It's so odd to see a developer's conference turn into a PR machine for arguably the world's hottest tech company, but about all of the geek crowd is sitting on pins and needles this morning waiting for the Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) from Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) to begin. Why? Well, the expected unveiling of the iPhone 2, of course.

As I wrote last week, Apple's shares may inch towards $200 today depending on what product bombshell Steve Jobs drops on the world. If you bought shares when they were in the $120 range back at the start of 2008, are you going to take a profit should shares reach the $200 level? Apple, like most of the market, took a beating this past Friday as the DJIA dumped almost 400 points in a single day, but that doesn't mean AAPL shares will not make up for lost ground. Customers are still buying Mac computers and iPhones like there's no tomorrow -- recession or not.

The trick is this: Apple could score a major coup if an iPhone 2 is announced today -- and is immediately available for purchase at Apple stores. This is being predicted, and it's not really out of the realm of reality. The original iPhone was a launch of monstrous proportions, but it was announced in January 2007 and released in June 2007. The hype built in that gap was so large that iPhones flew off the shelves once June came last year. The hype is now for the newer, speedier iPhone that has extended capabilities and a possibly lower cost. If that happens when Jobs takes the stage at 9:30 a.m. PDT this morning, expect the market to take notice and AAPL shares to lift past their ending $186.25 price from Friday's market close.

The hysteria will begin soon -- catch it here live.

Beginning Monday June11, thousands of very technically talented people will descend into San Francisco for the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2007. The conference runs through Friday June 15. There are over 100 separate and distinct technical presentations and mini-lab sessions on the schedule. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) will use the opportunity to make sure everyone in attendance gets a beta-copy of the new Leopard operating system, due out in October, and of course the buzz will be the new iPhone.

Apple has been strategically advertising the iPhone on television and other media with the final message "due out June 29." The early adopters will sing its praises and the various media representatives will be there to capture every word. But what else does Apple have up its sleeve?

I wrote on May 31 that Apple and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) have emerged as the two distinguished leaders in the technology sector. Both have hit new 52-week highs and the momentum in their respective earnings and revenues is compelling. They have taken over from the old guard.

Rumors have been circulating that Apple and Google will formalize a strategic relationship. Basically, Apple has grown weary of its dependence on Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office Suite, and Apple CEO Steven Jobs has indicated that Mac needs to "catch up." If Apple decides to include the Google suite of internet applications, it could be a blockbuster union of these two titans and a serious blow to Microsoft. Google's suite would include e-mail, spreadsheets, maps, and general document management.

Apple's stock continued to slide today, down $2.43 to end at $64.78 as investors reacted to the lack of unexpected product releases at Apple's developer's conference with disappointment. As some pundits have pointed out, WWDC is a developers-oriented conference. This should not be a surprise. Announcing the expected and high-end Mac Pro made sense (and as American Technology Analyst Shaw Wu points out the Pro will likely sell well due to pent up demand from high-end users who've been waiting for it), consumer products in the line would make more sense to be announced closer to the back-to-school season.

Indications that consumer products and updates are still in the pipeline come from Robert Scoble, who apologizes for helping fuel the Apple rumor cycle, but maintains his sources say some exciting stuff is coming soon.

Today at WWDC Apple announced new pro level desktop machines and updated its server offerings both to use Intel chips with all the power savings and speed boosts that were expected to come with such a transition.

Steve Jobs also previewed the new OS that will come out this spring, called Leopard. 64 bit computing, improvements to iChat, virtual desktops, and an automatic backup or versioning system built into the system called 'Time Machine' were debuted.

What didn't debut? The flurry of predicted items that Apple had never promised, including the iPhone, the touch-screen full-screen iPod, and many others. Apple closed the day down $67.21 a 1.6% percent drop. With pressure from the backdated stock options scandal and the disappointment from the rumormill that had some overexcited about the next iWhatever, one can expect dips in Apple stock here in the next few days.

If you are strong on the company, remember to view the upcoming dips for what they are: buying oppurtunites.

Apple ended the day up $1.50 at $69.66, a 2.20 percent jump in share price. The stock is building on anticipation of new products being released at WWDC. As Grant Robertson points out, all the flying rumors should be taken with a grain of salt. If they're responsible for the flying stock price right now one should consider cooling one's investing heels until after WWDC. That way when the stock dips as products people were hoping would come out don't show up one isn't disappointed as well. That would be a conservative and smart thing to do, but I doubt it will stop eager speculators for now.

Nonetheless, it is nice to see the upward momentum and excitement when four weeks ago dire worries about flash ram and iPod stagnation were the more common news stories.

More news from Apple today includes more auto manufacturers like Mazda, GM, and Ford working with Apple to make iPods work in car stereo systems, hints of Apple stores in Melbourne and France, and tension between Apple and Scandinavia.

