Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Connected consumer third-quarter 2012

After a software-only WWDC last year, this is going to be a welcome change for lovers of Apple gadgets — particularly for those who’ve been holding out for a new computer, a part of the business Apple hasn’t spent much time talking about in public since July 2011 when OS X Lion and new MacBooks were released.

So what will we see? Here are some educated guesses.

Macs

It’s hard not to feel sorry for the Mac, which despite ever-increasing growth has been all but ignored for basically a year in favor of its flashier and far more popular iPhone and iPad cousins. But, happily for those of us not jumping wholeheartedly into the post-PC era, it looks like WWDC 2012 will be the Mac’s time to shine. Many leaks indicate that much of the company’s Mac line is getting a tune-up.

According to a couple of reports by 9to5Mac, it looks like there will be a new Mac Pro desktop; a revamped, thinner 15-inch MacBook Pro featuring a high-resolution display similar to those on the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and the new iPad; possibly new iMacs (though I’ve heard from my own source that new iMacs are not a sure thing for next week, so stay tuned); and updated 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs.

Mountain Lion

Despite a recent shift toward making iOS developers its priority, Apple’s very likely going to spend time next talking about Mac software and the things third-party appmakers need to know. The company surprised a lot of people in February by suddenly dropping a preview of OS X Mountain Lion on its developer community, just nine months after the previous desktop OS, Lion, was officially released. We’ve already seen a lot of the top-line new features — some of which borrow heavily from iOS — but expect to hear about new software for Mountain Lion and, if Apple follows last year’s pattern, a solid release date and pricing.

iOS 6, maps and Facebook

A huge chunk of the 5,000 or so developers in attendance are going to be there to learn about iOS apps. As John Gruber at Daring Fireball noted recently, the schedule for the event includes an awful lot of developer sessions that are still labeled “TBA.” We know Apple loves the element of surprise, so it’s not unreasonable that many of the sessions will have to do with learning more about the new version of iOS–IOS 6–a few months before its expected launch alongside new iPhone hardware.

One of the most interesting things that could be a significant change for both users and developers is Apple’s plan for Google Maps in the new version of iOS. The Wall Street Journal essentially confirmed that Apple is ditching its rival’s ubiquitous mapping solution in favor of a homegrown version, which was built at least initially under Steve Jobs. Rumors have indicated there’s a 3D mapping feature that should be fairly impressive. And, frankly, despite Wednesday’s oddly timed and clearly defensive Google Maps event in San Francisco, Apple has to have something eye-popping to compete: Google Maps is still an excellent product.

We’ll also be watching for whether Apple reveals a change in screen size for apps in iOS 6, which would indicate a change in hardware design for the next iPhone – although that feature itself likely wouldn’t be confirmed until later this fall.

And, per Tim Cook’s hint at the AllThingsD conference last week, we could see evidence of Apple and Facebook putting aside some of their differences. Several reports have indicated that Facebook integration is coming to Apple’s mobile operating system in the same manner as Twitter, which we saw a year ago at WWDC 2011.

iCloud

This is the same conference that iCloud made its debut a year ago. Apple calls it a company “strategy for the next decade” so it’s probable we’re going to hear a lot about changes and improvements to its cloud service. What will we hear? The Journal said last month iCloud will get video syncing, and the ability to sync albums and videos across devices, share photos and whole albums outside of Photostream and allow people to comment on them.

Siri

Another possibility could be Siri. It’s a beta product that Cook recently admitted Apple “could do more” with. WWDC would be an appropriate time to talk about new features and show developers how to integrate Siri better into their apps.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter
• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• New challenges for the IT organization
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room

The major new features in OS X Mountain Lion are what everyone is talking about, but with every release of OS X, Apple makes some smaller changes that escape the notice of most. We’re going to take a look at some of those changes, starting with more general ones dealing with look and feel, up to some new features in apps like Mail and Safari.

General

• When you move a large file in the Finder, the file icon reflects the progress, just like when you install an app on iOS. The default progress dialog also opens, but I imagine it’ll be gone in later builds of Mountain Lion.
• The iOS-like scrollbars in Lion are pretty thin, and they stay thin when you hover over them, making them harder to target with the cursor. In Mountain Lion, scrollbars are noticeably wider, so they’re easier to hit.
• In Lion, grid-view Stacks still used the scrollbars from Snow Leopard, which is odd given that every other scrollbar has been iOS-ified. Not any more — in Mountain Lion they’ve been replaced by darker iOS-like scrollbars.
• Last, there are some changes to System Preferences. There are new slide-show-style screen savers in the Desktop & Screen Saver pane, similar to the ones for Apple TV. The Universal Access preference pane has a cleaner interface, and it’s been renamed “Accessibility” and moved from the Personal section to the System section.

