This isn’t going to be your standard WWDC prediction article, because so much of that so far has focused on what form the next iteration of the iPhone will take, and what apps will be available for it on day one. What’s more, I’m sure you’ve heard quite enough on that subject already, and you’d rather wait for the main event, and discover the truth or falsity of the expectations.

That’s true even if you have given up trying to locate an iPhone for sale now. In fact, I suggest you wait for the  new model before you decide whether a possible closeout on the original — if you can find one — makes any sense.

There is also some speculation that Apple might debut new form factors for the aging MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks, but they are incredible sales successes, so where’s the incentive? But even if new models appeared for the summer and fall buying seasons, the internal hardware wouldn’t be all that different, so it wouldn’t be so revolutionary.

However, there is one element of Apple’s product portfolio that analysts and rumor sites just aren’t talking about, and I think you see where I’m going.

As we all know, Leopard went on sale at the end of October of last year, a few months late, allegedly because Apple needed to move a fair amount of its development resources to the iPhone.

Regardless of the truth of the announced reasons for that delay, Leopard came out approximately 30 months after Tiger, which is rather longer than Apple has separated its operating system reference releases in recent years. It was meant to be a 24 month gap originally.

If Apple were to return to that schedule, it would mean that Mac OS 10.6, with an unknown feline designation, would appear in the fall of 2009. Now Apple has to give developers a fair amount of time to play with prerelease versions, and three or four months from WWDC to possible release is far too short for a proper development process.

So, if that schedule is truly being considered by Apple, when would they first deliver preliminary information to developers?

Yes, it would come at the prior WWDC, which just happens to be debuting the second week of June of this year!

So if this schedule passes the logic test, it would mean that Apple is poised to unleash the next great version of Mac OS X upon developers who are simply not expecting that news. Now I wouldn’t expect it to get more than a very basic presentation, with a profile of some key new features, and perhaps less than an hour of keynote time. It is quite possible, in fact, that the actual developer’s releases wouldn’t arrive until the fall, but Apple needs to prepare WWDC members to be ready to consider the wealth of possibilities.

Certainly it would be presumptuous of me to suggest what features Apple might be considering for 10.6. I’ve made some references to improved Help systems and other elements that are missing from Leopard. The improved use of 3D in the standard interface is another idea that ought to be considered, since Apple’s enhanced graphic support could be readily harnessed and exploited on any recent Mac, even the Mac mini.

Beyond that, I just don’t know whether 10.6 should be just a general refinement of the features that first debuted in Leopard, such as Time Machine and Spaces, or offer something far more compelling.

Certainly, the pressure isn’t so high on Apple when it comes to operating systems. Windows Vista hasn’t done the job for Microsoft, and its successor, known as Windows 7, is not expected to arrive until 2010. As far as new features are concerned, Microsoft has already demonstrated their own version of Apple’s Multitouch capability, which appeared on the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro after originating in the iPhone and iPod touch, and even a Dock alternative. I suppose Microsoft’s imitative tendencies don’t need any explanation. Maybe they still call it “innovation” because they live in a bubble.

However, the scope of the new features publicized so far seems mostly limited to wizzy special effects. MIcrosoft, after seeing many of its key features depart from Vista during its over-long gestation process, is evidently trying, for once, not to make promises it cannot deliver. Today’s Microsoft cannot get away with such shenanigans as easily as in the past, when they delivered demos of new technologies, only to cut back on features or abandon them altogether before they ever saw the light of day.

Does anyone, for example, remember Cairo?

Apple, however, isn’t in the business of delivering less than it promises, and it usually manages to keep close to the timetables it publicizes, with a few rare exceptions that we all know about. So while I really think there is a decent chance that we’ll get the first digs on Leopard’s successor at WWDC, the new iPhone will still be the star of the show.

Or am I just way, way off the mark here?

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• The Leopard Report: My Personal Petty Mac Annoyances
• Newsletter #453 Preview: Consumer Reports Again
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Long, long ago, someone referred to a specific attempt at reforming the state of the U.S. economy as “voodoo economics.” Maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong, but when it comes to the often-aggravating problems that occur with technology-related products, you sometimes wonder whether a little magic might be called for.

Back on the heady days of the Classic Mac OS, when something went wrong, there were always a few pat steps to resolve your problems. Restart and disable Extensions, remove preference files, rebuild the desktop and check your hard drive directory. It didn’t matter what the real cause of the problem might be. It was easier to repeat the standard repair methods by rote than to think about it.

