The Cult of Mac Super Guide To What To Expect At WWDC 2011 [Feature]

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Screen shot 2011-06-03 at 1.47.00 PM

In just three days, Steve Jobs will take the stage at San Francisco Moscone Center and kick off this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC. In so doing, he’ll announce new software, new products and end months of speculation about the new iPhone, iOS 5, iCloud music streaming and OS X Lion.

Here’s Cult of Mac’s complete overview of what we’re expecting to hear about at this year’s WWDC.

iOS 5

Voice Recognition: Back in 2010, Apple purchased Siri, a company which used Nuance’s speech recognition technologies. It is thought that Apple will deeply bake voice recognition tech into iOS, perhaps so deeply that any text-entry field will support voice recognition with just the tap of a button.

Twitter Integration: iOS 5 is likely to support at least the ability to share photos via Twitter, but evidence is mounting that Twitter has been baked so deeply into iOS 5’s DNA that it amounts to getting Apple’s foot in the door of social networking. Our guess? Apple will use iOS 5 Twitter integration to compete with Foursquare. Either way, we expect a lot in regards to Apple and Twitter from this uear’s WWDC.

Notifications and Widgets: With iOS 5, Apple is rumored to roll out a completely revamped notifications system and a new feature: widgets. Widgets could function like OS X Dashboard widgets, or they could be similar to Windows Phone 7’s tile approach, in which an app icon can also be animated and interactive, allowing a weather app icon to show the day’s forecast on the homescreen. Here’s how iOS 5’s new notifications and widgets might work.

iCloud integration: Using iCloud, you’ll be able to sync iOS data to the cloud, as well as stream your home iTunes media library to your iPhone or iPad over the net without syncing them into local storage first.

Location-aware iCal: Got a flight to catch? In iOS 5, an iCal alarm could take note of your location, combine that with the route to the airport and tell you you need to leave in ten minutes if you want to be on time. This one’s a big question mark, but we’ve heard from our own source it’s coming… if not in iOS 5, then in iOS 6.

Past Compatibility iOS 4 left the original iPhone back in the dust, and we expect the same thing this time. The iPhone 3GS will no longer be supported by iOS 5.

Overhauled Game Center: Supposedly, Game Center will become even more Xbox Live like with iOS 5, improving upon the service’s matchmaking capabilities. All we’ve heard are background rumblings on this one, but keep an eye out.

Release: iOS 5 will likely be available as a developer preview shortly after WWDC, but don’t expect to see it on your own iPhone until September, when Apple will release iOS 5 along with the new iPhone and iPod Touch.

Next Page: iCloud

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