My WWDC20 Wishlist
This year’s WWDC will, for sure, be a unique one. Up until now, all of the developer conferences organised by Apple took place in person, with the keynotes and the individual sessions streamed live and available for on-demand access via Apple Developer website. This year, though, due to the global pandemic of COVID-19 and social distancing measures caused by it, Apple will host the event fully online.
There have been some rumours spreading regarding the future releases of Apple’s platforms, but we don’t really know how much of that Apple is going to show. That being said, I have a few things, also based on the rumours, that I’d like them to release later this year.
iOS 14
Even though I find iOS on the iPhone to be quite mature, especially after the introduction of the much needed Dark Mode, there are still a few things that I would like to see Apple do.
The first thing, which is actually rumoured to happen this year, are widgets on the Home Screen. Together with iPadOS 13, we got an option to pin the Today View to the first page of the Home Screen, which is a great start but there’s so much more that can be done. I wish that Apple would allow us to mix app icons with the widgets, kind of how it worked on Windows Mobile phones with Live Tiles. It seems like a simple solution that would make the iPhone Home Screen so much more useful.
The next thing on top of my personal wishlist is updates to the Notes, Mail, and Calendar apps. Especially the last two are far behind the competition, both design- and feature-wise. It almost seems like a joke that Apple still doesn’t have a snooze option in their mail client, which is something that even Gmail implemented (or rather took away from Inbox — RIP). And, of course, I really want the paper background in the Notes app to go away. They managed to get rid of it from the Reminders, so I’m pretty sure it’s possible.
Another rumoured feature is a built-in translator, which would be truly amazing for me. I live in Germany, but I’m only ok-ish when it comes to the German language. Being able to translate local news sites on my phone without using Chrome or some other 3rd party app sounds great to me. Also, knowing Apple, it will happen locally on the device.
I’m a big advocate of the Do Not Disturb mode, and I really liked the changes that Apple introduced back in iOS 12, like being able to set it until the end of an event or when one leaves a location. I would like to see even more options, though, like being able to whitelist certain apps or contacts (without marking them as an emergency contact).
iPadOS 14
It seems that Apple really cares about the iPad. First of all, they gave its OS a new name last year. Second, they finally added proper pointer support and released the Magic Keyboard with a trackpad. I think that the part of the Keynote dedicated to the iPadOS may be full of surprises and exciting news. But from my perspective of a relatively fresh iPad user, I have only a few wishes.
I’m still more of a Mac guy, and my 11" iPad Pro is not my main productivity device. Therefore I share it a lot with my girlfriend who uses it to draw with Adobe Fresco. Unfortunately, unlike macOS and tvOS, iPadOS still doesn’t support multiple users, at least not for normal consumers. And I think that my case is not unique and many other households share just one iPad. Being able to have multiple accounts, in my opinion, is very needed.
There has been a heated discussion around iPad’s multitasking system in the Apple-focused blogosphere, and that’s for a reason — it’s still quite confusing and hard to discover for someone who doesn’t watch Apple keynotes. It’s hard to point to a solution that would make multitasking on the iPad better (although I really like this one from Ryan from MacStories), especially having in mind how different the overall user experience of iPadOS is compared with macOS. Personally, I’d love to see a feature that’s present on Samsung’s phones, where you can save a pair of apps on your home screen and launch them without struggling with the multitasking system too much.
macOS 10.16
Catalina isn’t Apple at their best. I think that what most people want from the next release of macOS is for it to just work and to get rid of all of the small bugs spread across the whole system.
I was very happy to see Screen Time come to the Mac in Catalina as I use it on all of my other devices. But it doesn’t work as I and many others would like it to. Instead of tracking the time when an app is in focus, it tracks the whole time the app is on, even in the background. What’s even worse is that it tracks all of the open apps at the same time. It really messed up my screen time reports. Therefore I stopped using it after two weeks. I wish Apple would fix this.
Catalyst-based apps were not a big hit at the beginning, especially with the extremely poorly designed Home app. Catalina brought support for third-party apps, and some of them are really good. I recently switched to the official Twitter app that’s based on Catalyst, and it’s very pleasant to use. Now I want Apple to switch some of their own apps to be based on Catalyst, especially Messages and Music, which still has a lot of left-overs from iTunes on the backend. I really enjoy the Podcasts app that even supports Handoff, which is much needed in the Music app.
Regarding Handoff — I would love to see an option to use my iPhone’s or iPad’s front-facing camera instead of the one that’s on my 16" MacBook Pro. It’s ridiculous that cameras on Apple’s notebooks actually got worse over time (I remember to downgrade in quality when I switched from a 2015 MacBook Air to a 2018 model). Of course, it would be great to see Apple upgrade the hardware, but being able to use cameras from other devices seems like a not-so-bad alternative.
It would also be great to get an option to back up a Mac into iCloud, even if it would be limited to the highest plan only and only certain data. I really like the option to sync the Desktop and Documents folders, but I wish I was able to select other folders to sync as well.
watchOS 7
To be honest, after Apple introduced the Always-on Display on Series 5 watches, my Apple Watch wishlist decreased to about zero items. The only thing missing that I can think of is an automatic change of the watch face based on time of day or on location. I could imagine it to be a part of the Shortcuts app, which is also missing in watchOS.
Other things
There are a few more things that I’m looking forward to seeing, like the rumoured AirTags that will help with locating objects using the Find My app. Another thing that sounds exciting to me is Night Shift for lights, that would allow you to set a temperature of HomeKit-enabled lights based on time of day. And last but not least, a services bundle that could combine Apple Music, iCloud Drive storage, Apple TV+, and more. As someone who subscribes to most of Apple’s services, I would find a bundle with a discount to be a nice addition.
I’m looking forward to watching the opening keynote in less than two weeks and see what Apple has worked on in the past year. What are your expectations and wishes? Feel free to let me know via Twitter.
