Even this year’s CodeMash 2.0.1.2, a developer’s conference in Sandusky, Ohio sold out in an amazing twenty minutes to over 1,200 attendees.  So rather than holding out to see if Apple expands its own event, you should check out these upcoming alternatives:

• MacIT in San Francisco at the Moscone Center Jan. 26-28, 2012.
• 360|MacDev in Denver at the Embassy Suites Feb. 3-4, 2012.
• CocoaConf in Chicago at the Elk Grove Village March 16-17, 2012.
• 360|iDev in Denver at the Crowne Plaza Sept. 2012.
• MacTech in Los Angeles Oct. 17-19, 2012

You may even be able to score an event closer to home by checking Eventbrite, or by contacting a local CocoaHead. However, if you have your heart set on attending WWDC, there may be something you can do about it.

Cult of Mac points out that there is a service that will send you an SMS message the moment WWDC tickets go on sale.  WWDC Alerts, the site  extending this offer, also has a Twitter account that you can follow if you prefer. So sign up for the alerts, monitor your Apple information channels, and you just might get in.

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The usual suspects. By simply searching for the term “Top 10 Web Hosting,” you will find several lists, all vying for the honor of the definitive top 10 list of web hosts. I’ll save you a lot of trouble, and point you to hostmonster.com, justhost.com, fatcow.com, bluehost.com and hostgator.com, all of which appear ranked highly in most of these lists. Be sure the package you select supports hosting domain names on the account, and be aware of page limits and bandwidth caps on entry-level accounts. You should be able to find decent virtual accommodations for personal use for less than $5/mo.

Domain registrar. Apple doesn’t provide a domain service of their own. You can point your registered domain to your MobileMe account, but Apple is not a registrar themselves. Many, if not all, domain registrars also offer web hosting solutions, too. I happen to use GoDaddy as my domain registrar, and have been looking at what they have to offer.  I was able to find a plan that suited my needs for less than $10/mo.

Squarespace. This is where things start to get interesting. Squarespace has lots of nice features to offer its customers. It is featured on many of the podcasts I listen to and watch. Squarespace’s strength lies in its easy-to-use, prefab template-based site development that is highly customizable supports multiple authors. But if you’re handling your web design and development elsewhere, this may be more than you need, and in order to avoid a ten page limit you have to start looking at plans that costs as much as $20/mo.

Apple may be getting out of the web game in favor of moving to the cloud, but it’s a feature that’s well-represented by many providers already, so it really isn’t a great loss. Nor is the demise of iWeb, which, truth be told, wasn’t a stellar web page creation tool to begin with. If anything, this may be the shot in the arm needed to get users to make some timely improvements to their personal websites.

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At the WWDC keynote this week, Steve Jobs remarked that when trying to teach someone how to use a Mac, “everything’s going along fine until you hit the file system, and then the difficulty is staggering for most people.” I remember having my own difficulties understanding file systems back when I was a computer neophyte, and I’m sure others would agree.

On iOS, this learning curve is non-existent, as it has no file manager. Instead, apps use a “library” metaphor, where each app is responsible for presenting its own documents. For example, when you launch Pages for iOS, you get a view of all your documents, so you can swipe through and choose one to edit.

Pages for iPad uses a library to display its documents.

But how can Apple make file management easier on the Mac? Truth is, it has been laying the groundwork for years. The iLife suite, iTunes, and Photo Booth have used the library system since the beginning, and I suspect a new version of iWork will come out that does the same. Apple is furthering this groundwork with Lion; Auto Save, Versions, and Launchpad are all designed to be easier alternatives to using the Finder. AirDrop, the new simple local file sharing tool, is also part of the transition, even though it’s integrated into the Lion Finder. All Apple has to do is take it out of the Finder, and integrate it into each app’s library.

Another piece of the puzzle is iCloud, which makes syncing files across multiple devices easy, requiring no intervention on the user’s part. iCloud has the potential to make drag ‘n’ drop file management a thing of the past. No more copying that important Keynote presentation from one Mac to another with the Finder; With iCloud, it’ll already be there.

It follows that in the future, we could see a Mac OS where there is no Finder, and none of the complexities that come with it. When you want to work with a document, you’ll just fire up the app that’s associated with it and select it from the library. Shared libraries could work between apps, too, like they do now with iPhoto and other Apple apps. There won’t be any need to save files, or launch applications with the Finder; the OS will take care of that for you.

All this isn’t to say that it’ll be easy for Apple to replace the Finder. There are still questions that remain unanswered. For instance, how Apple would deal with downloads or the Desktop folder. Despite this, I have little doubt that Apple will continue to move us towards a Finder-less future. The gains in terms ease of use are simply too great for Apple to pass up.

What are your thoughts? Should Apple ditch the finder, or are the compromises required too great?

