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A WWDC keynote would be the longest gap between events ever
Jay Yarow's done the homework and determined that if Apple takes the stage as expected at WWDC, it'll be 230 days from the last big Apple event. That would make this the longest wait for a new Apple event ever, at least since the iPad's launch in 2010. The previous record was 132 days between the launch of the MacBook Air and the iPad 2, so this wait trumps that by at least three months. Yarow cites that wait over at Business Insider for the recent drop in Apple's stock price, and indeed, you can see on the line above that Apple's stock does seem to line up to the reveal events. But there are a lot of factors going into that stock price. The difference in event timing could just be attributed to CEO Tim Cook -- as Yarow notes, he's a very different person from Steve Jobs. Cook has suggested that the company could be a little more careful about new product releases, in order to line up more sales when the release actually arrives. Whatever the reason, it seems very likely that Apple will host an event at WWDC in June, if not before. It's unknown if that event will feature new hardware. Usually Apple uses the WWDC event to show off new version of iOS and OS X. But considering the wait, it seems likely Apple has something to show us.
iPad hits 50,000 apps in eight months
MacStories points out that according to the listings in the iTunes App Store, the iPad has reached an unofficial total of 50,000 apps in just the eight months since software started selling for the device. For comparison's sake, the iPhone (which basically means the App Store in general, since that was the first device that could run Apple's apps) hit that total right around the year mark, between July 2008 and 2009. iPad apps first went live in the App Store back in April of this year, and at the time, I noted that it was the best selection of original software for a hardware launch that I'd ever seen on any device -- console manufacturers would love to have had the support that the iPad did when it launched. And that developer interest has continued -- while I think we have seen the price drops that a lot of developers expected (though probably slower than was predicted), developers are still extremely interested in developing for the iPad itself, even inside of the iOS environment. And as MacStories notes, this makes you wonder what the response will be to the Mac App Store when it launches early next year. In that case, we've got an established platform (remember, no one, not even most developers, had held an iPad in their hands when the apps on the App Store went live in April) with an existing software library that's moving into a new venue, so it'll be extremely interesting to see what happens, both from a developer perspective and as a consumer of Mac software. Maybe next May we'll be talking about an even faster run to 50,000 apps for sale.
