This year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is set to take place on June 6, and will gather the great and good of the iOS development community to hear what Apple has planned (and to learn how to use what’s already there). But what does this event mean for Apple’s current top device, the iPad 2?
Gone soft
For one thing, it’s highly unlikely that there’ll be a dramatic hardware release hogging all the headlines this year. While last year’s event centred around the iPhone 4 release, experts believe that this year will be all about the software.
Indeed, Apple’s reveal and subsequent WWDC 2011 web page didn’t even hint at hardware, with senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller simply saying that ”we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS.”
What does this mean for iPad 2? It means there’ll be more time spent discussing how to get the best out of the second generation tablet device rather than moving on to the next big thing (which we tech journalists are as guilty of as anyone).
Appy talk
This being a developers conference, there’ll be plenty of advice on how to make better apps for the iPad 2. This will include helping app developers with “implementing the latest features in iOS such as AirPrint and AirPlay.” The two wireless communication elements (the former for printing over Wi-Fi, the latter for streaming multimedia content wirelessly between devices) were initially only available through Apple’s own apps, but it clearly wants developers and peripheral manufacturers to use them to improve your iPad 2 experience.
More excitingly (to me at least), Apple should be using WWDC 2011 to help games developers to optimise their releases for the iPad 2′s monstrous GPU.
Amongst all the blurb on the aforementioned WWDC section of the Apple website, there’s a picture of an iPad 2 running a game (see right) along with the following text: “See how your apps can harness a layered set of graphics frameworks to create accelerated 3D rendering, rich 2D drawing, dynamic animations, and image effects. Dive deep into the powerful capabilities of OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and OpenCL, and gain insights into the expert techniques and profiling tools used to attain maximum performance”
This will mean that more developers will be given the knowledge and impetus to improve their games for iPad 2, which should lead to a general step up in graphical fidelity and gameplay possibilities.
iOS 5
Despite what we said at the outset, a major Apple launch is expected at WWDC 2011 – it’s just not one you can hold in your hands. It’s widely believed that Apple will unveil iOS 5 – the next major iteration of its mobile operating system – at this year’s developers conference. This will be the OS that defines the latest generation of iDevices, and as that currently amounts to just the one device, it should be of great interest to all iPad 2 owners.
So what is iOS 5 expected to include, and which bits will be of particular relevance to the iPad 2? One expected feature that will delight iPad and iPhone owners alike is an expected overhaul of the maddeningly intrusive iOS notification system. According to Cult of Mac, Apple is buying a small developer to achieve just such a task, with App Remix a likely candidate. The developer’s Boxcar third party notification app has been particularly well received, and includes an excellent iPad version.
Arguably less interesting to iPad 2 owners is the report that iOS 5 will include Apple’s new cloud-based music service, which will (according to Bloomberg) allow you to stream your iTunes purchases to your Apple device. We expect this will be of more interest to iPhone users given that device’s status as a portable media player replacement, but the fact that this will likely be part of a wider MobileMe overhaul has wider significance. For example, 9to5Mac reports that iOS 5 will include a feature called Photo Stream, which could allow iPad 2 users to store pictures in the cloud and send them directly to other iOS users.
Another possible iPad 2-specific improvement coming in iOS 5 may have been revealed through an Apple patent (as reported by Patently Apple) for “Spaces,” which is an app that uses the tablet’s larger display to show and switch between multiple running apps. That A5 dual-core processor is brilliant at multitasking – could Apple be set to realise this for the iPad 2?
Not long to wait
We’re hoping to see iOS and its many iPad 2-embracing features unveiled and explained at WWDC 2011. We’re also expecting to see the benefits of the conference over the long term, with Apple’s intention to teach app developers how to handle the iPad 2′s powerful hardware likely to bear fruit over the next year or more.
The best thing is we only have a couple of weeks to wait to find out what Apple has in store. Who needs an iPhone 5/4S launch, eh?
YOU SHOULD READ — Apple iPad 2 review