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• Design. Well-designed apps are delightful, elegant, intuitive, engaging, exciting, compelling, and reliable.
• Innovation. Innovative apps are revolutionary, inspirational, unique, and do things in completely new and exciting ways.
• Technical excellence. Technically advanced apps have excellent performance and make extensive use of the latest Apple technologies to deliver innovative, platform differentiating, and advanced features.

The winners are chosen for Student, iPhone, iPad, and Mac categories from apps available for sale in the iTunes App Store and the Mac App Store (app links below are to the respective App Store). The 2011 ADA winners are:

Student

• Grades 2 by Tapity – a GPA calculator.
• Pennant by Vargatron – an interactive history of baseball.
• Pulse News by Alphonso Labs – an innovative and beautiful news reader.

iPhone

• Cut the Rope by chillingo – a physics-based puzzle game.
• Golfscape GPS Rangefinder by Shotzoom – an augmented reality rangefinder for 35,000+ golf courses.
• Infinity Blade by Chair Entertainment Group – a sword-fighting action game.

iPad

• Osmos for iPad by Hemisphere Games – a physics-based game of survival.
• Our Choice by Push Pop Press – an interactive book platform featuring Al Gore’s latest publication on the environment
• Djay by algoriddim – DJ software for your iPod library.

Mac

• Capo by SuperMegaUltraGroovy – a learning tool for musicians.
• Pixelmator by Pixelmator Team – an outstanding image editor.
• Anomaly Warzone Earth by 11 bit studios – a highly rated game with a “mixture of action and strategy in a tower offense formula.”

Congratulations to the winners! Anyone you think was overlooked this year? Let us know in the comments.

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Slowly but surely, Apple is trying to convince more media companies to play in its sandbox, and the latest move is an iBooks-style digital newsstand for the iPhone and iPad. As part of the raft of new features and services it announced at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple launched Newsstand — a single interface for all of a user’s subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. Whether the new offering will convince more publishers to sign up and hand over 30 percent of their subscription revenues to the company remains to be seen.

Apple has been working on a single digital newsstand for newspapers and magazines since last year, but it ran into some significant roadblocks with several publishers. One issue was the control over subscriber information: Some media companies didn’t want to have to ask their readers to give up personal details, but they wanted direct access to that info the same way they have it with print subscriptions —since it is a crucial part of their sales pitch to advertisers. Apple stood firm, however, and eventually a number of mainstream publishers started to cave in to the company’s demands.

As my colleague Darrell Etherington has noted in his coverage, Condé Nast has recently signed up to offer digital magazine subscriptions for a number of its properties, including Wired, Glamour and Vanity Fair, and Hearst (publisher of Esquire) has also signed up to offer subscriptions (Time Inc. is one of the few remaining holdouts). And contrary to what some publishers feared, a surprisingly large proportion of users seems to be fine with providing personal info through an app.

With the launch of the new Newsstand, all of a user’s newspaper and magazine subscriptions will be available in a single interface, the same way that books are available through the iBooks interface. The design of Newsstand even looks the same, with the wood-style virtual shelving similar to a bookstore or magazine store.

Newsstand completes the transition of magazine and newspapers away from just being apps in the traditional iTunes app store and toward actual subscriptions in the home. When publications were first offered on the iPhone and iPad, users had to pay for each individual issue of a magazine and then download it separately. Now, with Apple’s support for in-app purchasing, subscriptions for Wired or the Daily or the New York Times will automatically be updated every month without requiring users to do anything.

The biggest issue for publishers, however, is that dealing through the Apple ecosystem still means they have to give Apple 30 percent of their subscription revenue. Some publishers were getting around this by sending users to a website outside their app in order to sign them up for a subscription, but Apple closed that door last year by requiring any publisher who charges for content to do so from within the app as well as outside it.

Condé Nast and Hearst seem to feel that giving Apple that kind of control over their access to a subscriber base — not to mention 30 percent of their revenues — is a fair trade. But is that a sign of how compelling Apple’s offering is or how desperate publishers are?

