We’re less than a week (5 days, exactly) away from Apple’s WWDC event on June 6th and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting pretty excited for it. For those of you who don’t know, WWDC stands for World Wide Developers Conference, and it’s usually held in San Francisco or the surrounding areas. Since 2007, it’s traditionally been that magical keynote where Steve Jobs announces the next iPhone to the world. However, with almost no hope of an iPhone update this time around, what do they have in store for us instead?

With no iPhone update, prospects for the conference seem pretty bleak – usually, that was the thing to look forward too every spring. But this year, we have to do without! So instead, here are some surprises Apple likely has planned for us.

First – iOS 5. Devoid of an iPhone update, this is widely considered the next best thing. iOS 5 has been reported to be a fairly major update, with many changes likely. To start, we’re almost certainly looking forward to a brand new notifications system to replace those annoying pop-ups that everyone so loves to complain about. Next, widgets. It seems like widgets are a very commonly requested feature this time around – though I fail to see the reason. I think it’s a pretty good guess to say we might be seeing some implementation of widgets in iOS 5 – although I would say probably not quite the boring old way that Android does it. Instead, I would say it’s more likely we see something like the new Mission Control feature coming in OSX Lion. A notifications area, plus a few widgets and maybe a new modified multitasker, all in a new window. Lastly, several rumors about a partnership between Apple and Nuance Voice Recognition seem to point to a very updated version of Voice Control for the iPhone – this time, we can hope to compete with the sadly lacking voice control implementation in Android. There are a few other features that we might see in iOS 5, such as an updated Maps app, and perhaps Twitter/Facebook integration.

Next – iCloud. This ties in with the iOS update. Lately, we’ve seen trademarks for the “iCloud.com” domain name, coupled with the massive data center in North Carolina, and the many sources claiming Apple has been busy striking deals with the major music and video labels all point to the same thing – a cloud service integrated with iTunes and accessible from your iOS device. This service would likely involve iTunes scanning your library for tracks, and adding digital copies to your cloud library. Any songs that iTunes doesn’t recognize, you would probably have to upload to the cloud yourself. These songs would then be accessible from any computer or iOS device from anywhere there’s Internet access – perhaps even without. I’m looking forward to this one a lot – finally, something better than Google’s laughably bad “Google Music” service.

Lastly, it seems likely that we’re going to see a release date for Mac OSX Lion. Apple demoed this new software build for the Mac last year, and promised it for this spring/summer. I would doubt we see an actual release of the product that day, however they will likely put a finite date on it, as well as seed a Golden Master version to developers. This is an exciting new update, which should bring many new features to our Macs.

So, with all these great updates, there’s still plenty to look forward too at WWDC this year! Personally, I’m already counting down the days – and secretly hoping that we see a surprise iPhone 4S update pop up – Apple would never break tradition, right? Hope you all enjoy your week of anticipation before the big day! Replies in the comments!