WWDC 2022 Wish List

It is now early June and Apple's World Wide Developer Conference is on Monday. Typically, I would do a predictions, but given that WWDC is primarily about software, and it is anybody's guess as to what Apple will announce. So, because of that instead of predictions, I will provide my wish list for what I would like to see from iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13, tvOS 16, and watchOS 9.

Widgets

Widgets were introduced in iOS 14 for the iPhone, and widgets were added to iPadOS with iOS 15, including an extra large Widget type. It would be nice to see Widgets come to the desktop of macOS.

Along with being available on macOS, I also think it would be great if there could be a tad bit of interactivity, not the pseudo-interactivity that Widgets have now. It may only be through standard controls, like Button, and Picker, but even that would be a significant improvement

macOS

macOS is a mature operating system and it is not easy to think what additional features macOS could have added to it. But there is one, Widgets on the desktop of macOS, which is covered above.

As for the name for macOS 13 that is a bit more difficult. There are five possible names,

• Laguna
• Sequoia
• Calistoga
• Mammoth - Only if it is a monumental release
• Redwood

A second feature, which would be nice would be a completely redesigned System preferences screen. Possibly with new an entirely new preference pane style, or at bare minimum, a resizable window.

iPadOS

The iPad in its current state is living a double-life, one of hardware and another of software. First, the hardware is fantastic. The entire iPad line of products, from the smallest, the 8.3-inch iPad mini, to the largest, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, are able to easily handle anything that is thrown at them. The iPad Pro has an M1 with 8GB of memory, and even the base model iPad even has 3GB of memory.

Yet, the software is woefully inadequate. I am not going to say that the iPad has been ignored, although for many years it was clear that Apple was not sure of its direction, but it does seem like iPadOS has not been getting enough attention. Apple has not been pushing the limits of what the iPad can do.

When the person who uses the iPad to its maximum and pushes the boundaries, decides to leave the iPad Pro behind and instead embrace macOS, it should be a clear sign that the current state of iPadOS is not where it should be.

I would like to see significant changes to iPadOS myself. I had thought about trying to use the iPad for some of the tasks that I use my MacBook Pro for, but the limitations of iPadOS precluded me from doing so. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that the apps that I am used to using on my MacBook Pro are not available, in any form, on the iPad.

HomeKit

HomeKit is Apple's framework that allows you to control and manage your smart devices in your home. The Home app has the ability for you to identify favorites. One thing that would be nice to have would be the ability to put your favorites in whatever order you want. With iOS 15 this is not possible. The order is entirely arbitrary and does not make any sense.

Removing a favorite and re-adding it does not change the order and there is no way to manually adjust the order. It would be a great addition to be able to set the order for favorites would go a long way to adding some flexibility.

Apple Watch

There are a couple of things I would like to see on the Apple Watch. These are the same things that I wanted last year, but we did not get them. Therefore, I am copying and pasting my exact wish list items from last year.

When you charge an Apple Watch once the Watch is fully charged a notification will be sent to the paired iPhone. What I would like to see is this enhanced a bit so that the notification will be sent to other nearby devices, like a Mac or an iPad, provided that the devices are logged into the same iCloud account. Like the listing of shared iCloud folders, this is a small feature that would add a nice touch.

The second change is third-party custom watch faces. I think allowing developers to create custom watch faces, and having users install them, is sorely needed. The Apple Watch has a wide variety of watch faces, however, even with all of the customizations that are available, not all watch faces suit the needs of all users. I am not sure if Apple will ever do this, but I am sure that there is a market for this.

SwiftUI

I think we will see some improvements to SwiftUI. What specific improvements might be tricky to determine, given that SwiftUI is not open source. However, SwiftUI is still a somewhat nascent framework and there is still some features that could be added.

One area that could be significantly improved is layout. In particular, providing equal width buttons. If I have three buttons that I want to have equal widths, there is no simple way of doing this.

Documentation

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for any programmer is determining whether something can be done with a particular framework. Apple's documentation, while it has improved, is still woefully inadequate, particularly in relation to SwiftUI. Instead of consulting Apple's own documentation, I tend to just do a search for how to do something in SwiftUI, because Apple's documentation won't answer it.

It is not necessary just a particular approach, but whether a particular View (Stack, List, HStack, etc...) can accept a particular modifier or not. There are times I just try to add a modifier to a view and see if it can do anything. Sometimes, it works, other times it does not.

Closing Thoughts

There is my wish list for iOS 16, iPadOS 16, tvOS 16, watchOS 9, and macOS 13. Apple's WWDC keynote is on Monday at 10am Pacific Time. Apple's State of the Union will follow at 1:00pm Pacific Time. As is the case with other Apple keynotes, I will post a recap sometime on Monday, after the keynote.