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Zarko Drincic

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1. Multi-touch gestures. As laptops with trackpads now account for nearly 75 percent of Apple computer sales, OS X Lion gives full consideration for multi-touch gestures. These gestures also help bring some UI conventions from iOS devices to the desktop OS.
2. Full-screen apps. While developers have always been able to create full-screen apps, it takes quite a bit of extra work to get it right. Apple has added specific features to Lion to make it easier for apps to go full-screen. This is another nod to the importance of the laptop market with smaller built-in screens.
3. Mission Control. Integrates the best of Exposé and Spaces and ties it to gestures to make it even easier to switch between apps. This type of quick switching is particularly important with full-screen apps.
4. App Store. The Mac App Store has been a great success. Apple is adding new features like in-app purchase for Mac apps and delta updates to reduce the size of downloads.
5. Launchpad. A new way to launch apps. My impression is that full-screen makes the dock less usable and Apple is experimenting with creating an easy way to use gestures to bring a list of apps up on screen.
6. Resume. Developers can now take advantage of system-level features in Lion to automatically save the current state of applications. Now when you relaunch the app, it will automatically resume exactly where you left off, with window positions, pallettes, documents, etc. exactly as it was.
7. Auto-save. We’ve all lost work at one moment or another because we forgot to save a document. Lion now brings auto-save to every application and integrates closely with the next feature…
8. Versions. Because apps are auto-saving documents frequently, Lion keeps track of all the previous versions of that document. You can browse old versions much like Time Machine for backups of older files.
9. AirDrop. A simple way to share files over a local-area network, Airdrop will automatically discover other Macs nearby and help you securely transfer files with your permission and confirmation from your colleague.
10. Mail. The new Mail app has been updated to use all these new features of Lion and work well in full-screen mode. There’s a new Conversation view that brings threaded email to the Mac and some new search magic to make it easier to find the message you are looking for.

I’m not sold on full-screen apps and the associated changes to Mission Control and Launchpad, but Resume, auto-save and Versions will make users’ lives much easier. What is your favorite new feature in OS X Lion?

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Facts and figures.

Schiller also mentioned a few examples of how the Mac App Store has benefited developers. Autodesk, the company behind the SketchBook apps, has seen over a million new users since entering the App Store. Pixelmator, the low-cost Photoshop alternative, has seen a quadrupling of its revenue in the past six months. The Pixelmator app made $1 million in the first 20 days of being available in the App Store — at $30 a piece, that’s over 30,000 new users just in the first 20 days. As Schiller said, the Mac App Store has been a “huge hit for the small players”.

New features

After running through the numbers, Schiller also talked about a few new features coming to the App Store in Lion. First was news that apps will now be able to use in-app purchase, in the same way as iOS apps already do. You will be able to purchase upgrades or add-ons from within the app itself using your iTunes account.

The other new feature is the inclusion of Push Notifications, again taking a page from the iOS book. Just as your iPhone can tell you when something happens with a sound or a message, so will your computer be able to. Think of it like Growl for Mac App Store apps.

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9:31: Pictures from inside the Moscone Center

9:45: The doors are open and all 5000+ attendees are filing in, finding seats, and snapping the requisite crowd photos.

9:57: And now, our own requisite pre-keynote photos of the stage and audience at Moscone:

10:00: Standing ovation as Steve Jobs walks onto stage, 10am sharp.

10:03: Jobs says WWDC sold out within two hours. Over 5200 attendees are here today. Says hardware is the brain of our products, and software is our soul.

10:07: Phil Schiller, SVP of product marketing, takes the stage and introduces Mac OS X Lion, which has 250 features. He says he will be talking about 10 of them today.

10:13: Craig Federighi, SVP of OS X software, takes the stage to demo the first three features introduced by Schiller: multi-touch, full-screen applications, and a “mission control” app navigation feature.

10:17: Phil Schiller is back onstage following Federighi’s demo. He says the Mac App store is now the number 1 channel for buying PC software. Surpassing Best Buy, Walmart and Office Depot. The Mac App store is now built-in to Lion, with in-app purchasing and push notifications.

10:20: The 6th new feature in Lion is called “resume”– when you launch an app in Lion, it brings you right back to where you were when you quit it last. The 7th feature is “auto-save”, that saves a document automatically as you write it.

10:22: The 8th feature is “versions,” which saves each version of a document that’s been auto-saved. The feature looks a lot like Time Machine.

10:25: Federighi comes back on stage to demo Lion’s built-in version of the Mac App Store, which includes a launch pad navigation feature. He also demos the experience of working with documents in Lion, including auto-save and versions.

10:29: Schiller is back onstage. Feature #9 is “Air Drop” which allows you to share documents via a peer-to-peer WiFi based network. Using this feature allows you to drag and drop documents to other users who are running Lion’s Air Drop nearby.

10:33: Schiller announces new features to Mail in Lion, as the 10th feature update. The search function has received a major upgrade with better search features. Federighi comes back on stage once again to demo the Lion Mail features.

10:37: Schiller comes back on stage and announces additional features to the 10 he’s highlighted, such as Windows migration. He notes that the OS has more than 3000 APIs for developers. Lion will be available only within the Mac App Store, he says. Lion will be a 4GB download and can be used on all a user’s authorized Macs.

10:38: Lion will be available for $29.99, $100 less than the typical price. That gets a huge response from the crowd. It will be available on sale to everyone in July, Schiller says.

