WWDC Wish List
A few days ago, Phil Schiller announced big changes to the economics of the App Store. This would usually be announced at WWDC, but Schiller cited time constraints as part of the decision to announce early. If that’s true, I expect to see a keynote chock-full of big announcements. With that in mind, I've put together a wish list of what I hope is announced on Monday.
Apple Services
Apple Music
I’m a reluctant Apple Music subscriber. It works well enough for my wife and I, but it is not a wonderful experience. The rumor mill says there will big a huge redesign, and I hope they’re right.
I’d love to see Apple break iTunes into multiple apps on the Mac. Maybe the Mac apps will look something similar to these mockups from @chrismasterson.
They’re already part of the way there on iOS with Movies, iTunes and Podcasts being separate apps. That said, Apple Music is still too complicated on iOS. I hope to see either a much simpler redesign or it broken into two apps–a My Music app and an Apple Music app.
Apple Photos
Apple Photos is another Apple service that works decently well but could use some hefty updating. I have my entire library in both Apple Photos and Google Photos, and Google Photos provides a significantly better search experience. That is Google’s strong suit, but Apple needs to catch up.
Apple Pay
I hope to see Apple Pay in more stores, an announcement for web APIs so online stores without apps can integrate with it, and Venmo-like person-to-person money transfer functionality.
iMessage
People don’t think of iMessage when they talk about major chat apps like WhatsApp, Line and Facebook Messenger, but its user base is similar in size.
I’d love to see Apple bring better gif support, display link metadata (image, title, description) and maybe even integrate Apple Pay person-to-person payments with iMessage.
Siri
A Siri API and type-based interactions with the service could be Apple’s response the the “AI” and “bot” announcements from Microsoft, Facebook and Google over the past months. That’d be nice.
Apple Operating Systems
iOS
If the only improvements to iOS were the service improvements above, it’d be a solid keynote, but there is some other functionality I’d like to see addressed.
- Dark Mode: I love dark mode in Tweetbot, Instapaper and Omnifocus, and it’d be awesome to have it across all the built-in apps.
- Multitasking: Multitasking on the iPad pro can be tedious. Adding search to the app picker would be a huge improvement. Also they could add drag ’n’ drop between apps.
- Hide Built-in Apps: Instead of adding a bunch of apps to a “junk” folder, it would be really useful to be able to hide built-in apps. This same hide functionality was in the old Apple TV.
OS X (macOS?)
Renaming OS X to “macOS” would bring consistency to Apple’s operating system names. That alone would make me happy, and it looks like it’ll happen.
I’ve heard rumors that they’ll bring Siri and touchID (with new hardware) to the Mac. If they do add Siri, I think it should be integrated with Spotlight. Having separate search and Siri would lead to the same broken experience as search and Cortana have on Windows 10.
watchOS
Overall I’ve enjoyed the Apple Watch, but I think the OS is a bit too complicated. I never use the honeycomb app screen or open any apps directly. I’d love to see a complete rethink of watchOS with a focus on improving what is already useful about the watch–watch faces, complications and Siri.
tvOS
I’m very happy with the Apple TV, but there are three improvements to tvOS I’d like to see announced at WWDC.
- Dark mode: The home screen is aesthetically pleasing, but all of that white can be harsh in a dark room.
- Amazon Instant Video: Amazon Instant Video is the only media missing from the Apple TV for me. I hope they can get over their squabble with Bezos and make it happen.
- Siri: Siri works about 70% of the time for me. It should be better.
Hardware
I’m not in the market for new Mac hardware, but much of their lineup could use some serious updates. Everything should have the Skylake Processor from Intel, and the Mac Pro and Cinema Display need any sort of update at all. They haven’t been updated since 2013 and 2011 respectively.
There have been some rumors that Apple will announce an Amazon Echo competitor. I’d be surprised if it was announced on Monday, but I’d be happy to see it.
It'll be fun to see how much of my wish list comes true on Monday. Thanks for reading!
Header image from Unsplash