What will the big topic be at Apple's conference? Stay tuned

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Profit for Apple Sales New Zealand was $15.1 million in the year ended September 27, up from $10.5 million the year earlier. Photo: AP.

Apple announced this week that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (better known as WWDC) will kick off June 8, giving the company a chance to fill in some of the plans it's already laid out for the future of its devices and software, its music service after the Beats acquisition and - people really hope - its long-awaited plans for the television.

It's always fun to try and pick up clues about what Apple's plans are from its event logos, and this year's WWDC invitation is no different.

This time around, Apple-focused blogger John Gruber noted that rounded square shape in the middle of the WWDC logo looks an awful lot like the Apple TV set-top box.

For years, analysts and fans have speculated that a television set is just around the corner, but so far the company hasn't released anything of the kind. What has risen instead among Apple watchers is the forecast that the company may not be that interested in an actual television set, but turning the Apple TV into a hub for all things home and entertainment.

Which makes Apple's text on the WWDC logo even more interesting. Epicenter. Hub. You get the idea.

The rounded square is not new to Apple's iconography - it's even shown up in past WWDC logos, with no accompanying major Apple TV overhaul. Regardless of whether the logo holds a secret clue or not, the timing of a television/home hub feels right.

Major networks are embracing the streaming revolution, as HBO's new stand-alone service has shown - opening the door for a company like Apple to make sense of a newly crowded landscape.

Meanwhile, a flood of smart-home devices - locks, thermostats, etc. - are finding their foothold in the consumer market, and users are increasingly looking to a single platform to manage all that information. Apple offers one already, as does Google and Amazon.

In short, there are plenty of dots to connect when exploring the theory that Apple may be looking at the Apple TV as a way into the smart-home market. On the other hand, sometimes a rounded square is just a rounded square.