What a difference a year makes. 2008 saw the introduction of iPhone SDK, iPhone 2.0, App Store, MobileMe, and iPhone 3G, the latter two of which were announced at WWDC and prefaced a worldwide rollout that broke Apple's conservative goal of shipping 10 million units.

We've seen iPhone 3.0, the changes to the SDK and App Store, and now on the eve of WWDC 2009 it's time to think about what else we just might see one year later, and -- according to Apple -- lightyears ahead.

No one knows exactly what Apple is going to do. They make the cold war Kremlin seem positively chatty by comparison. That doesn't mean we don't have rough ideas. See, Apple likes their patterns. They like showing iPods off in the fall, for example, and they seem to like June for showing off the iPhone. So, based on WWDC 2008, the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview, and the more consistent rumors since then, we might be able to draw some educated guesses as to how WWDC 2009 might play out...

Schiller Time

Last year Great Balls of Fire filled Moscone Center and Steve Jobs took center stage. This year Phil Schiller, Vice President of Marketing, will be headlining the keynote, as he did the last -- and final -- Apple keynote at Macworld in January.

Jobs announced a sellout last year. They had a faster one this year. Schiller will no doubt mention that, and cover the WWDC session housekeeping before the fun begins.

Whether Schiller elaborates on the "three legs" of Apple's business - Mac, iPod, and iPhone -- before singling out the iPhone, or just singles it out right away, the predominance of iPhone over Mac signage seen so far, and Snow Leopard being more of an internal update to Mac OS X, leads us to think this year will be every bit as iPhone-centric, if not more.

Special caveat: if the outside rumors are true, if Apple intends to delay announcement of new iPhone hardware for an event later in the summer, when Steve Jobs is back in the saddle, we expect Schiller will start off by saying something to the effect of "we're not here to discuss iPhone hardware today" so as to immediately re-set expectations. To not mention it in advance, and then not announce it, would blot out anything else Apple could say.

We don't expect that, however. Apple has shown they're no longer a one-man-show. They don't need to wait for Steve Jobs to return. So, we expect no early re-set. We expect Schiller to jump right into--

iPhone 3.0 Review

iPhone 3.0 will no doubt lead off the show. We'll get the perfunctory State of the iPhone Development address. The numbers should be staggering. 4,000 developers had been admitted this time last year. No doubt that has been eclipsed by a wide, wide margin. Same for App Store numbers. 47,000+ apps, 1.x billion downloads. We'll hear just how big Apple's monster has become.

A rundown of the OS details, likely similar to the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview event, will kick us off. It's a fairly massive list, so hopefully Schiller will stick to the highlights.

Last year, Exchange and Enterprise were a large part of iPhone 2.0, and Jobs spent a good bit of time on showing off Fortune 500 and higher education participation in the beta. If Apple is serious about continuing their push into IT, maybe we'll get another video. We're guessing we don't. The SDK peripheral access via USB tether and Bluetooth looks to fill that role this year, so just like we saw blood pressure and diabetes apps and accessories at the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview event, we expect to see even more impressive demoes of that kind of functionality at WWDC.

Demo Time

Cue Scott Forstall, Vice President of iPhone Software. Forstall handled the SDK element of WWDC 2008, and the lion's share of iPhone 3.0 software at the Sneak Preview event, and he's likely to do the same at WWDC 2009. No doubt his technical overview will "blow us away".

1000 new APIs, and developer demos, June's show should again repeat quite a bit of March's show, though we beg you, Apple -- please don't draw the demos out as long as you have the last few times. Please.

Still, Push Notification, in-app purchases, P2P gaming, and the aforementioned peripheral access will take up more than their fair chunk of time.

