From 9to5mac:
"
The Apple news web's still reeling at the lack of any big deal announcements from the mothership Tuesday, this blackout likely reflects the company's customary radio silence in the days before it makes its quarterly financial results public (on 23 April). "
The quarterly will probably spill some beans. But if it would, you've always got the 22 April, a Tuesday to announce other things (not everythings Tuesday related I know).
Hopefully some pertinent questions will come. FLASH purchases, expected and delivered iPhone sales, 3G plans, new model plans etc etc.
It's background busy at the moment i'd say - the number of product lines overdue a refresh is growing to a large number, you've got very frequent developer builds hinting an update to Leopard, you've got the quiet announcement that Apple is collaborating with Nike still (which is a huge thing in my book - Nike's been very quiet since Nike+ in relation to Apple), you've got Webkit hitting a 100% Acid test score (and it rocks in terms of speed (3x faster on Safari on a PC than on my copy of Firefox in terms of some test scores)) that'll wind it's way to the iPhone 2.0 and give lots more animation capabilities that are easy to code.
The number of Apple employees working on touch has been steadily expanding - is the lack of a refresh of monitors a portent to something?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1569
There was a job listing for handwriting recognition (hint to iTablet, and possible stylus interaction?).
Other moves afoot include work towards a possible significant strategic acquisition or acquisitions, suggested by the hire of HP's leading legal corporate buyout specialist, Charles Charnas to lead its corporate epartment, filling a role that hasn't been occupied for 7 years. He'll oversee Apple's intellectual property and strategic acquisitions. (he led the $25 billion merger between Compaq and HP.) (and no it ain't Dell in the sights). Another sign of work in the background by Apple is the no-show at NAB. Apple might be hamstrung by Intel's public timeframes, but it makes all the rest it can.
It might be in a slightly unexpected way - just as Fingerworks brought in a fair deal of patents, Apple might want to carve out an IP section of the market. Gates hints Microsofts definitely going and making a strong voice based system. The possibilities that developers have through the SDK is amazing - (and also cool to see how it all works through vieiwing some of the demos' code). The positive halo the SDK will bring will be large, if it's secure and the signed app system works. Through the Interface Builder you could do a huge amount of groundwork for your own personal app - and easily open it up for collaborative coding (though I haven't seen the group management side of Xcode etc, the creation of savepoints seems very useful).
I need to check my agreement/NDA through using the ADC developer stuff for the iPhone. I'd recommend actually signing up just to have a look at the materials - a lot of people for example were unsure why it took so long to get out the SDK (or not have the Interface Builder from day 1) or why Apple said no background apps - if you look at the video guides, they give good reasons for it - it's all very well documented, and the support (technical guides, help, actual programs available (e.g. debugger, realtime analysis of your app etc) are good.
