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Apple WWDC 2012: it's from June 11 to 15

Apple's next Worldwide Developers Conference will be June 11 to 15. Headlining: OS X Mountain Lion.
Written by Andrew Nusca, Contributor

Apple this morning announced that its next Worldwide Developers Conference will be held at San Francisco's Moscone West from June 11 to 15.

As with last year, the show will focus on its mobile and desktop operating systems, iOS and OS X, and presumably the increasing integration of them as the company prepares to release the ninth version of OS X, nicknamed "Mountain Lion," to developers.

The summer is also Apple's traditional time to release news of the next-generation iPhone, but the company deviated from expectation with the Oct. 2011 release of the iPhone 4S, breaking the cycle. It would not be a surprise if the company avoided any next-generation mobile device talk to focus on selling what's already on the market.

Last year's WWDC saw the formal release of Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud. It was Apple's first major attempt to begin knitting its disparate platforms together on the front end, through the introduction of feature such as the Mac App Store that brought its desktop devices in line with its mobile and cloud-based infrastructure.

Mountain Lion, to little surprise, promises to further this agenda by smoothing out more cross-platform wrinkles. It's evolutionary, hardly revolutionary, but that's the name of the game when you're releasing new versions on an annual basis.

The ease and affordability of upgrading -- and the lack of all-new, paradigm-changing features -- should please the Apple-based enterprise as it continues to accept iPads and iPhones. Unless the folks in Cupertino have deliberately kept a big feature under wraps -- the Siri personal assistant has been bandied about in the rumor mill -- the lack of surprise about the next version of its operating system might be the best gift of all.

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