Speaking of Push Notification, Forstall spoke about it a year ago -- introduced it to us in fact, and promised it for September 2008 release. It was delayed until 3.0, when we saw it again at March's Sneak Preview. He's spent time poking fun at other platforms' multitasking solutions, their management complexity and battery drain. We're not sure he'll do that again now, in a post Palm Pre "Cards" smartphone space, but if any company is ballsy enough to blaze ahead with that strategy, it's Apple. Still, we expect to see the final, polished version of Push Notification, nothing more. No multi-tasking surprises, at least not yet.

iPhone 3.0 New Features

It's possible minor additions, things that Apple doesn't believe make a major impact on 3rd party developers, such as further tweaks to the built-in apps could be shown (like last year's landscape scientific calculator). Apple showed an awful lot of that kind of tweak back in March, however, and they certainly have enough on their plate already. So we don't expect anything earth shattering. Again, at least not yet.

By the same token, while we'd love to hear Apple tell us they're solving the App Store review problem, making more transparent processes and guidelines, improving the Ad Hoc and beta testing process, we've learned a little helplessness in that regard. (Surprise us Apple!)

iPhone 3.0 Release date

Apple will announce it, of course, but there will be a couple of factors at play. If they're planning to release the OS update independently from any hardware update, they'll likely give us the date right away. If, however, they plan on once again doing a coordinated release, they'll make us wait until the end of the keynote.

Our bet? Sooner rather than later. Coordinate release last year hammered Apple hard. Maybe they could handle it this year, maybe not. But they don't need to. With iPhone 2G 24-month subscription accounting period ending June 29, with Palm Pre getting a lot of technorati attention, Apple can release 3.0 either after the keynote or right after WWDC and then update to 3.0.1 or 3.1 later in the summer.

MobileMe

Phil Schiller is the star of the show this time, but he was relegated to a supporting role last year. And that role was introducing MobileMe. Could we see a MobileMe 2.0? We know developers have found strings for a new MobileMe WebApp, Find My iPhone in the 3.0 firmware, so if nothing else we should see that. With most of its growing pains behind it, however, there's certainly room for Apple to begin expanding the service.

Regular updates via the MobileMe News blog for things like File Sharing (which were actually promised at launch but not delivered until later) suggest that Apple might be content simply rolling out new features as they finish them. If that's the case, while we won't see a whole new version -- certainly nothing as ambitious as Google Wave -- we could see whatever other new features are ready, or will be made ready during the summer.

Notes sync, given the new iPhone 3.0 desktop functionality, certainly makes sense. We'd love photo sync as well. Task sync would really round things out, but unless a built in task app is one of those extra new features, there's little chance of that this time. Online backup would be competitive with Microsoft's MyPhone and Palm's new Pre features. Server-side calendar subscriptions would also mirror on-device functionality, and server-side email rules would just make life so much easier, as would the ability to pull in other email services, a la Gmail. Speaking of which, Apple has already integrated Google into iCal and Address Book on the Mac, why not in MobileMe? And with FaceBook and Flickr living in iLife, could they also find some form of integration into MobileMe?

Heh. We doubt it. Our prediction is minor, evolutionary improvements for MobileMe, with one or two new features like Find My Phone thrown in for good measure.

iPhone International

Last year Steve Jobs presented a list of what the iPhone still needed. 1st on that list was 3G, followed by Enterprise support, 3rd party apps, and more countries. The middle two had already been addressed earlier in the keynote, and since then both 3G and a worldwide rollout have come to pass. Sort of. There's still the small matter of China.

It's a big deal in terms of market, and rumors have persisted about Apple trying to make deals with China Mobile and China Unicom, and even making a special Chinese CDMA iPhone to better fit that market's needs. They may do just that, but ultimately Apple is a US company and WWDC is a US show, so while it may get a mention, it won't be the main event. The third generation iPhone will be.

Third Generation iPhone

We predicted an iPhone HD back in October. Turns out we're getting a Zune HD instead. (Hey, maybe next year?). What Apple looks to be focusing on this year is an iPhone with video. And a fast iPhone at that.

Consistent rumors point to speed. Faster CPU, more RAM, faster 3.5G or 3.75G and 802.11n Wi-Fi networking. And a 3.2 inch, auto-focusing, video-recording camera in front of it.

If last year's model was named iPhone 3G to highlight last year's killer feature, iPhone video, as many rumors are now suggesting, could certainly highlight this year's.