10:40: SVP of iOS software Scott Forstall takes the stage to provide some iOS numbers. He says more than 200 million iOS devices have been sold, and more than 25 million iPads have been sold to date. Over 15 billion songs have been sold in the iTunes music store, making Apple the number 1 music retailer in the world. More than 14 billion apps from the app store have been downloaded. Apple has paid out more than $2.5 billion to developers building apps for the app store.

10:45: Forstall says he’ll announce 10 new features to iOS 5. The first is a better UI for push notifications.

10:46: The new iOS has a notification center where all notifications– voicemail, emails, text messages, Facebook messages, along with stocks and weather, will be updated in one place.

10.47: You get access to the notifications by swiping your finger from top to bottom. The notifications don’t interrupt and it acts like a launcher for the app. Notification center is pretty cool.

10.48: News Center is the new production and it has major publishers who have signed up for the subscriptions. Talking about a whole lot of magazines – the usual suspects. A single place for finding all the papers and magazines in one place. It is like the iBooks, but for Magazines and Newspapers with background downloads.

10.49: And there is twitter. …We are doing a number of things – single sign-ons. Twitter is built into iPhone, iPad and you can sign-in. Logged in and don’t need to sign on again. Oh, Facebook doesn’t like that :-) It integrates with our apps – Cameras etc. You can include Twitter @username in contact list and use Twitter to update photos of your friends.

10:55: When you share an article via email on iOS Safari Reader, the entire body of the story is included in the email, not just the link. Also has added full tabbed browsing in iOS Safari– an announcement that elicited a lot of applause from the audience.

10:58: Forstall announces a new “reminders” feature added to iOS 5. Reminders app is basically a place to store to-do lists. You can associate dates and locations with these reminders– when the date arrives, or when you are geo-located within a certain place, you receive a reminder to do a certain task.

11:01: The 6th iOS announcement has to do with the camera app. iPhone 4 is the 2nd most popular camera overall used on Flickr. There is a new camera button accessible from the iPhone’s lock screen, so that even if there is a passcode set, the camera can be used without unlocking the screen. The volume up button can now be used to take a photo– an announcement that received a big whoop of applause from the crowd here.

11:03: Photos can be edited within the iPhone and iPad now– things such as red-eye reduction, and one-tap enhance are now added into the iOS camera app.

11:05: The 7th update has to do with updates to the mail application. The inbox now has drag and drop capabilities for adding email recipients, and search now includes entire message content. There is also a new feature that allows you to type easier with your thumbs by splitting the keyboard onto the right and left sides of the iPhone or iPad.

11:07: The 8th update, “PC Free”, receives a big cheer from the audience. Now, when an iPhone is taken out of the box, the setup does not prompt users to plug the device into a computer to activate the device. Software updates are now over the air, or OTA, so you  no longer need to plug the phone into a computer to update the mobile device. And instead of updating the entire OS, you just download what’s changed– known as Delta updates.

11:11: The 9th announcement has to do with Game Center. Forstall says iOS’ Game Center now has 50 million users. New updates to Game Center in iOS 5 are focused on making it more social– you can add photos, etc. Now Game Center has support for turn-based games like Scrabble in the OS.

11:15: The 10th update is a new messaging service that works between all iOS customers– on iPads, iPod Touches, and iPads, called iMessage. There are now delivery receipts, optional read receipts, typing indications, and muli-device sync, 3G and WiFi support, and full encryption. Forstall demos iMessage with Apple marketing VP Greg “Joz” Joswiak. iMessage is built on Apple’s own push notification system.

11:18: Forstall goes over a few other updates beyond the 10 he delved into: AirPlay mirroring, which mirrors the iPad 2 to a TV wirelessly. Also, he said iOS has added WiFi sync to iTunes. Forstall also goes into some new developer additions, and says the company will give out iOS Developer SDKs today at the WWDC conference.

11:19: iOS 5 will be shipping to customers “this fall,” Forstall says.

11:20: Steve Jobs takes the stage again to lots of applause. He says he’s going to talk about iCloud and jokes that “I’ll try not to blow it.”

11:22: Jobs says that the status quo of keeping all our information, such as pictures, up to date across all our devices is a broken system. “Keeping those devices in sync is driving us crazy. We’ve got a great solution to this problem… We’re going to demote the PC and Mac to being just a device, and move the center of your digital life in the cloud.”

11:25: iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices, and is completely integrated with your apps.  “You might say, why should I believe them? They’re the ones who brought me MobileMe,” Jobs says. He admits that MobileMe was “not our finest hour” but says that the company has learned its lesson. With iCloud they’ve built all the company’s apps from the ground up to work perfectly within this automatically synced system, he says.

11:27: iCloud will be completely free. It also won’t contain any ads.

11:30: iCloud will automatically do daily backups to the cloud over WiFi: Back up includes purchased music, apps and books, your photos and videos, your device settings, and your app data.

