Apple Hints at Future Direction

Rumors about Apple’s every move are common online, but each year the company tips its hand decisively with its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). This year’s sold-out event will see a flock of 1,000 developers and IT professionals descend on San Francisco.

Based on the topics and the experts present at the 2009 WWDC, Apple fans can expect some of the below to appear soon in software and hardware:

More Revenue Engines
The iPhone’s third developer kit enables requests for payments on subscriptions, additional game levels, or other content from within your applications. This is a natural and brilliant step on Apple’s part.

One reason why the iPhone has caught fire is the number of apps – developers are drawn by the App Store’s solid money making framework. Other platforms such as Facebook have stumbled in delivering in the payoff arena for developers, which is one reason why so much brainpower is being concentrated on Apple devices.

Re-introducing the Basics
The bane of iPhone owners everywhere, Apple is finally enabling cut, copy, and paste as “major new features” of the upcoming iPhone OS.

Stronger Security
With its increasing market share and the discovery of a worm targeting the Apple operating system, developers now have to think about something that has long dogged Microsoft’s ubiquitous OS: how to foil people looking to steal valuable information or con you.

The conference will be aimed at shoring up techniques for the Mac OS X and iPhone – as well as pushing Apple’s proprietary Mobile Access Server, which provides a path through corporate firewalls for IMAP, SMTP, HTTP, and CalDAV without using VPN. The focus will also be on the 802.1x standard for authenticated access to data by a remote Mac, iPhone, or iPod touch.

Better In-App Features
The new framework for Google’s Mobile Maps Service will allow developers to embed custom maps directly within your applications. The verdict isn’t in just yet on whether Apple will change the iPhone’s one-application-at-a-time OS (challenged by Palm’s upcoming Pre), meant to preserve overall performance.

Beyond English
Apple’s global ambitions are clear from its ever expanding presence abroad and focus on foreign language versions of the independently created apps and software.