My WWDC Predictions (and yack about random stuff) Disclaimer: I don't really read the Mac Rumor sites anymore, so this stuff might have already been speculated on. If so, take this as confirmation that maybe, just maybe it's a good idea. Things I think will happen at WWDC:
Regardless, we won't see any talk about 10.5 ("Siamese") - unless there's some major radical change that will require every application writer to change their app (and we all know how many times that's worked: the PowerPC transition, Carbon... and how many time's it failed: OpenDoc, early versions of OS X (which required all application developers to write in Cocoa/Yellow Box), and the original Copland(?). To another topic: Earlier I mentioned about Apple charging 10 cents for "commercial podcasts." Except this requires micropayments, which are fun (from the technical - I can only imagine - and, from what I've heard, the financial aspects as well.). If I was Apple I would solve this problem by selling a subscription, and not the individual episode. You pay $1, and get to listen to 10 episodes of the podcast you want. I suspect this is more likely than other methods, because Apple's obviously figured out the $1 "micro"payment business, I suspect they'll just use that model, instead of having to figure out the 10 cent payment business as well. Sidenote: I thought the PS3 and XBox360's online gaming systems were going to have micropayments - spend 3 cents on special shoes for your favorite player on NBA Live 2007, things like that. If I'm right about micropayments (they are trouble/hard), perhaps Sony/Microsoft will route around the problem by becoming the bank: you buy 3,000 credits for $30, from Sony or Microsoft, and spend credits from that in-system account, not your real world bank account. Transactions become a simple matter of decrementing and incrementing accounts in a Sony/Microsoft database, accounts are balanced with real world financial institutions once a month (so a merchant, who accumulated 100,000 in-system credits, would log in on the first on the month to find their online account at zero-ish, and themselves about $1,000 richer in the real world.) This method would only require 1-2 transactions a month (instead of an unlimited number), and doesn't require cooperation of large financial institutions. On the other hand, perhaps this method would mean declaring yourself a real bank, and having to submit to the practices of the federal banking rules (like PayPal has to do) - perhaps that paperwork makes this idea prohibitive as well. Fun link for the historically interested: Wikipedia on Pink/Tangent |