11:32: Jobs announces 3 more apps to iCloud– what he says are the “most innovative” aspects of the product. The first is Documents, pages that are automatically stored into the cloud and synced across all your devices.

11:33: Roger Wosner, VP of iWork takes the stage to demo the experience of iWork apps such as Keynote and Pages in iCloud.

11:37: Steve Jobs is back onstage to give more details about how documents are handled . He also announces iCloud storage APIs, so that developers can easily tie their own apps into iCloud storage.

11:40: Jobs announces PhotoStream, what he says is his favorite aspect of iCloud. This automatically syncs Photos into the cloud and across all devices. PhotoStream also works with AppleTV.

11:42: Apple VP of Internet services Eddy Cue takes the stage for an iCloud PhotoStream demo. This app is really slick.

11:44: Steve Jobs takes stage again to introduce “last, but not least– iTunes in the cloud.” Eddy Cue is back onstage to demo how iTunes works in the cloud– it allows a user to sync all the songs he or she has ever purchased, on any device. Any song now purchased on any device is instantly added to all of a user’s other devices. When Cue shows this feature off it elicits a big “wow” from the crowd. Very nice.

11:50: All 9 apps that comprise iCloud are completely free, Jobs says. “We want people to see what these devices can really do, and what the software can do.”

11:52: When you upgrade your phone or buy a new phone with iOS 5, all you do is type in your user name and password, and iCloud is automatically ready to be set up. iCloud users start with 5 GB of free data, not counting songs, books, or photo streaming. Developer beta of iCloud is open today, he says. iTunes in the cloud is available today for end users for iOS 4.3. iCloud in its entirety will be shipped concurrently with iOS 5 this fall.

11:54: “There’s one more thing,” Jobs says to applause. This is “iTunes Match,” which allows users to automatically find all non-iTunes songs and albums that users have ripped themselves and match them with iTunes songs so that they can be accessed via iCloud. This scan and match service will take minutes, instead of weeks, Jobs says. These songs will be upgraded to 256 kbps AAC DRM-free, and will cost $25.99 per year.

11:57: To demonstrate how serious Apple is about its cloud efforts, Jobs shows photos of the third data center that Apple has constructed to help support its iCloud efforts. He says it’s the “most eco-friendly you can make.”

11:59: Steve Jobs exits the stage to another standing ovation from the audience, and that’s a wrap for the WWDC 2011 keynote.

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By the numbers

Steve Jobs is hosting this year’s keynote, and generally speaking, he kicks off Apple’s public events with a look at the company’s success to date. Since this is a developer-focused event, expect to hear about the App Store’s growth, an updated figure regarding revenue paid out to developers (over $2 billion at last count), and possibly some numbers about in-app subscription adoption, since that has turned out to be quite a nice little victory for Apple. There should be an acknowledgement of the record-setting sellout of this year’s batch of WWDC tickets, and how that reflects the health of Apple’s development platforms.

Jobs will also likely talk about the success of iTunes, and the number of active accounts on file associated with the iTunes store, especially if today is the day Apple unveils its cloud music service.

Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud

The known variables about today’s talk are OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud. Apple issued an official press release stating it would be talking about these three software releases specifically, though it didn’t elaborate much about any of the above. I expect Apple to talk about these new software offerings in the order I’ve listed them here, since we know less about each product as we move down the list, ending with iCloud.

OS X Lion has gotten a lot of press, and the features are not really a secret thanks to Apple’s decision to release developer preview builds of the OS. We’ve covered some of the more notable new features of Lion, and detailed many of the smaller changes it brings as well. What Apple will show off today will better reflect Lion as a polished, shipping product, and they’ll probably announce a release date, too, which could come very soon.

iOS 5 is Apple’s next big update for the mobile OS that powers its iPhone, iPod touch and iPad line of devices, and though specific information about the update are few and far between, there have been reports that show notifications and other improvements are likely on the way. Over the weekend, iTunes users also discovered an Apple slip, noting automatic over-the-air updates could be in store, too, thanks to a line included in iTunes referring to the feature. Apple also is thought to have hired a notifications specialist, reinforcing the idea that iOS 5 will change how those work. Apple will also probably take some time while unveiling iOS 5 features to bring out key development partners (like EAand Gameloft, for example) to show off new APIs in action.

iCloud looks like it will be Apple’s big unveil at this year’s conference, since there’s a lot of excitement surrounding this product. We don’t yet have a really good idea what shape iCloud will take, but John Gruber said Sunday we should think about it like iTunes, or, in other words, a repository for all the information you regularly sync to and from iOS devices, but one that resides in the cloud, instead of locally on a computer. We’ve also discussed other potential features of the service, including cloud music and media streaming, and how it might benefit iOS developers.

