WWDC 2010: What Apple missed (but shouldn’t have) in the iPhone 4 show

June 10, 2010 - By Jose A. Gutierrez

As expected, Monday’s WWDC Keynote included the long-awaited announcement of the iPhone 4. After a presentation that lasted almost two hours, though, many are left wondering about the things that did not make it to the show. Although we did get to officially see the next generation iPhone, several rumored topics that spread across the internet over the last several months were left unmentioned.

Obviously, the rumors were exactly that…rumors. This doesn’t mean they didn’t actually constitute sound business concepts and plain-old, good ideas that gave many tech aficionados a sense of hope going into the program.

One of the most anticipated potential announcement for U.S. customers was the possibility of a CDMA version of the iPhone for Verizon (or Sprint). After months of rumored preparations by both companies and their retail partners, some saw it as even more probable when AT&T announced its intention to phase out unlimited data plans and raise early termination fees. It looked like a sign of desperation to keep current customers onboard, right?

Unfortunately for consumers, it seems that the exclusivity agreement with AT&T is here to stay (at least for a while longer). The dream is dead for now, though, and Verizon and Sprint customers are relegated to using their existing devices. At this point it seems we may not see an iPhone on Verizon or any other carrier, until the LTE roll out, which will make a future device comparable on AT&T and Verizon, as well as the rest of the world.

The hopes for cloud-based iPhone services were also dashed on Tuesday. With the closure of Lala services, by Apple on May 31, 2010, many speculated that streaming iTunes services must be on the horizon. This would have explained why the storage capacity on the iPhone 4 remained the same as the previous offering. Who would need more space, when they could access their entire library, through the miracle of the cloud? With the ability to maintain your movies and music library on the cloud, on board storage becomes less important.

The same concept applied to another Apple service, Mobile Me. After feeling significant pressure from competitive offerings like Dropbox and Google, one would think that the service might have been reduced from $99.00 to $0.00. Dropbox, which provides file storage and synchronization between platforms, and Google Sync, which provides an Exchange-like solution that combines mail, calendar and contacts synchronization, are both free. Thusly, why not throw customers a bone and give them a little more for their iPhone dollar?

To the chagrin of the hopeful consumer, though, these dreams didn’t become a reality, either. The Apple misses weren’t limited to just the iPhone, though.

A redesigned version of the Apples TV is rumored to be coming soon. Assuming the redesign is significant and included iOS4 as its operating system, including it in the showcase of tech wonders would have generated the significant buzz needed to help it compete with the recently announced Google TV.

The MacBook Air is also due for a refresh. Ironically, the ultra-thin laptop’s sales may ultimately be affected by one of its siblings, the iPad. Some exciting new hardware features might have given it a boost in today’s ultra-mobile market, despite its significantly higher price tag.

Technically, we could “what if” all day long, but let’s face facts. There will always be someone who says that something important was left out. So, for now we’ll just have to be satisfied with what we got and wait for June 15th to roll around, so that we can preorder the iPhone 4. If we do, we’ll get it on June 24th and hopefully forget all about the other things that might have been.

Of course, we could also go back and watch the keynote video one more time. Who knows? We might have missed a clue about what Steve might give us in the future.