In fact, I remember getting into a few arguments with people who recommend the foregoing remedies even when the problem clearly had nothing to do with any of them.

With Mac OS X, of course, the things you do to repair problems can be both easy and complicated, depending on the kinds of solutions you employ, and some of the Mac troubleshooting sites make the situation all the more confusing by posing draconian measures that may create additional complications.

Let’s look at the normal before the abnormal:

It’s perfectly true that hard drive damage can be the cause behind all sorts of ills. Certainly if data is being corrupted as it’s written to your hard drive, that can cause a load of problems when you try to run an application or perform some system-related chore, such as using the Finder. However, unlike latter versions of the the Classic Mac OS, Disk First Aid’s successor, Disk Utility, is not able to repair a startup drive without rebooting from another device. Yes, I know about the FSCK command you can use when you restart, but we’re talking about something real people can use without going through command line hoops.

However, it doesn’t seem that drive related difficulties occur so often with Mac OS X, unless it’s actually a failing drive. Other than FireWire and USB devices, Disk Utility will report a drive’s S.M.A.R.T. status, which reflects the condition of the hardware and whether it might be poised to fail.

Understand that drive failures can happen at any time, even if you’ve only had your computer for a few months. Here Mac and PC users are on an equal footing. Drives are cheap and, despite the promise of greater longevity, the mechanical innards can go at any time, and not always with adequate warning. So keeping tabs on the health of your hard drive is naturally a good idea.

Need I say that defective RAM can also cause the unexpected. So I always recommend you buy from a respected vendor or manufacturer, even if you have to pay a little extra. RAM is never something you select on price alone.

Preferences can also be an occasional cause of difficulties, but usually such ills will be centered on a single application with a corrupted .plist file, Mac OS X’s parlance for the settings file. That’s one reason why, after repeated crashes, you’ll be given the option to relaunch an application with default preferences to see if that helps resolve your unexpected quits or performance anomalies. Of course, if you’ve carefully crafted application settings over time, you may not be too keen on recreating them, but that’s what backups are for, and Time Machine is ideally suited for recovering an older version of a preference file that, one hopes, will be less troublesome.

Forgetting the common sense issue of a basic incompatibility between an application and the Mac OS you’re using we come to an alternate universe where, if the simple doesn’t suit, it’s time to stretch the boundaries.

How so?

Well, consider the Repair Disk Permissions function. What’s it for? Well, each of the hundreds of thousands of files you have on your Mac has a specific range of read and write permissions. The theory goes that if the permissions become messed up for some reason, you will encounter a standard range of system or application troubles, such as sudden quitting and inconsistent performance.

In practice, this particular troubleshooting method seems little more useful than rebuilding the desktop in the previous Mac OS generation. I have worked with Mac OS X since day one, when I got the Public Beta in 2000 direct from Apple. I cannot recall a single instance where the Repair Disk Permissions function did any good. Maybe your experiences are different, but I regard this as one of those voodoo schemes that seldom has any value.

A certain Mac troubleshooting site also suggests mixing and matching system files from different system versions, supposedly to address bugs in a current version. While I have no doubt such things may, on occasion, fix a particularly irritating problem, consider that certain files are dependent on other files, and if you use some sort of system-hacking tool to mix and match, you may create more problems than you had before.

One solution I would support, however, is to use the so-called Combo system updater — the one that carries all the changes from the last reference release — to see if that helps resolve an issue. Not to be paranoid, I would also suggest you quit open applications when you are installing any Apple system update. Yes, it may work anyway — and I haven’t run into any problems — but this is just a simple, painless precaution.

At least it can’t hurt.

However, when you read suggestions that take you beyond Apple’s normal troubleshooting steps, and seem to involve a little file movement legerdemain, I would be extremely skeptical. Yes, it’s all right to, on a rare occasion, rush to Terminal and enter a few command line instructions. Beyond that, and you’re in a paranormal world, where the laws of psychics just don’t seem to apply. Don’t fall for nonsense.

Related Articles:

• Memo to Steve Jobs: Don’t Stop with MobileMe!
• Apple’s Unfortunate Economy of Words
• The Leopard Report: My Personal Petty Mac Annoyances
• Newsletter #453 Preview: Consumer Reports Again
  Shows How Not to Convert PC Users to Macs
• Apple Walks the Tightrope