One more thing

At big public Apple events, we often see Steve Jobs reveal something that few, if any, saw coming. This “one more thing,” has become the biggest draw of these addresses for some. Some have speculated Apple will indeed unveil new iPhone hardware today, despite many reports to the contrary, and that this will be the “one more thing.” Supply-side, things have been awfully quiet, which is generally not the case leading up to a new iPhone model release (we almost always see reports of hardware going into full-scale production before an update), so don’t get your hopes up.

iTunes music streaming services could be the last “surprise” announcement at WWDC, especially if Apple doesn’t include them in the basic iCloud package. It would make sense if Apple planned it that way, because according to reports, the company’s negotiations with record labels came right down to the wire. If no deal was reached, Apple could leave it out without affecting their other planned announcements.

That’s the short version of what you can expect from Steve Jobs and the Apple executive team in just a few short hours. Stay tuned for our live coverage, and detailed reports on all the new features announced today.

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While both Google and Amazon have already launched cloud music offerings of their own, which allow users to upload their music collections to remote servers for streaming on various devices, those companies both decided to launch without securing any special license privileges from record labels. Instead, both suggest that they don’t need any additional licenses to offer music owners a new alternative to local storage. Despite the stance, license negotiations are said to be ongoing behind the scenes, at least for Amazon.

Support from record labels shouldn’t be discounted as an insignificant advantage in the cloud music race. Proper licenses mean Apple will be able to make music available in the cloud directly from time of purchase, eliminating the annoying step of requiring you to purchase and then upload your music separately, as users have to do with Google’s offering. And, like the music service Lala it acquired in late 2009, Apple should be able to provide a service that scans your existing iTunes library and provides instant streaming access to all licensed music it has in its collection. Considering some users have huge existing libraries that would take hours or even days to upload using Google’s service, for example, this would be a non-trivial advantage.

Record labels are reportedly pulling for Apple in this case, since they’ve already been left out of the party by Google and Amazon. The hope is that Apple’s service will be much more attractive to users than either Google’s or Amazon’s, which could bring those companies back to the table and make them much more eager to negotiate new licensing deals.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference begins June 6, and it’s supposed to be a software-focused event. A cloud music service is definitely a software product, and the unveiling of one by Apple at the event could help people get over an iPhone hardware refresh missing until later this year. If reports are true, all that remains before Apple can introduce the service is for a few remaining pieces to fall into place, so I think it’s likely we’ll see something musical at WWDC.

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DigiTimes has found that primary suppliers for the MacBook Air will remain the same, and that both the 11.6- and 13.3-inch models will continue to be produced. The source of the info is said to be “makers in the supply chain,” although none would go on record since Apple never reveals info about future product releases early and wouldn’t be too pleased with its suppliers doing the same.

Rumors that Apple would be introducing a refresh of the new MacBook Air, which received a major overhaul in October of 2010, have been circulating for some time now. Some suspect a new Air could be unveiled at WWDC this year. Another possibility is that Apple is planning to launch it alongside the official public release of OS X Lion, the next iteration of its Mac operating system. Lion has a lot of features that make the Air the perfect platform for showing it off, like the ability to resume state on power on, and auto-save features that make the most sense in a mobile computer.

A new Air within the next couple of months also makes sense because it sets up Apple’s computer line-up for the third quarter of 2011, which is when computer-makers traditionally see their peak volume for the year. The MacBook Air has, by all accounts, been a success since its redesign last year, but it still uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Upgrading to the Sandy Bridge platform will provide better power usage, better graphics and better performance, and make the Air much more attractive to back-to-school notebook buyers.

The MacBook Air is the most exciting product in Apple’s Mac line, in my opinion, and I think a well-timed update that coincides with the release of Apple’s most significant operating system update in many years is a recipe for success. An update like the one described in this new report is definitely in the pipeline, and this timeline does make a lot of sense. Anyone putting their money down if this does come to pass?

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Last year, the distinction between the two platforms was easier to evaluate; Google has caught up to and surpassed Apple in the important area of new activations. But there’s plenty more for developers to consider before making a choice about which platform to support.

Just Follow the Money

With iOS and Apple, there’s clearly one primary source of income: the direct sale of the final product into the hands of consumers. The relationship isn’t quite so clear with Google and Android. Google can’t make money directly from the licensing of Android. Manufacturers and carriers are in the driver’s seat, and all they want to do is sell parts and service contracts. At best, Android was created as a strategy to gain access to consumer information.

Google is more interested in user behavior, social networks, and even location information than in traditional direct revenue. Apple certainly wasn’t going to share or otherwise surrender such information to anyone. Apple worked too hard to change all that.  So what was a marketing and search company like Google to do? Google likely had no choice but to create Android. The relationship Apple has with their customers is the core of Apple’s existence. And it’s that bond Google is looking to break. If Google loses control over specific flavors of Android modified by hardware makers, Google’s revenue opportunity on Android will be exactly the same as it is on iOS since it loses the customer relationship.

