February may seem early to you to be strategizing about Apple WWDC announcements. For tech writers, it's crunch time. To plan books, posts, and other coverage, you try to anticipate how big a change is coming up and what areas will be affected.
For example, Victor was asking me the other day what I'd like to see in the next installments of iOS and OS X. My answer is the same as it's been for years: "Bug fixes and security enhancements." I'm a bit over the yearly update cycle.
I think iOS 7 needed more time to simmer before its debut and I'd rather see more mature products instead of constantly living in an alpha test. I'd love for Apple to spend time fine-tuning its codebase rather than pushing new features. It's awesome to innovate but I'm not sure that innovation really needs to come in 12-month waves.
If I had to dream about this summer's announcements, I think I'd want to see an Apple/Tesla iCar that doesn't catch on fire when you plug in its magsafe connector, a super fitbit-like iWatch, or even "Apple and Samsung finally settle all legal disputes." We're probably going to get iOS 8 and OS X Malibu Barbie.
There's plenty of room for growth and new features, of course. Each year's API change list includes logical progressions to existing classes as well as keynote-worthy game-changers. I'd just like to see those emerge as slower dot releases than full OS revolutions.
It may already be happening. We're now about six months or so in from the 7.0 release. Apple is still evolving 7.1, now in its 5th beta. That's a trend I want to encourage -- slow, deliberate, and careful where the end-user benefits from the extra time.
All told, I have no idea what Apple is going to announce this summer but it would be great if the company took a bit of space to breathe.
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