The casing could see cosmetic changes, the digital compass could get some demo time, but shooting video, editing video, and sharing video -- all of which have been found in the 3.0 firmware screens, will be the star of the show.

And like with web browsing in 2007 and apps in 2008, Apple will bring ultra-mobile video production and publishing to the masses in 2009.

If they can take a page from iMovie and include direct upload not only to MobileMe but to YouTube as well -- well, the next set of TV commercials have just written themselves, haven't they?

(This is also where we'll see those previously undisclosed iPhone 3.0 features, of course).

It will be Phil Schiller pulling it from his pocket this year, not Steve Jobs. Sure, we'd love Jobs to be the "one more thing..." that comes on stage, triumphantly returning, iPhone video in hand. We'd love for a special iChat Mobile demonstration with Steve Jobs on the other end. Heck, we'd settle for hearing Steve Jobs over the phone or being sent a video clip while on the phone... Anything.

But realistically Apple has always said "end of June", and if Steve Jobs looks anything less than Greek god-like, history shows Apple takes a stock hit.

So, yeah, Phil Schiller will be waving the new iPhone high over Moscone, going over the battery details (please let John Gruber's 15-20% bump in battery life be correct), doing the demos, and announcing the price...

Pricing and Availability

Apple was aggressive last year in hitting $199/$299. Given the current competitive landscape, we can't see them being anything other than the same this year. You'll get more iPhone for your money, but it will cost the same money. $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB (given the availability of the double-density NAND Flash chips of course -- with Palm Pre only coming in at 8GB, Apple may think video alone is enough until component costs are sufficiently low).

The $99 iPhone? That'll be the iPhone 3G, on clearance, while supplies last.

Color will stay the same as well. No aluminum unibody iPhones this year.

Availability... we're hoping the same as last year -- as close to simultaneous release in all major markets as possible (especially Canada!).

Release Date Take III

Tomorrow just sounds too soon to us. If it really was going to be in Apple stores before the keynote, we'd have expected to see some leaks by now -- mysterious packages arriving, back store pictures, etc.

FCC clearance will no doubt be announced as quickly as possible (it was same day as WWDC last year), and while it's possible online ordering or even shipping to Apple Stores could be announced immediately, there's one huge reason we doubt it:

AT&T.

The iPhone is a two-part show, Apple and carrier. AT&T, and other carriers, will need to announce MMS plans and tethering plans. They'll have to announce upgrade paths for users still on contract for iPhone 3G. Unless AT&T is up on stage with Apple at WWDC and announces everything with crystal clarity right away, it'll be a customer support nightmare.

No, we think Apple will announce the date, but that the date will be some reasonable period of time after WWDC. Maybe a week, maybe a month like last year.

Unless Apple has secretly been shipping over new internals in iPhone 3G casings for a while now, they'll need to fill the channel and organize a huge, splashy launch just like they did last year and the year before.

June 26 would be close to the 2 year anniversary. July 10 to the 3G anniversary.

We'll take a risk and go for June 26.

Ad

The only thing we don't know is if we'll see a new ad for it to close out the show. Last year they shut down the flagship Apple Store to film one. This year, nothing so obvious. We hope so, it's a very Apple thing to do.

Conclusion

So that's it. That's our predictions for how the WWDC 2009 keynote will roll out tomorrow. Now all that's left is for us to watch tomorrow and find out!

Tomorrow is WWDC 2009. We'll no doubt get a second preview of iPhone 3.0 and hopefully a release date to go along with it -- if not the actual release itself.

We've done our best to cover iPhone 3.0, both through our massive and continuously updated iPhone 3.0 Beta Walkthrough, and our ongoing iPhone 3.0 blog posts. But what will that release -- tomorrow, later this week, or later this "summer" -- mean for current owners of the 2007 original iPhone 2G and the 2008 iPhone 3G, never mind the 2009 iPhone... whatever it ends up being called.

Let's take a look!

2007 iPhone 2G on 3.0

Apple has provided an unprecedented amount of software updates -- free software updates -- for iPhone owners. What originally shipped with OS 1.0 received a series of interim updates until 2008, when they got 2.0, and now 2.2.1.

Even after the 2-year subscription accounting model Apple users is on the verge of expiring, Apple announced back at the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Preview Event that they would also be providing 3.0, free of charge, to iPhone 2G owners. (That expiration date might even play a factor in the 3.0 release date, who knows?)

Controversially citing hardware limitations, however, at least 2 major features won't be made available:

• MMS
• Stereo Bluetooth

Of course, it won't get new features tied to the new hardware. It didn't get GPS and 3G last year, and it won't get the presumed digital compass, storage, RAM, CPU, etc. upgrades this year -- which means video recording is likely off the table as well. Other than that, your 2007 iPhone be made 2009 hardware fresh.

2008 iPhone 3G on 3.0

Apple demonstrated iPhone 3.0 on the current, iPhone 3G, and all the improvements publicly shown so far were shown specifically for the iPhone 3G.

That means, come iPhone 3.0 release day, the very least iPhone 3G owners can expect is what Apple showed -- and what most developers have been using since March.

Of course, developers who dug into the 3.0 code have found extra functionality. Some of it, like the digital compass, would require new hardware. Video recording may or may not require the additional storage, RAM, CPU power, of the new hardware.

Everything else, however, will be made 2009 good for your 2008 iPhone.

2009 iPhone ? on 3.0

Well, that's the question now isn't it? Apple hasn't announced any new iPhone for 2009 yet, but they're widely expected to tomorrow. Based on the code strings referenced about, it will include new hardware features and boosted internals.

So, at the very least, if you decide to upgrade to new hardware along with your new software, you'll get everything the iPhone 3G gets... and probably more.

Conclusion

So, if you're still rocking the iPhone 2G with no interest in upgrading, Apple still has a pretty nice present coming your way with 3.0. Feature-set alone, it will be like getting a whole new phone.

For iPhone 3G owners with not intention of changing, you'll still get everything you've been promised so far. And, yeah, it'll feel like a whole new phone.

And for those of you who simply must have the third generation hardware, either as an upgrade or as a first time iPhone owner, well, we ain't seen nothing yet.

The WWDC Keynote is tomorrow. Phil Schiller and Apple Execs take the stage as Moscone to update us on iPhone 3.0 and -- hopefully! -- announce iPhone 2,1 hardware (iPhone video in the latest rumors).

Makes sense that them rumors then would be hitting the high point of crazy today? By way of iSpazio (via Gizmodo), we get the above shot of a supposed iPhone with Mobile iChat video (is that why the ear piece has been raised up, to make room for the camera?), a two-tone iPhone, and the mother load of all whacky leaks:

A supposed Canadian source with inventory listings for -- we kid you not -- multicolor 64GB iPhones with flowers and bunnies on them. Yeah, somebody is having a little fun there in data entry... But here's the thing:

Make. It. Stop.

Seriously Phil.

Announce it tomorrow. The insanity must end...

(At least until speculation for 2010 starts!)

We get leaked third generation iPhone pictures. Not all of them are compelling enough to post or link to, but every once and a while, something comes in that fires off the old brainstorms. See above.

This one was sent to us by Emanuel who said simply, "Hello, this is leaked Photo of the iPhone video coming out June 9."

Date aside -- how tall is that screen now? Quite a bit taller than the current iPhones and iPods touch. We've heard rumors of a repositioned ear piece before, and this could certainly be a reason for it.

Not only is it taller, however, it's also exactly 16x9, that magical widescreen video ration the current iPhone achieves by letter-boxing, and what the Zune HD will have by going with a slimmer 272x480 display.

Apple can't cut pixels -- it would play havoc with all those 40,000ish apps that count on every single one of the current 320x480. Assuming Apple adds to them then, we'll be looking at 320x570.

Adding pixels wouldn't create the same problem for developers, since current apps would still fit on the wider screen. However, instead of having to letter-box video as much (some video is even wider than 16x9), Apple would suddenly be letter-boxing (or pillar-boxing) everything else. That doesn't sound like Apple.