Versions

• When you begin editing a document that’s just been saved, the “Edited” status in the toolbar will flash blue three times, to make sure you know.
• When duplicating a document, it lets you change the name right in the title bar, instead of just creating a new document with “copy” at the end of the name. You can also just hit Cmd-Shift-S to duplicate, so you don’t need to map that shortcut in System Preferences.
• In the Versions drop-down menu, there’s a new “Move To” option, so you can move the current file around on your Mac, or to iCloud.

Launchpad & Dashboard

• Launchpad has a new search bar at the top, which lets you filter through applications just by typing. You can key through them and press enter to launch them.
• Dashboard has a new interface for adding widgets, and it works exactly like Launchpad. It even has folders, for those hyper-organized Dashboard users (if they exist).

Safari

• Safari has a bunch of small refinements that make it easier to use. First, there’s a unified search bar and address bar, à la Chrome’s Omnibox. URLs are grayed out after the domain name, and the “http://” is stripped out as well.
• Tabs scale proportionally now, so if you have two tabs open, they’ll each take up half of the tab bar instead of a fixed width like before. This actually isn’t entirely new, as the Safari 4 beta did the same thing, though Apple axed the behavior before final release.

Mail

• You can now designate contacts as VIPs, so their emails will show up in a separate mailbox in the sidebar. Inline find is another new edition to Mail, and it works much the same as it does in Safari, with the addition of find and replace when composing a new email.
• The new Mail lacks RSS support, which has also been taken from Safari. It seems Apple doesn’t see the point in keeping that feature around.

Preview

• Preview has a simplified toolbar, with View, Zoom and Share on the left, and Crop, Rotate and Edit on the right. The Edit button opens a toolbar where all of Preview’s other tools reside, similar to the Edit button in the iOS Photos app.

Calendar and Contacts

• There are some pretty minor changes to Calendar and Contacts. In Calendar, the calendar’s drop-down menu is gone, replaced by a slide-out sidebar instead. Also, the faux-stitching has been removed from the toolbar. Also, the search box now supports search tokens, like in Mail.
• In Contacts, the red bookmark used to access groups is gone. Instead, there are three different views.

It’s clear that Mountain Lion is all about simplifying OS X: getting rid of things that don’t work, and refining things that do.

What else do you think Apple should change before Mountain Lion is released this summer?

Header image via Flicker user sigsegv.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why the Mac is infiltrating the enterprise
• Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear

Mac developers will get the first chance to sink their teeth into the developer preview of Mountain Lion starting Thursday. The rest of us will be able to download the finished product sometime “this summer,” according to Apple. Mountain Lion will be a paid download from the Mac App Store, like Lion, but Apple says it’s not yet ready to talk about price.

Looking at the company’s balance sheet, it’s obvious that Apple is defined by mobile. This next OS X release drives that point home even more, and shows that CEO Tim Cook meant what he said about iCloud being a company strategy for the next decade. Though Apple sold more Macs last quarter than ever before (5.2 million), that’s still not satisfactory for the company: with Mountain Lion taking on so many familiar traits of iOS, Apple clearly intends to make it more difficult for iPhone and iPad lovers who are Mac OS holdouts to continue to say no.

Here are some new features we’re going to see in Mountain Lion:

• Built-in iCloud integration. Setting up iCloud will be the second thing you do after setting up a new Mac with Mountain Lion. The big new thing in this version will be the ease with which you can access Documents in the Cloud, which will allow your documents created in Pages (or some other third-party apps) to be available on any Mac OS or iOS device.
• iMessage on Mac. Many people have been asking for this, and finally we’re going to get it. The Messages app, which will appear very familiar to iOS users, replaces iChat. It’ll let you start a conversation on a Mac and continue it on a different device, like your iPhone or iPad.
• Notes and Reminders. Any notes you make on a Mac or iOS device, along with any reminders you set for yourself, will show up on any of your Mac or iOS devices. Both apps can be searched and look easier to navigate with the additional screen space of a desktop. Notes can be “pinned” to your desktop.
• Notifications. Just like the drop-down Notification Center on iOS, the Mac is getting its own version in the top right corner of the screen. All reminders, app alerts and calendar appointments will appear there. And just like iOS, Mountain Lion Notification Center has its own swipe to bring up the window — two fingers right to left from the right edge of the trackpad.
• Sharing from apps. That sharing arrow that appears in iOS apps? Apple has inserted it in many Mac applications and dubbed it Share Sheet. That button will let you share web pages, notes, videos, QuickTime files, docs and photos via email, Messages, AirDrop or Twitter, or post photos or video to Vimeo or Flickr.
• Twitter integration in the OS. This is kind of a big deal for Twitter. When you share something via Twitter in Mountain Lion, a Tweet Sheet pops up, which looks like an index card with whatever it is you’re tweeting attached via paper clip.
• GameCenter. Apple’s social gaming network comes to the desktop, and brings with it a new opportunity for developers. With a new set of GameKit APIs, game creators can develop games for both Mac and iOS, so players can compete whether they’re on an Apple desktop or mobile device. Current Game Center-compatible iOS games will have to be converted to appear in the Mac App Store.
• AirPlay Mirroring to Apple TV. Just like an iPad or iPhone 4S, you will be able to mirror your Mac desktop on your TV via an Apple TV (as long as your Mac has an Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 processor).
• New security features. Gatekeeper lets users select settings to control which apps can be downloaded to a computer. You can choose to allow all apps, or only apps with a developer-signed ID program (run by Apple) to be downloaded. Or, for the most conservative choice, only apps from the Mac App Store.
• Improved features for Chinese users. Apple is making a special point to improve text input and make popular Chinese web services and apps a built-in choice for some applications for customers in its second-most important market.

