10 Ways Apple Will Wow Your Pants Off Tomorrow

If you’ve been seeing the hashtag #WWDC floating around Twitter of late, or people in your feed seem to be posting heaps about Apple today, here’s the deal: WWDC stands for the Worldwide Developers Conference, which, whilst nowhere near as nefarious as the Worldwide Dangerous Criminals Convention, is still a pretty wild ride for anyone who works in, or froths, technology. It's basically a big five-day nerd convention that happens in San Fran every June, and at the keynote address, Apple sits everyone down, pours them a nice glass of water, and then proceeds to blow everyone's pants off, as they detail changes coming to their products / plans to continue world domination.  

This thing goes down every year, but - especially for people who listen to music (i.e. everyone) - tomorrow's event is slightly more newsworthy than usual, because Apple’s almost definitely going to unveil a music streaming service, that will forever change the future of the way we listen to music. Because we were always the kind of kids that went snooping in our parents’ wardrobes for our birthday and Christmas presents - instead of just waiting patiently – here’s some predictions about what Tim’s Cook-in up:

Death to Downloads

This one’s The Big Kahuna. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple plans to launch a $10 per month subscription service that would offer unlimited access to music, much like Spotify. While there doesn’t look to be a free-tier level like Spotfy has, it looks like there will be a focus on curation, including a rumoured $19 million dollar deal with Drake to be a guest DJ for iTunes Radio. Pharrell Williams and David Guetta are also possible playlist curators. Also, Bono. So like, get ready for heaps of Irish rock playlists.

Apple has the smartest developers working for them on the entire planet. Our guess is that they’re going to shove Spotify, Pandora, Rdio and Tidal in a blender and give us a product that combines the best bits of them all. And then use their hectic marketing muscle (read: $178 billion dollars in the bank) to ensure we all give it a crack. Which is going to be easy given Apple have all of our credit card details already (they have over 800 million credit cards registered in iTunes).

If this thing gets announced tomorrow for real, it’s only a matter of time before Apple will dominate the streaming industry (it may even be on Android – which would make it the first Apple app to appear on Android). But this development goes bigger than that – there’s the potential that it will have a run-on halo effect for other music streaming apps - like Spotify and Tidal (“a rising tide lifts all ships” – Jay Z is just getting quietly excited right now to have been handed a life jacket). Think about mass audiences who had their reservations about just the act of streaming in general – they’ll now accept it as the way forward for modern music.

See ya Siri

Get the cookie dough icecream and Kleenex ready for Siri, that chick is getting Apple Mapp’d to Dumpsville. I don’t have an Android but apparently Android users love Google Now, this personal assistant thing, that lets you manage, search for and organize your information easily within your phone. Apple is ready to offer an alternative called Proactive – it would be on your homescreen, and would offer relevant info about your calendar, where you are, alerts, and what you usually do on your phone or tablet. 

Although there’s this new thing called Soundhound that might just trump them all.

Youtube Killer?

Could Apple be about to take a swing at unseating the undisputed king of user generated video content? Rumours of an Apple-run YouTube-style post-it-yourself destination called Apple Connect are running hot. You can be sure they know the recent news about Spotify getting videos and podcasts now and they’d be remiss not to counteract that plan with one of their own. Casting our eye further back even, in 2012, Apple booted YouTube off its list of default iOS apps, sparking speculation of a YouTube killer. Seeing as though Apple has a monopoly on mobile devices - iPhones, iPads etc - which increasingly account for the bulk of YouTube views, they could make a decent crack at this, despite Google owning search advertising. But insiders are saying a service aimed at user-generated videos won’t get announced tomorrow.

Put Your Best Font Forward

Design buffs, this one’s for you! Actually no, it's for everyone. No membership to cool font-sharing designers group required. There’s a font used on the Apple Watch called ‘San Francisco’, it's super read-able, and it might overtake Helvetica Neue as the default Mac display font in the new versions of both iOS and OS X. 

Maps learns how to catch the bus. 

Maps has had a lack of public transit directions that may now appear in iOS 9 - Apple is planning to begin introducing directions for bus, train, and other public transit routes in several big cities like New York, with others to follow suite - providing coverage for millions of public transit riders each day. Surprised Apple haven’t done this sooner – you can’t use your bloody new Apple Watch while you’re busy driving!

OSX Gets A Sensitive Side.

Updates to the OS X platform is looking mainly to be a stability upgrade, writes Forbes (so that’s reducing crashes). There could also be further integration among OS X, iOS, and iCloud. There’s also an iOS-like Control Center that gives you quick access to settings by swiping left on your Mac’s trackpad, and a system called Rootless, which is either a new system that only desperate single people can use, or a security system that stops folks tampering around with highly sensitive information.   

Your iPhone's Staying Stable. 

Apple are pretty OCD when it comes to following their yearly release schedule, so it’s not likely an iPhone 6C will crop up – besides, the two-year contracts for iPhone 5C users won’t be up for renewal until September (we wouldn't bank on seeing much in the way of new Mac hardware either). However, the software that will propel those new phones come September - iOS 9 - will probably get announced tomorrow. iOS 9 will focus on stability - reducing bugs and errors. So next time your Instagram craps itself mid photo upload then you forget your awesome caption… it won’t. There is also an improvement where you can see what apps are draining your battery. Hint: it’s all that time you’re taking trying to think of awesome captions on Instagram.

Two-Timer.

Now you can increase your productivity being unproductive on two social media platforms at once! iPad could be now enabled to have multiple apps appearing onscreen at the same time.

Clocking Some Action.

Apparently the Apple Watch can't do shit unless its wirelessly tethered to an iPhone, but Apple’s giving developers the tools so that they will now hopefully be able to make native third-party apps for the Apple Watch – that means they can build and test apps for potential use on the device, although they won’t be implemented on the device just yet. iOS 9 will also reportedly come with deep-seated hooks for Force Touch, so the next-generation of Apple's phones and tablets will probably crib some interaction tricks from Apple's wearable.

Apple TV, You Will Not See.

Apple TV’s streaming subscription service - not coming. 

Where can I watch the action unfold?

The event begins on Monday, June 8 at 10AM Pacific Time – that’s 3am Perth time, or 5am Sydney / Melbourne time – for those who are up early, it streams live on Apple TV and on Apple’s website. The rest of us can just read all the handy re-caps that will appear online at a more reasonable hour – we’ll probably write one of those kind of articles, so keep your eyes on our Facebook page.