Analysts and other pundits do a lousy job of predicting what Apple will do next. Rumors about the company are often sheer fantasy. I’ve guessed wrong so many times that I’ve mostly given up trying. With Apple’s WWDC conference and its accompanying keynote a week away, what to do? Should we just swear off predictions altogether?

How about seeing if the collective Technologizer community–or any of its individual members–comes closer to telling us what Apple will unveil than your garden-variety professional Applewatcher probably will? That’s the idea behind our WWDC Prediction Challenge. Spend a few minutes taking our survey, and we’ll ask you about a bunch of possible announcements, including the likely (a new iPhone), the unlikely-but-tantalizing (a tablet), and the almost-certainly-not-for-one-reason-or-another (like new iPods). We’ll aggregate the results and see if there’s any consensus on what’s likely to happen, and publish a report before the keynote. Then we’ll publish another report after the keynote, grading the overall results. We might also mention any respondents whose predictions were eerily dead-on or otherwise interesting.

(Related shameless plug: I’ll be attending the WWDC keynote and will provide live coverage of what we learn as we learn it at www.technologizer.com/wwwdc09.)

The survey mostly involves multiple choice questions, but you’ll have the opportunity to make free-form predictions. For the most part, it involves matters other than the two topics which Apple has already told us it will discuss: the upcoming Snow Leopard OS and iPhone OS 3.0. Oh, and here’s one more incentive to participate: We’ll give one $100 Apple Store gift certificate away to a respondent in a random drawing.

Ready? Click here to take the WWDC Prediction Challenge.

 
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