June 6th is approaching rapidly, and for those in the tech world (or any anyone who owns an Apple product for that matter) this should be an exciting day. Apple throws a WWDC(World Wide Developers Conference) event every year and this year it’s kicking off on June 6th and is running through the 10th. Apple said it was going to be focused on the future of Mac OS X and iOS.

Now, normally Apple is very closed lipped on what products will be showcased at these events, which always leads to a whirlwind of rumors, (there has been no shortage this year), but in a very un-Apple form, they made an announcement a week early. The morning of May 31st they had a press release announcing that Steve Jobs, along with a team of Apple execs will kick off the event with a keynote showcasing OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming music service. Many had heard that Apple’s music service would be called iCloud, but Apple doesn’t often confirm names of their services or devices until they are actually announced. So lets take a quick look at each of these three things.

• iCloud; Recently we have seen both Amazon and Google launch new music locker storage services, keeping your music ‘in the cloud’ and streaming it to any device that you access the Internet through. The whole point of these services is so that you don’t have to keep the music on your device and can access it remotely. Now, both Amazon and Google have done this without the blessing of the major record labels, Apple is said to have signed deals with three out of the four major labels already and is said to be signing with the fourth this week. With both Amazon and Google you have to upload your music to their servers and with Google offering room for up to 20,000 songs this can take days, even weeks. The general consensus on this seems to pointing to a different tactic coming from Apple, where they will scan your library and give you access to stream their copies of this music. Copyright laws are very tight and that’s why having the blessing of the major labels will really help Apple in this sense. Also, there is hope of possibly getting a better version of the song than you have stored on your computer. The fact that they have announced the name early has some people wondering if this will be more than just a music service, if in fact it will turn in to an all-in-one replacement for their Mobile Me service with music included. Of course we will find out soon enough.

• iOS 5; The newest installment of their mobile operating system is looking to make some major upgrades. Most people are hoping to see some improvement in their notification system, which a lot of fans think is the worst part of their OS. As it is right now, when you receive a text or anything else you chose to let give you push notifications, it shows up over whatever you are doing. In games this is super annoying, most games will pause, but it is still something that is an inconvenience at times. Hopefully, they will address this problem. We can be sure to see the incorporation of their iCloud service into the software as well. TechCrunch is claiming that Twitter is helping iOS 5 be more connected, by allowing you to push your photos straight to Twitter. I am hoping that they also include the multi-touch gestures that they included in the developer version of iOS 4 for iPad. Will they include NFC? All in all it is going to be exciting to see what they put  into      iOS 5.

• Mac OS X Lion; This one is probably the easiest to predict because they have already released many developer versions. We know that they will be adding something called Launchpad, a way to see your apps in an iPad style grid for quick access to your programs. Once in, these apps will be made full screen, for less distraction and more room to play. They are upgrading their current ‘expose’ style of seeing what you are running with what they are calling Mission Control; a way to see everything in groups of what apps are running them. Other features include are more touch gestures, a new auto save feature for when you are working, an upgraded mail client, and a new resume feature so you can always pick up where you left off. This OS is supposed to launch this summer so I don’t think there will be very many surprises here, but you never know.

With WWDC less than a week away Apple will stay on top of the news feed for a while. Another great rumor is that there will be no new iPhone announced at WWDC, Apple said this is about the software, so whether they skip a whole year or we see a release of the iPhone in the fall we will have to wait and see.

A few other quick notes in the Apple world:

• iWork was release on May 31st for iPhone and iPod touches. This was launched with the iPad last year and is finally making its way to smaller screens.
• If you are thinking about buying a MacBook Air you should probably hold off for a bit, a refresh is rumored to be right around the corner including a new Sandy Bridge processor and a Thunderbolt Port.
• Apple recently sent out a software update to help combat the Mac Defender malware that had been going around, proving that Apple isn’t quite as impenetrable as everyone thinks.
• And as the battle between Samsung and Apple heats up in court, Samsung has demanded that Apple show them models of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 just to be sure they aren’t to similar to their future models.