Mac Mania on Monday?

June 7, 2012 — by Per Christensson

iMac and MacBook Air Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicks off this Monday, June 11. As usual, the event is expected to begin with a keynote address, most likely from Apple's CEO Tim Cook. What's not so usual, at least not compared to recent years, is that the focus of this WWDC will likely be on Macs, rather than the iPad and iPhone (yea!).

Regular PC.net visitors know I like traditional PC (hence the name of this website), and am not a big fan of tablets. Therefore, I have found Apple's focus on the iPad over the past couple of years to be disconcerting. Many of Apple's Macintosh products are long overdue for updates (especially the Mac Pro) and there is speculation that Apple could be revamping it's entire line of Macs.

That means we may see new Mac Pros, MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, iMacs, and Mac minis on Monday. Woah. While it's possible the entire Mac line will receive a refresh, I am guessing new Mac Pro and iMac lines are most likely. I also think there is a good chance Apple will announce a new laptop, though I'm not sure if the MacBook Pros or MacBook Airs are more likely to be updated. There are rumors that Apple will be merging the two lines into one, but I think that is a bit unlikely based on how well both lines have performed individually.

Speaking of rumors, the biggest one I've heard is that the new Macs could have retina displays. I predicted forthcoming "HiDPI" displays all the way back in 2010, but I was a bit early with my guess. Simply based on screen size, I think new laptops are the most likely candidates for retina displays. However, it is not impossible that we could see new iMacs HiDPI screens. The current 27" iMac has a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, which means a double-resolution display would have a resolution of 5120x2880. That is 14.7 megapixels! How awesome would it be to edit digital photos on that screen?

If the new iMacs have HiDPI screens, it would make sense that Apple will release new Thunderbolt displays as well. After all, it would be a shame if Mac Pro users were stuck with lower resolution screens than iMac users.

Finally, the one guarantee (thanks to Apple's own sneak peeks) is the introduction of the new Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion." The only question is whether it will be released immediately or if Mac users will have to wait a few weeks or months to get it. Since it would make sense for Mountain Lion to be installed on the new hardware, I think an immediate release is most likely.

Of course, all of these predictions are pure speculation. I hope all of my predictions come true on Monday, but realistically, I doubt they all will. For those who skim web articles (like I often do), I have listed my final predictions for WWDC 2012 below:

YES - New Mac Pros
YES - New iMacs
YES - New MacBook Pros
NO - New MacBook Airs
NO - New Mac minis
YES - Laptops with retina displays
NO - iMacs and Thunderbolt screens with retina displays
YES - Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion announced
NO - New iPhone
NO - New iPad
NO - New Apple TV