There has been a lot of noise lately about iPhone OS 3.0 being released to the public next week, when Phil Schiller gives the WWDC keynote talk on Monday. Fanning the flames has been the release of iTunes 8.2 yesterday, which is a prerequisite for installing the OS on an iPhone or iPod touch.
There are a number of reasons why Apple won’t release the OS next week, but the most obvious is this: WWDC (WorldWide Developer Conference) is Apple’s primary event for developers. Thousands of developers will be there, including lots of iPhone devs. They won’t be doing any programming there, but will spend lots of time with Apple employees learning about the new OS. So it would be a really nonsensical move (and basically spitting developers in the face) to release the OS to the public during that week.
But there is more. There have been rumors of new hardware functionality in the next iPhone, like an electronic compass, an auto-focus camera with higher resolution, video recording, etc. Developers have not had access to those, and they were not mentioned in the iPhone OS 3.0 presentation a few months ago (for obvious reasons). It is also likely that Apple has a few more pure software features up its sleeves that they haven’t talked about yet.
So even though Apple has been requiring programs submitted to the AppStore to run on 3.0 for a few weeks now, developers don’t really know the entire OS yet. Releasing the new OS on Monday will mean a lot of apps won’t be ready for it (it’s not like every app has been updated), and even those that supposedly were might not be. In any case, they won’t be able to use the new features that will only be introduced on Monday.
That also means that the new iPhones will not be available right away, but remember: this is a developer conference! The original iPhone and last year iPhone 3G were also only available at the end of June. It seems likely that they will stick to that schedule. It gives Apple the publicity, and developers some time to incorporate what they have learned into their programs.
Finally, that gives everybody plenty of time to update their iTunes. I doubt a lot of people update software every week, especially in this case where the bundled QuickTime update requires a restart. Having as many people as possible on iTunes 8.2 will make the transition to iPhone OS 3.0 much smoother and quicker, and that is clearly in Apple’s interest.