New Apple products are almost always launched with massive fanfare. With Steve Jobs, the consummate pitch-man, dressed sharp and on top of his game pulling back the curtain on the future as Apple sees it. The Apple product launch cycle has become more of a tradition than an event, with speculation running wild right up to the wire and bloggers everywhere digging up every little scrap of evidence, then spinning out product visions of their own.

The gadget obsessed gurus at Engadget (sister blog to Blogging Stocks) are no exception, and they've been diligently rounding up all the rumor and conjecture about new Apple products in the lead up to WWDC. All that rumor can be hard to keep track of, so today Ryan Block put it all in perspective.

Notable speculation includes the iPhone (iCall?), a hybrid iPod/Cell phone to compete with scores of mp3 enabled phones hitting the market. Also among the wide-flung rumors, things like Intel Xeon based Xserves, 1:1000 contrast ratio Studio Displays, Core 2 Duo mobile MacBook Pros, and loads of new stuff for Leopard.

Remember to keep it all in perspective. Rumor usually contains a grain of truthiness at its core, but that truth is often obscured so that the end result looks very different, or never materializes at all.

[via Engadget]

Apple ended the day down 72 cents to close at $67.24 as rumors about an Apple phone made their way all across the internet. In Apple's last conference call the company all but admitted that it was working on an Apple phone. T3, a gadget mag, notices that Apple has tossed its hat in with the group that standardizes mobile phone applications, indicating Apple wants to have a say in those standards. Meaning Apple is getting very serious about the iPod/phone combination. T3 notes that the last time Apple did this it joined a Windows benchmarking group. Then just over a week later Apple announced Bootcamp, the software that allows Intel-based Apple machines to dual-boot Windows and OS-X.

But when will the phone be announced? No one is sure, that's half the mystique around Apple when it comes to announcements. But something interesting is coming at WWDC. Robert Scoble, previously blogging as a Microsoft evangelist at his site Scobleizer, drops an awfully interesting hint in a post about delayed Vistas ship dates. He talks about an Apple product announcement there that makes him wish he could "camp out at an Apple store on August 7th." Color me more intrigued than usual. Scoble is more plugged in than most Apple rumormills, is this a reference to an iPod/phone, or to other Apple equipment? We'll find out in seven days.

One reason Apple's stock price has been hammered lately is that a Wall Street analyst predicted that Apple would be unable to get a new generation of iPod out in time for back-to-school sales. Apple's stock price of late is tied very closely to performance of iPod sales.

Investors and consumers alike will be pretty psyched to see that ThinkSecret, one of the more prestigious Apple rumor sites, is reporting that a new iPod Nano will likely debut at next month's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC).

The new iPod is expected to have a slightly larger capacity for songs, be in a metal alloy case to solve the scratching issues the Nanos have been dogged with, and be available in a series of colors.

In some ways the update doesn't sound like that much. Yet don't underestimate the importance of the scratch issue for Apple customers. Having a $150 device that is purchased for its stylish good looks start looking like a two-year-old scratched up piece of junk after it has been in a purse or pocket for a few weeks is not what Apple fans expect.

It's only halfway through the day, and Apple stock is up almost 64 cents, a 1.22 percent increase.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]

[Pic credit: Dan Taylor]

Half of the fun for Apple users comes at times like this. With a month to go before the World Wide Developers Conference (referred to as WWDC) where Apple often announces some new products, rumors about what will be revealed by Steve Jobs on the stage are running rampant.

Apple sites and blogs will speculate on what might come out, dream about what they want to come out and list the details, even Photoshop up possible models to pass around or fake others out with. It's an entire ecosphere of excitement, and often in the middle of it some of these rumor sites will break a real tip from an Apple employee about an upcoming product.

In the most recent case it was a leak about music-media related product Apple still has yet to release (an 'iPod-killer' killer?). Apple made the case that online bloggers and website owners were not real journalists, and therefore did not have any legal protection in refusing to give up their sources. However a panel of judges recently affirmed that online journalists were still journalists and had that protection. Apple was not able to grab the offending email from the servers of two sites that got the information. As a result of the decision Apple decided not to pursue the matter any more.

This was first of all a landmark case for online journalism, as it sets the precedent for online reporters to have some of the same protection that their print counterparts have.

Apple ended the day at $57.43, down $1.56, a sudden 2.64% slide. The internet is still trying to figure out whether more information can be found about Apple's working conditions at Foxconn, or whether it is an unfounded attack. Meanwhile, the normally media savvy computer maker's special investigation team signed off on the factor conditions, and Apple has not really responded to the growing coverage in mac-focused blogs and sites.

A new, very minor update to Apple's operating system was released today. The next major version of the system will be previewed at WWDC, a developers conference for Apple, on August 7th. The next version of the OS will come out in late 2006 or early 2007.

Also, a new store seems to be in the pipeline for Cleveland, bringing the brand further into the heartland.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]