WWDC 2019: Wish List and Predictions
WWDC is always a fun time for the Apple nerds out there, and a much bigger deal for most regular people than they realize. Here are my thoughts about this year’s keynote, which is set for Monday, June 3rd, at 10AM (pacific time).
First off, my wish list:
Fix the atrocious Apple Music app. Get rid of the useless Browse, For You, and Radio tabs at the bottom, and replace them with Playlists, Artists, and Albums. Work in better sorting. Streamline the search feature.
I want to see more Apple Watch health features with extensive backwards compatibility, at least back to the series one models, if not the original models. Apple has such a huge opportunity with the watch to impact people’s lives in a very real, physical, measurable way, and I want to see them continue the great work they’ve done the past few years.
It is HIGH TIME for some Siri improvements. We have been waiting and watching for years, every year expecting this to be the keynote where Apple rolls out a badass new Siri. They’ve teased us a few times with things like Siri suggestions and other minor voice improvements, but at the end of the day, I don’t give a shit about having Siri tell me hockey scores. I’m talking Iron Man-style, JARVIS-level intelligence. I know that Apple is behind the curve on this as a result of their focus on privacy, but they’ve gotta figure out a way to at least get Siri up to speed with the Google Assistant.
HomePod improvements. This flows in the same vein as the Siri thing, but a $300 speaker should be able to do more than a flip phone’s voice control can do.
The rumored, Tile-like tracking devices sound like a very interesting product, and I’d love to see how Apple may work those into their product lineup.
I want more privacy features. Apple has really been flexing on the rest of the industry as far as privacy and security goes, and I don’t want it to stop any time soon. I would love to see an Apple VPN service, or dare I say… a social network.
I would really like for them to revamp the Apple Watch UI in a meaningful way, and finally give the side button a distinct, useful role in controlling the device.
Some Predictions:
This is hardly a prediction, given the leaks, but I’m sure we’ll see an iOS dark mode (finally).
I’d be surprised if we don’t get some new Apple Watch health features, whether that’s sleep tracking, menstrual cycle tracking, more heart-related features, or something else.
I do think we’ll get some new privacy features; I believe there have been a few rumors of Safari-related privacy features.
I think we’re finally going to get some more substantial iPad updates. Will it finally be able to replace your laptop? Probably not. But I think this year will be an important stepping stone along that path.
Given the recent MacBook Pro updates and the new iPod Touches that were just released, it seems like Apple doesn’t want to talk too much about hardware this year. I’d say the odds are 60/40 that we’ll see a preview of the new Mac Pro, but I’ll be very surprised if we get anything more than that.
I predict that Apple will, once again, disappoint me by leaving the Music app practically untouched.
I’m sure we’ll see some heavy touting for new artificial reality features that nobody will really care about. They make it look great on stage, but the technology just isn’t good enough to be useful yet. The truth is I don’t need to play an obviously fake looking LEGO video game through my iPhone’s viewfinder, I don’t need to use the stupid Measure app to find out that a 12-inch ruler sitting on a flat surface is apparently 13.5 inches long, and I don’t need to see what an ugly, yellow, cartoonish-looking chair from IKEA would look like in my living room.
All in all, this WWDC isn’t really as exciting as the past few have been, but maybe they’ll surprise me and check off a couple items from my wish list that I’m not expecting. I miss the days of watching the keynote and not being able to think of anything else for days, but the past two or three years have been really lackluster; if anything, I’d find that I had forgotten half of what they’d announced by the next day. Hopefully they’ll recapture my attention this year like they were able to do in the iOS 7 era.