an app. No problem, you get some books, look at some tutorials, and then it hits you.

You still need to learn C and Objective C to be able to actually code the app.

This is where today’s deal comes in. Unlike many “learn to make and iOS app” courses that skip the foundation of C and Objective C. This course doesn’t. This is a true Foundations for iOS Development Course.

Kicking off this week’s must-have games roundup is Uplink, a title you may remember from 2001, when it made its debut on PC. This computer hacking simulator has now been remastered for the iPad’s touchscreen, and despite being 11 years old, it’s still an awesome game.

Accompanying Uplink is a hugely enjoyable platformer, a unique take on golf, a first-person catapulting game, and more.

I’ve never been particularly interested in theming iOS on my jailbroken iPhone. Apple’s stock iOS design is simplistic and efficient. The last thing anyone wants is to look at an over-designed interface every day.

With that said, I’ve also been wanting a change of pace recently. With iOS 6 on the near horizon, I’ve been looking for beautiful and interesting jailbreak themes to switch things up on iOS 5.1.1. It just so happens that one of the most gorgeous themes ever made was just released in Cydia.