Hopes for WWDC 2019
6 min readMay 27, 2019
Apple makes a lot of tech these days and if I were to go through all of what we should expect from WWDC I think that at the rate I blog WWDC would have come and pass so instead I’m just going to focus on what I would want to see. Lots of places cover the rumors better than I do. Here are just some items I’m personally interesting in seeing.
Apple Watch
- Always-on Watch Face: This will undoubtedly eat more battery, but most of the time my Apple Watch ends the day with 30–40% battery life left. I think the utility of being able to always see the time would be worth the battery drain.
- 3rd party watch faces: Even if they don’t do a full watch-store, I think that its long-due that we have more choices in watch faces. I’d love the ability to buy more watch faces going forward for my watch. I think it would be cool if they even linked to them band purchases. You buy a Nike sport loop and get the Nike Watch faces. You buy a Star Wars watch band and get a BB8 or Storm Trooper watch face. I think it would make the watch even more personal and fun for people. I’d be even okay if they just curated heavily like they do the iTunes store or simply gave us a picture watch face that you can customize to your heart’s content.. I’m just ready for some more watch faces.
- Android Support: Like iTunes for Windows. I think this would be like Steve Jobs once said “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell” I think that this would greatly open up the Apple Watch market. Ideally this would get Google to get with the program and take wearables seriously, but they seem to have dropped the ball with WearOS despite having a lead by a few years.
Homepod
- Multi-user support: My $30 Google Home Mini has multi-user support. Apple’s $300 Homepod should be able to do the same. It’s kind of crazy that anybody can send and receive texts from the person who set up the Homepod, especially from Apple, the privacy company.
- Soundbar Mode: I think that you should be able to tether a Homepod to an AppleTV or SmartTV with Airplay 2 and have it route all the audio through a stereo pair. Have it still be able to resound to requests, but after the request is over have it go back to being a soundbar. I think a stereo HomePod pair would make a pretty great movie theater system, especially if you throw in some HomePod Mini’s in the rear for a 5.1 setup.
- Homepod Mini: Smaller and cheaper than the current Homepod. I doubt its going to be coming next week at WWDC, but it would be a nice surprise.
- Ability to play audio from Spotify and 3rd party podcast clients. This is long overdue. Apple doesn’t lock my AppleTV into just having iTunes content. The Homepod should be no different.
Mac
- Marzipan 2: I think we’ll see more iOS apps on the Mac, but I do hope that we get some features like multi-window, touchbar support, better keyboard shortcuts, better menu bar support, and more nature controls (The Home app comes to mind). I feel like stuff like Apple News and Home were nice to have on the Mac over the last year, but I would not feel good about the future of the Mac if they were what Apple consider to be acceptable going forward.
- Apple Music for Mac: I’ve read that they are gutting everything out of iTunes save the music bits and I’m game for this. Keep all the power and make the app much more lightweight. I’d love that.
- Apple Podcast and Books for Mac: I particularly want Apple Podcasts on the Mac. iTunes for podcast on the Mac is the worst experience by far. The sync is awful, the library management is awful, and it just never works for me.
- Aperture X Return: Apple has been wanting to court “Pro’s” for the last few years now with the iMac Pro, new Macbook Pro’s, and the Mac Pro. I think it’s ridiculous that they have a great video and music editing suite, but nothing for photography. For anything beyond iPhone photography the Apple Photos app just breaks down. I really would love a professional photo management and editing application from Apple.
- Mac Pro and Apple Display Preview
iPhone
- Dark Mode: DARK MODE FOR ALL THE THINGS! But seriously everything from Apple Watch to Homepod have a dark mode. Why doesn’t the iPad and iPhone have dark mode yet?
- More powerful Reminders app: This app hasn’t be updated in years. There are rumors that its getting an Apple Notes level of refresh to better compete with 3rdparty reminder apps. I’m looking forward to seeing this. Apple Notes is one of my favorite apps on Mac/iOS now after that refresh a few years ago.
- AR: I’m always interested in Apple’s AR efforts. I do hope they reach out to education going forward.
- RAW support in default camera app: I just want this as an option. It doesn’t need to be a separate shooting mode or anything. Just give me the option to save images as RAW+JPEG. We have iPhones with 512GB of storage now. Let us take advantage of RAW images.
AppleTV
· I doubt we’ll see anything big, but I hope we’ll see more about Apple Arcade’s interface and experience.
Homekit
- I’m hoping we see more devices in Homekit such as robotic vacuums, room fans, doorbells, wireless camera, and more.
- Camera recording access within Homekit
- Better Siri Shortcut integration. I should be able to use Homekit devices, status, and other information directly within shortcuts rather than just trigger a scene.
iPad
- Home screen that takes advantage of its size
- Multiple instances of the same application like Safari, Pages, Word, etc.
- USB drive support over USB-C in the Files app
- More powerful Files App
- More powerful Reminders and Mail App
- Safari displaying desktop pages by default
- Mouse support for 3rd party apps like Remote Desktop
SiriOS
- AudioKit: Let me play audio from 3rd party sources like Spotify, Amazon Music, NPR, Pocketcasts, Overcast, Audible, etc.
- Multi-user support
- MY Day Routine: Allow me to ask about “My Day” and get a reading off of my upcoming appointments, daily commute, weather, reminders, and a short burst of news
- Better Shortcuts: Let 3rd party apps directly integrate into Siri Shortcuts instead of having to pass it a URL.
So, those are just a few things that I’m hoping for this year from Apple’s WWDC conference. There have been a lot of rumors and iMore does a good job at rounding them up here
Last year was largely a stability and bug-fix year and I hope that we get some new features this year without having to walk that back too much. I know adding new features and complexity always builds up some technical debt, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what Apple has in store for us on June 3rd. This is a really exciting time to be an tech geek.
— Hobie 🦖