Android’s Fragmentation Evolved

A year ago, Google didn’t think it had a real fragmentation problem when the installed devices were scattered across three major divisions of the Android SDK. A year later, Google is starting to see a fragmentation issue, but not where you might think. Google is worried it’s losing control of Android, but it’s control it may never have had in the first place. The low profit margins Android smartphone manufacturers are forced to contend with are creating a situation where device manufacturers will need to compete on more than just the sum of their manufactured parts.

Android’s open environment is one where malware, pirated apps and downright malicious software can thrive. As manufacturers try to increase their margins, they are starting to enter into bundling deals with third-party app developers, including what has been referred to as bloatware on devices. Google may be powerless to regain control of Android due to its open nature, making the platform even more of a development challenge.

More Than Just a Smartphone OS

Just like iPods drove Mac sales with college students, iPhones and iPads are continuing to drive sales of Macs, largely due to how seriously Apple takes its relationship with the customer. Apple hardware sells more Apple hardware, and that’s good for developers.

There are an increasing number of software titles that have distinctly different interfaces across iPhone, iPad and Mac, but all contribute to a common goal, as both iOS and OS X share the same development environment and language through Xcode. While the install base of Android is now larger than iOS, Apple’s sales aren’t suffering. More than ever before in Apple’s history, families are choosing Apple.

Conclusion

Controlling the customer experience and a unified platform that received regular updates in a timely fashion were the key factors in being the best last year. Android fragmentation made things challenging, but not impossible, for developers. And when it came to activations, Android was still lagging behind iOS.

Now fragmentation has device manufacturers realizing they need to distinguish themselves if they want to increase profits and lure prospective buyers away from other Android handset makers. While the number of total activations across all of Android is on the rise, the Android platform is about to erupt with fierce competition, pulling it in directions we can’t possibly foresee today.

Choosing Apple from both a developer as well as a consumer perspective is not just a smartphone decision. Apple has been expanding the platform to include iPads and even the living room via content streamed to the Apple TV, and sharing code with Macs. You can’t accomplish the same synergy across multiple consumer devices with Android, and that’s why iOS should remain a winner with developers for at another year.

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Huberty came away from the meeting expecting that we will see “major feature/function updates” at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) in June, according to her note to investors. WWDC is usually where Apple unveils new iPhone models each year, but rumors have been circulating that this year the conference will only focus on software updates, which will likely include iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion.

Apple did not confirm or deny whether or not a hardware iPhone refresh was on track for summer or later this year, but Huberty reports that since Apple sees itself as focused on software, iOS 5 and Lion are expected to continue to drive strong sales. She also reports that executives conveyed the message that other factors will continue to support strong margins, like improved product cost and higher average selling prices for iPads. Huberty also left the meeting feeling that Apple’s earnings per share could climb as high as $50 in 2013, thanks to “lower-priced iPhones, iPod-like market share in tablets, and expanding distribution in China and other emerging markets.”

The Apple execs really seem to have gone out of their way to take the emphasis off the possibility of new hardware and place expectations firmly on the shoulders of software. That could be a sign the company is trying to further soften the blow of a fall or later iPhone hardware refresh, while also sticking to its policy of not revealing product release plans in advance.

A dramatically altered iOS 5 could indeed steal the show at WWDC and even stave off concerns regarding a changed hardware refresh cycle, but only if it addresses customer pain points with Apple’s mobile OS. If it’s a strong-enough release that’s available to all devices that support iOS 4, it could actually bolster customer loyalty by providing new device-style experience without the price tag. But that’s a pretty big “if,” so we’ll see if Apple can deliver.

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Location: Moscone West in San Francisco

San Francisco’s Moscone Center can certainly accommodate more than the traditional 5,000 attendees normally allotted at WWDC. Apple could decide to make use of the full convention center and take over both the North and South venues as well. But location is not the issue. In fact, if it were, relocating to a location like Las Vegas could potentially accommodate all of Apple’s registered developers (were each to buy a ticket) without issue.

So if keeping things small and confining the conference to just 5,000 attendees is what Apple has determined is key to puling off a successful conference, then perhaps simulcasting to multiple locations or repeating the event in various regions of the world is a better way to deal with increased demand.  This makes perfect sense in the entertainment business, where entertainers are looking to maximize time spent in front of fans.  But WWDC is not about entertainment, and as much as Apple would like to spend more time with developers, it’s not nearly as easy to do remotely.

Speakers: Apple Engineers

That leaves just one scarce resource as the true reason Apple can’t afford to expand the WWDC to accommodate more developers.  The presentations and materials that are showcased at WWDC are of the highest quality (speaking from personal experience).  Each presentation is lead by an Apple Engineer. During WWDC 2010, one of the presenters had a live demonstration that started going badly, and the presenter started to choke.  Within minutes a second presenter stepped up and took over an alternate demonstration and the topic proceeded on schedule without anyone walking away feeling like they’d missed out on something.  In other words, Apple puts the same time and energy in its conference at it does it products, and that becomes much harder to do once you start playing with size.

Conclusion: WWDC 2012 Will Sell Out in Minutes

So long that Apple insists that the speakers at WWDC are all Apple Engineers and other product-related associates, then WWDC will continue to sell out in record time.  Pulling off an annual conference of this quality, using the very staff you also depend on for your core business is a very expensive undertaking.  The location will likely never change because of its proximity to the very resources (Apple employees) that make the conference a great success.  It will also likely never be repeated in different locales, given Apple’s relentless release schedules for its products (taking time out for conferences threatens this schedule).  The only opportunity would be to possibly simulcast the event around the world, and such event ever occurring at this scale in multiple locations worldwide would also be difficult and costly to pursue — likely more so than the ultimate reward would merit.  So be prepared to be close to an internet connection in 2012, because WWDC ticket sales are likely to break records yet again next year, because Apple isn’t likely to make big changes even in the face of strong demand.

Image courtesy of Flickr user adamjackson1984.

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This is the fourth consecutive year that Apple’s developer-focused event has sold out, and the fastest sell-out on record. Clearly, the introduction and widespread adoption of iOS has had a significantly positive effect on interest in the conference, which offers training sessions, face time with Apple engineers, and previews of software features to come. If anyone needed further proof that iOS continues to be popular among developers, you couldn’t ask for a clearer sign than this.

Apple also typically unveils a new iPhone at WWDC, but there’s some question as to whether it will continue that tradition this year. Apple will definitely be showing off its next-generation version of Mac OS X, version 10.7 (also known as Lion), so that may account for some of the additional anticipation around the event. Did you get your tickets while they were available, and if not, are you disappointed they went so quickly?

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Three notable sources are saying it will. John Biggs at CrunchGear argues that since the iPhone 4 is still a big seller, Apple will skip this year’s revision (at least for WWDC). Biggs also points to the software focus of the WWDC press release, but readers should note that isn’t an indication of whether or not we’ll see Apple hardware at the event. Apple’s WWDC PR materials typically don’t allude to new iPhones, yet new iPhones arrive just the same.

The other two sources of the no-new-iPhone buzz are much more interesting. First, there’s The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, who has a long history of guessing correctly when it comes to Apple’s product releases. He argues, with the support of Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg (another respected authority in the Apple-watching community) that Apple has no reason to necessarily continue to follow a yearly update cycle, and that in this case, Apple won’t, in fact, do that.

Finally, John Paczkowski of AllThingsD chimes in with possibly the most noteworthy evidence of all. He says he’s “hearing explicitly” (though his sources remain unnamed) that this year, WWDC will be a software-only event. It’s a coincidence of opinion among top tech news outlets that suggests Apple may have a vested interest in letting it be known we won’t see new iPhone hardware at WWDC to lower customer expectations in advance.

But, as mentioned, Apple has never indicated its previous WWDC announcements that new Apple hardware was on the horizon. And there’s another major reason why Apple putting off a release this time around would be dangerous: It stands to leave a lot of potential consumers on the table who might jump to LTE Android devices, many of which are coming to market quite soon. It’s possible Apple could be waiting until later in the year to offer up an iPhone that has LTE support, but deviating from its standard release schedule without comment (and Apple has never been one to give customers ample advance notice of product releases) might still lead to an overall erosion of its user base.

That would be the case with an unusually long wait between, say, MacBook upgrades too, but it’s especially relevant when it comes to smartphones, since many users are just waiting until their contract comes up for renewal before upgrading handsets. Customers who bought AT&T 3GS devices at launch are due for renewal this year, and many won’t wait an additional six months for Apple to come up with new and improved hardware. LTE-equipped 4G Android devices might appeal to a good chunk of those buyers, especially as the coverage map for Verizon’s next-gen network continues to grow.

In the end, I’m going to go ahead and suggest we can indeed continue to expect a new iPhone iteration come June. Gartenberg may be correct in pointing out Apple isn’t technically obliged to stick to a yearly schedule, but that doesn’t mean not doing so won’t have an effect on its business. Apple has gone out of its way over the course of the past four years to establish customer expectations of a yearly hardware refresh. To frustrate those expectations now (specifically with a delay, since an early release would be a different story altogether) would be a serious mistake, and not the kind Apple’s marketing machine is likely to make.

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