The next version of Mac OS very much treats the Mac as an equal to the iPhone and iPad. With iCloud at the center of it all, it doesn’t matter where you start a game or save a document or save a note — the Mac is no longer the thing to which your mobile devices plug in. Apple has 100 million registered iCloud users now, and by making it easier to access it or sign up from new Macs with Mountain Lion, it’s sure to add to those numbers in short order.

The Mac's Notifications Center

But even in this mobile, post-PC world, Apple is showing it has no intention of letting the Mac just slink along. Its computers have always been outsold by its mobile devices: first the iPod, then the iPhone and the iPad. Rather than accept the idea that its mobile devices are more popular and focus all its energy there, Apple is making a move with the Mac.

Another effect of what Apple is able to do with these evolutions in its desktop OS is it’s bringing current and potential users further and further into its grip. That’s not meant to sound sinister — though to some people it may well be — it’s just that Apple is pressing even harder to make a customer’s decision to use competitors’ products that much more difficult.

Whether it’s making Mac OS feel familiar to happy iPhone and iPad customers so they won’t think of using another PC brand, or enabling people to set their computers so that only Apple-approved software is downloaded, all the work Apple has done for the last 15 years is paying off: Each of its products is set up to provide a halo effect on the others. That’s a really hard thing for any one manufacturer to do. But it’s because of Apple’s extreme focus that their products line up together so cohesively and logically. Not everyone is going to buy into it, but Apple makes doing so seem very easy.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing
• Why the Mac is infiltrating the enterprise

Snapstream offers a TV monitoring service that helps various news services, government agencies and educational clients keep tabs on subjects discussed on TV, clip them and save them for later. Or, if you’re a customer like The Daily Show, you’re using those clips as part of your own broadcasts.

Sounds great, except for one thing. Prior to today, Snapstream was only available for Windows machines. That’s changed, as the company is moving to a web-based model that will enable Mac-centric organizations to also take advantage of its TV monitoring without having to run virtualization software. Since lots of video professionals are already using Macs and Final Cut Pro, that could greatly improve workflow for current customers and win over potential new customers.

The new Snapstream Mac Web player includes a downloadable plugin that plays back MPEG-2 TV recordings. For now the service can be used on Mozilla Firefox 8 and above, on Mac OSX Snow Leopard and above. Once installed, the Mac Web player will have all the same functionality as the company’s Windows player. That includes the ability to search TV recordings, clips relevant video segments, transcode those recordings to a Web-friendly format and set up alerts for when certain subjects are discussed on TV.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why the Mac is infiltrating the enterprise
• Where the next-generation console fits in today’s video game market
• How consumer media will change in 2013

That’s the question Bloomberg posed in a new article that polls patent experts on Apple’s ongoing patent disputes that seem to multiply on a daily basis. The answer they come up with is that Apple might be better off taking a less extreme approach, and I’m inclined to agree.

Especially in cases like the ITC import ban against HTC and Apple’s injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, 3LP Advisors LLC Managing Partner Kevin Rivette told Bloomberg that Apple is better off negotiating a settlement that would grant it some benefit in exchange for licensing its technology. Instead, Apple scores surface wins, but then the manufacturers on the losing end need only modify their design to get around the imposed restrictions.

The problem is that many of Apple’s patents focus on look, feel and design, which means they can be worked around, as in the cases mentioned above. As a result, Apple could have a hard time securing lasting, sticky restrictions that prevent its competitors’ products from being sold permanently in individual markets, let alone worldwide.

The better strategy, Rivette says, is to negotiate deals that allow Apple an inside look at competitor direction in exchange for the use of current tech. That way, Apple would be able to spot and benefit from any innovation made by others. As it is, Apple is basically forcing innovation on the part of others while doing nothing to ensure any net IP gains for itself.