We'll speculate after the break!

Enter our noble editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn: "Hey, what if they just left the dock visible for everything but video. That would make app switching a lot faster."

Doing the math, the current iPhone dock is 90 pixels high. 480 (old screen height) + 90 (dock height) = 570, which looks to fit nicely into 16x9.

Sure, landscape mode would require a dock that re-stacked vertically during transition. The current dock would likely also cause some problems for some users in an always-on implementation, coming too close to the menu tabs many apps use at the bottom of the current iPhone screen, and making the overall look a tad busy and cluttered.

The ability to auto-hide the dock like in Mac OS X (where you see pillar-boxes of black until you touch the area) could solve that. So could a whole new dock or approach to the home screen in general, which Daring Fireball's John Gruber had on his wish-list going back to Macworld 2009 in January.

So, let's break this back down. The picture above claims to be a leak of the iPhone video, available January 9. It has a 16x9 screen ratio. Do you think a) the picture could be real, b) the release date of June 9 could be real (it's been rumored already), c) Apple could go with an even wider, wide screen iPod, and d) if they do, how will they handle it for existing applications?

We have roughly 48hrs to figure it out for ourselves before Phil Schiller takes the keynote stage at WWDC and -- hopefully -- tells us for sure.

Gearlive (via BGR) is reporting that Apple will not only announce the third generation "iPhone video" (that's the name they use, so we'll mirror it here) this Monday, June 8, but actually have it available for sale at Apple stores the same day.

it will be available in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB models. A 4GB model is in the works as well, but it won’t be available on Monday, and when it is released, it won’t be sold in Apple Stores. All the things you’ve been seeing about an auto-focus camera, compass, etc. are all true. A camera on front along with a camera on back, that is the real deal - although it may just be for you to take video of yourself, and not for iChat video communication (although that would freaking rock.) A faster processor is also a lock (although I have heard nothing on additional RAM, it would make sense.)

Gearlive basically thinks Apple was going to release in July, but are rushing it up in an effort to counteract the release of the Palm Pre tomorrow, June 6.

TiPb isn't so sure. Last year's iPhone 3G was announced at WWDC on June 9, was cleared by the FCC that same day (presumably to prevent leaks), and went on sale July 11. Could iPhone video get announced, clear FCC, and hit the streets all in one day?

Also, last year Apple announced their carrier partners at WWDC, and those carrier partners spent the next month unveiling rate plans, upgrade paths, etc. Has AT&T, or any carrier, breathed a word about an MMS plan for iPhones? A way to upgrade from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone video? Would releasing the iPhone video not create an immediate customer service nightmare for Apple and AT&T as everyone showed up, nothing but questions to ask?

We don't know. Only Apple does. We know we want it though, and figure you do too. But could Apple really release the iPhone video this Monday?!

We've gone round and round on this before. I think Dieter and I may have mentioned this as one of a hundred guesses on the last Phone different podcast, but discounted it as being, like iPhone Extreme, something that fits into Apple's brand but doesn't really feel like a direction Apple would go.

TUAW was tipped to it being -- briefly -- on the AT&T website, however, so we have to consider it, don't we? (If the screen cap is for real).

Once upon a time Steve Jobs said no one wants to watch video on a tiny screen. Then Apple released the iPod video. So, there is precedent. Also, Apple named the iPhone 3G after its "killer" feature -- access to a faster cell network. So, if Apple considers video shooting, editing, and sharing to the the third generation's "killer" feature, iPhone video would certainly throw the spotlight on it (better than iPhone Compass, at least!)

That's the same thinking that was behind my betting the farm on iPhone HD last October. While Apple doesn't seem eager -- yet! -- to give me my 480x800 screen resolution, Microsoft has jumped on the moniker with Zune HD via its support for HD Radio and 720p dock-enabled output. If Apple includes new AV cables that let the newer, faster, more powerful CPU, RAM, and GPU push 720p as well, and HD is now off the table thanks to Microsoft's accelerated announcement last week, could iPhone video be a similar (if not quite as sexy) option?

What do you think?