Next Monday, Apple will kick off their World Wide Developers Conference with a keynote address. It's always a big deal. Even though the conference itself is for developers, the keynote is for everyone.

Those 2 hours on center stage lay out the road map for the remainder of the year, and well into 2017. Most folks will be anxious to hear about hardware revelations, such as the new Macs, iPhones, and watches. Others will be curious about the evolution of the Mac operating system and iOS.

I too am interested in all of those things. But I have one additional item on my list: will there be any news about Photos for OS X?

To this point, Apple has had a pass on Photos, as they should. In part, because they've handled the transition from Aperture and iPhoto well. We can still run those legacy apps on the latest operating system. That's a nice touch and greatly appreciated.

But before too long, that will no longer be the case. There will come a day when the latest OS won't support Apple's former imaging apps. And if that day is when Mac OS X 10.12 is announced, then Photos should be ready for prime time.

Don't get me wrong. The current version of Photos for OS X is good... for a V. 1.5 app. I think back to the first year with iPhoto and Aperture. They weren't perfect either. It takes time to polish software. But now, as we're moving to Photos 2.0, we should have a better idea about where this app is going.

In all honesty, I don't know if the next version of Photos even warrants a keynote timeslot. Maybe not. I may have to comb through the press releases to find the information that I'm looking for. But when I do, I'll report back to you.

Because what Apple decides to do, or not to do, will tell us a lot about their vision for managing pictures on Mac hardware.

-Derrick