Apple doesn’t have to give in, however. It has very deep pockets, and a solid armory of patents. Should it choose to, it can continue the war of attrition we’ve written about previously, in which it chips away at features and physical designs in an effort to undermine the overall consumer appeal of competing products.

But seeking to shut down the copycat competition through any means, as seems to have been Steve Jobs’ original intent in pursuing Samsung and others, doesn’t benefit Apple. Essentially, all it might really accomplish is a stagnated mobile industry, with Android spinning its wheels in cosmetic and minor changes to avoid Apple’s patent lockdowns, and Apple staying just ahead of the competition with no real impetus to achieve big, sweeping innovations.

Apple’s war on Android seems to have been Jobs’ preferred course when it came to dealing with Google’s supposed IP theft, but going after Microsoft for committing basically the same sin with regards to Mac OS was never such a sustained and concerted effort. And I’d say that given where we are today, that worked out for the better: forced to compete outside of the realm of the PC, Apple came up with the iPod and became a driving force of mobile innovation, plus its Mac division still outpaces the PC industry by a considerable margin in terms of growth. With that in mind, isn’t it time Apple thought about calling off the dogs and instead settled in to a prolonged, productive armistice?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why Android’s openness could cause real trouble for Google
• Research In Motion: future scenarios for its fate
• Analyzing the wearable computing market

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Millennials in the enterprise, part 2: benchmarking IT’s readiness for the new digital workforce
• Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter
• The evolution of the virtual goods market

First, find your serial number

Probably the quickest and easiest way to learn about your Mac is with the serial number. Look on the surface of your Mac or on your sales receipt or original packaging. If you can’t find it either of those ways, you can locate this while running your Mac:

• From the Apple menu, select “About this Mac.”
• Click on “More Info…”
• Highlight the “Hardware” category, and look for the serial number there.

(If you have OS X 10.1 or higher installed on your Mac, you can also go to the Apple menu, choose “About this Mac,” then double-click on the OS version number. It will change to your serial number.)

Then use these sites to get the help you need

With the serial number, you can find out the hip version name of your particular model. For instance, how are you to remember that the MacBook Pro 4.1 was also referred to as the MacBook Pro Early 2008. To get even more information about your Mac, Apple has provided a few online services that can help you out:

• Apple’s Support’s Tech Spec Search Utility: A great, well-maintained source of information about Apple products that includes all the product information even after it has been removed from the primary site as well as the Apple Online Store. Enter your serial number into the search box, and you will find information about the processor speed, size and weight, memory, storage and much more. support.apple.com/specs
• Apple’s Service and Repair Web Site: If you are in need of service or repair, whether you have Apple Care or not, this site will help get you started on the road to recovery. You can contact an Apple advisor, make an appointment with a genius at an Apple Retail Store, or search for a local Apple Authorized Service Provider. selfsolve.apple.com
• Apple’s Apple Care Registered Products List: If you have purchased Apple Care for any of your products, or if you have very recently purchased a new Mac and are still covered by the free Apple Care coverage, then this is the place to go when you need help or support. apple.com/support/applecare
• Apple’s My Support Profile list of My Products: Relatively unknown site that helps keep track of all of your interactions with Apple support as well as maintain a list of the products you have registered with Apple. In fact, this site will help you keep track of all of your Apple purchases. supportprofile.apple.com

What I find interesting about being an owner of Apple products is the amount of time and energy people, including myself, put into knowing everything there is to know about the next piece of hardware Apple is to release. Yet as time passes, many of us simply forget the exact details of what we already have. I hope this guide will help close this knowledge gap.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Where new opportunity lies in the mobile operating system space
• Mobile first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook
• Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter

Lion has some quirks that not everyone will love. Exclusive digital distribution is one, since bandwidth or connection concerns might not sit well with some. Also, Lion doesn’t appear to offer any way for people to do a clean install, unless they use a Snow Leopard disk first and then re-install Lion after that. Finally, the requirements will leave early Intel Mac owners out of the party.

On the other hand, Lion offers some significant improvements to core apps like Mail, Contacts and Calendar, and new features like Resume, Auto Save, Versions and AirDrop show a lot of promise. Plus users who’ve made the jump from iOS to their first Mac will find the operating environment a lot more familiar. And you’d be amazed at what fullscreen apps can do for your ability to focus on the task at hand.

I’ve got all my Macs running Snow Leopard, so I’m definitely going to upgrade, since it’ll only cost me $29 to get each on 10.7. I’ll probably do it on day one, too. But will you be joining me, waiting a while to see how Lion pans out, or skipping this OS altogether?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The new IT manager, part 1
• Where new opportunity lies in the mobile operating system space
• Mobile first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook