WWDC 2006 rumour roundup and crucial last minute drops

WWDC 2006 rumour roundup and crucial last minute drops The much anticipated World Wide Developers Conference 2006 will start today with a keynote performed by Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs. During this event, Apple usually previews the next version of Mac OS X and makes major and sometimes strategic announcements.

Last year, the company shaked the whole tech industry by announcing it is switching to the Intel platform. As a result, this year, it's the first time that the event is subject of so many rumours, fakes and discussion. So what the Mac community can expect to be announced in a few hours? We'll give you a summary of the biggest rumours and add to it our last drops of confirms and new information.

Mac Pro:

This is definitely the most anticipated announcement of the event. Actually if Apple does not release a Mac Pro line-up today, much of the audience and the mac user community will be highly disappointed. The Mac Pros are expected to sport Conroe processors on the mid and high-end and Woordcrest processors on the high-end.

Without being very specific, sources confirmed Apple would use both Conroe and Woodcrest processors on it's line-up of Mac Pros.

XServe:

It's been more than a year that Apple has updated its line of servers. Woodcrest processors are the best candidate for this line-up of Macs. It had been previously rumoured that the XServe's were to be released in July but it didn't happen.

MacOSXRumors did not obtain any information about the XServe but we find the use of Woodcrest processors quite obvious.

MacBook Pros?

Apple's mid and high-end notebooks are expected to get Core 2 Duo upgrade during the event, and probably get new features along with a redesign of their enclosure.

MacOSXRumors has previously reported from what we believe are very good sources that Apple is working on an ultra-thin 12" sized MacBook Pro in its labs. However we received no release timeframe at that time and we currently have no further confirmation on this report.

Meanwhile, recent comments made by an Apple employee tend to deny our claims but we keep believing that there's something in the labs, although it probably won't make it for today's keynote. Other rumour sites keep claiming that the 12" inch form factor might have been abandonned by Apple, in favor of the 13" form factor of the MacBook.

Apple Cinema Displays: Apple to go HDMI?

Also rumoured is the renewal of Apple's Cinema displays which were not updated since last year. Reports are claiming the obvious, that Apple is adding iSight and FrontRow features to them.

MacosXrumors has its own but unconfirmed report about it. Our sources did neither confirm or deny the inclusion of iSight and FrontRow but claimed the middle-end 23" inch display would be discontinued and replaced by a 24" inch form factor. Sources added that Apple could embrace the HDMI standard with it's forthcoming displays. However there's a reason why we did not make a separate report of it: it's far from being confirmed!

Wireless:

Engadget claimed last week, that Apple was about to release the iPhone in August. The site also refered to the "iChat Mobile" brand.

Although, we don't believe that an iPhone is coming during this event, we're quite surprised by the reference of the "iChat Mobile" brand which we had already heard about back in January from an unconfirmed source.

We also heard from a good source that Apple might make a wireless related announcement but we couldn't obtain any specific information about it. So we could also speculate on an improved wifi for Apple's notebooks or a video-enabled Airport Express.

Mac OS X Leopard:

Apple has confirmed executives would preview Mac OS X Leopard during the keynote. It's also being said that developers will be provided with a Leopard Preview DVD.

Many reports and also some fakes have made the rounds, the only information we can confirm is what we reported last week with our two articles on Leopard [see 1, 2]. We're in doupt about our own earlier report on the virtualisation feature, as Apple showed signs it has decided to rely on third party developers for it.

One more thing?

As it happens in almost every Steve Jobs' keynote, there's one surprise that has been kept so secret and unexpected that no one has even thought about. So we won't try to guess as we'll probably guess wrong.

Stay tuned, the keynote starts at 10AM PST, we don't know if we will be able to bring you a live coverage but we'll certainly provide reports and summary of the event.