WWDC keynote: Some notable no-shows

With the spotlight growing every time Apple puts on a major show, many feel it would be nice if the company would leave some real estate open for some Mac-related innovations. The keynote came and went, and the Mac was absent.

There was a time when Apple's World-Wide Developers' Conference spotlighted a little device that used to be all the rage, called the Macintosh. But for the entire two hours of CEO Steve Jobs' keynote speech at Moscone Center in San Francisco this morning, the attention was on the 3G iPhone and the iPhone SDK 2.0.

As a result, what could very well be some key innovations in the next edition of Mac OS X, may not get much press.

Jobs did take a moment right at first to note the forthcoming upgrade, and to formally herald the arrival of its new code-name, "Snow Leopard." But from there, he stated the first demonstrations of 10.6 at work would be pushed off until after lunch. By that time, network reporters waiting out in the hallways would already have mounted their ENG trucks, heading for the editing room.

If there were to have been any new kind of Mac hardware, certainly it would have premiered during Jobs' keynote. Some were expecting a kind of developer-centric hybrid iPhone/Mac, which on some blogs had already been dubbed the "Mac nano," though it would have been a first for Apple to have released a development unit specifically for programmers.

Others cited a photograph of what appeared to be a screenshot of one of Apple's Web pages, though it's worth noting that its identity as an Apple Web page was never verified. The page's legitimacy is waning with each passing hour.

The photo showed what looked to be a slimmed down Mac Mini, beneath the heading, "Mac Fusion...Bridge the gap," alongside the Mac OS, Windows, and Linux logos. Below it was the phrase, "Leave Windows behind. Build your Apps for OS X." Apparently Photoshop CS3 for Mac still gets a lot of use.

There was also some speculation about the virtualization capabilities of Mac OS X 10.6, with some believing the "Bridge the gap" slogan may have been legitimate, even if the screenshot wasn't. This may yet pan out this week, even if it's not Apple that delivers the goods: Some are looking for the possibility that a Mac-based virtualization tool would be able to run Windows and Linux applications not within enclosed, virtualized desktops, as is possible now, but within their own native windows integrated into the Mac environment.

News has also yet to emerge about whether version 10.6 will discontinue Apple's support for the PowerPC platform upon which older Macs were built -- in other words, whether it's x86-only. We'll probably get formal word as to the system's release date, however, which is expected to be next January.