Bold Predictions

Today is the keynote to Apple’s annual world-wide developer conference. As many developers, I’m at the same time looking forward to and scared of what might come. The huge design changes in iOS last year are widely considered to be continued within Mac OS. New hardware might be announced, not showing the iPhone 6 would be a big surprise.

My expectations:

• iOS 8 will be a polished iOS 7. Nothing too fancy here (especially no borders around buttons).

• As said above: iPhone 6 is a safe guess. I think we will see sapphire glass front and (maybe) a curved sapphire glass back. I expect the first all new design since iPhone 4. A bigger screen will be available, the rumored 1.5x pixel count sounds reasonable to me.

• Mac OS X 10.10 is a safe guess. I do expect changes in both, the user interface and in the user experience. I do not expect it to look like iOS 7 but it will get a new, reduced look. Buttons will still have some kind of border/visible active area.

• My fear is an even deeper lock-in on iCloud. I do not want my documents on a server other then my own. Even that scares me. My data should be on a drive that is physically in my proximity.

• My bold prediction is the same as last year: An ARM based MacBook Air.