We’re nearly there for the announcements at this years Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2014. Lots of speculation as normal, but I suspect the most plausible predictions are those from John Gruber on his Daring Fireball blog here.

The keynote is 2 hours long and can be watched live using Apple’s WWDC app, which is downloadable from the Apple App Store.

The Sapphire plant where Apple are reputed to be building screens for the next iPhone aren’t expected to come on stream (at least volume wise) yet, so i’d suspect that new phone handsets will arrive later in the year. While I thought Beats headphones would give Apple a youth-orientated brand to challenge Xiaomi in future growth markets – much as Toyota have their own sub-brands in Scion and Lexus in the car industry – it sounds like it’s use is more to land the impressive Jimmy Iovine and to sell a multi-platform music streaming service only. Certainly the trend is that purchasing tracks is out, and streaming services absorbing a lot of future growth potential.

I’m particularly looking out for Apple’s first foray into health and home automation applications – both using sensor devices from a wide variety of other vendors. But would be delighted if there are more impressive surprises queued up. We shall see – just 100 minutes to go at the time of writing!