With WWDC just getting started this year and the first partially in person one at that, there is lots going on in the Apple world. Seeing my Twitter timeline with people meeting in person, getting excited for announcements, its one of my favorite times of the year. This is my first impressions of the announcements and what I’m excited about.

I think the first thing that feels almost like a sigh of relief is no AR device paradigm shift. Don’t get me wrong I am incredibly excited for whenever Apple announces an AR or mixed reality headset. There were lots of people myself included thinking Apple would get everyone together in person to demonstrate a hardware device. They did end up introducing the long rumored redesign MacBook Air that looks amazing but its not a new product category like a dedicated AR device would be. If it was announced I feel like every Apple developer would feel a huge weight on their shoulders to develop for it and put their existing products to the side. Not that developers wouldn’t be excited to develop for a new platform but it would be a very busy and hectic summer. Instead what we got was way more light, there were definitely cool features announced. But I feel like for most developers whatever roadmaps they have had for their current projects can go on with ought too much disturbance. For everything going on right now I feel like developers can use another calmer summer. There was lots announced though and plenty of things I’m excited about.

iMessage

I guess Apple beat Twitter to editing messages. It seems like such a small thing but the fact that you can edit text on a sent message in iMessage is so nice. Typos won’t go anywhere no matter how proficient you are at typing. Having a way to fix things and not have to resend messages is one of those really nice quality of life improvements. On top of that you can unsend a message, like getting new emoji I feel like for people who use iMessage as their primary messaging app will welcome these improvements. As a bonus you get this undo feature in the Mail app.

Passkeys

I’m glad we’re all trying to figure out a better way for accounts and passwords. Sign in with Apple felt like it came out of nowhere and I’m happy to see Passkeys introduced. While this will take a long time to become the norm I like the fact that its trying to fix problems like people trying to phish your credentials or pass you a fake website. I was hoping for a standalone passwords app that integrates this and iCloud keychain but maybe next year?

Stage Manager and iPadOS

Windows!

When Apple first showed this as a new Mac window focusing feature I immediately thought this was gonna be on iPadOS. Turns out that is the case, it’s interesting that this feels more like a different approach for Apple. Usually for iPadOS when they bring things like cursor support they rethink a big key feature the Mac has had for a long time. In this case it seems like Apple was trying to give iPadOS users something that they and the Mac could have together that focuses on familiarity not a fundamental rethink. Does this mean Apple will treat the iPad more of a peer to the Mac when thinking of power user features? I feel like its to early to tell if this is the right approach but it’s fascinating to me that this is how it feels. Maybe I’m wrong but nonetheless I’m excited to see the iPad get this and full display support. It felt so wrong that when plugging in an iPad you had black bars on the sides of the display and you couldn’t even use the iPad screen as a second display. Now this welcomes external displays as a setup that would be really nice to use regularly. They didn’t limit you to 3 split view apps they gave you proper window like apps that overlap. All while letting iPadOS give this to power users and not take away from casual users using one or two apps at a time.

As nice as this is for iPad power users I still feel like there are many unanswered wishes from the community. Federico Viticci recently wrote on how the lack of advancement in iPadOS made it easier for him to switch to the Mac. Apple talked about improving pro workflows on the iPad but we didn’t get any of Apple’s pro apps like: Final Cut, Logic, or Xcode. Having those apps is only part of the story though Apple would need to improve file management and other areas to make these apps work similar to the Mac. Using apps on the iPad is now different but it doesn’t seem like new categories of apps could be created for the iPad. And I feel like many iPad power users were hoping that would be the case. I wonder now with so many Apple Silicon Macs out if iPad power users will be happy on the platform or turn to the Mac like Federico. I was never an iPad power user but I do want to see the platform get better and more capable for more people.

iOS 16 Widgets and the lock screen

Apple’s widgets API is one of the most essential API’s developers need to know. That means a good familiarity with SwiftUI and building compact views with key information. Ever since they introduced widgets Apple has only made it more and more important and now they are front and center in the iPhone lock screen. Apple has taken their design of the Apple Watch photos watch face and brought it to the iPhone home screen in a big way. It’s one of the biggest changes to iOS and I think it looks really great. Although I think now I need more portrait photos of my wife.

It is really nice and smart to have these new lock screen widgets be focused in one area at the top under the time and date. Then notifications on bottom over the flashlight and camera quick buttons. Having notifications grouped nicer and easier to tap with bigger phones is a great improvement. All this keeps your photo in the main view. As someone who cares a lot about whats on his lock screen and even made an app to get a good photo for it these changes are exciting to see. As they were demoing this new lock screen I was honestly hoping they would Sherlock me by giving you a view to see how a photo would look on your lock screen in real time. In actuality though I need to download iOS 16 to see if my app still makes sense to have.

In the future I fully expect to see Apples AR hardware have widgets as the one of the main UI traits. It just seems like it will only get more important over time. Even CarPlay is getting them in interesting ways.

The new M2 and MacBook Air

The new midnight MacBook Air is giving me polycarbonate black MacBook energy and I’m here for it. I am a little sad its not a modern iBook rethink but the new hardware seems really nice. I think it’s really interesting that Apple is still calling this the MacBook Air and not the MacBook. It seemed they felt a key characteristic was that wedge shaped design but I guess not strongly enough to change its name. Im definitely a fan of this more utilitarian thicker approach to their Apple silicon hardware though. Giving the new MacBook Air MagSafe is like giving it another port which is a big deal. As someone typing this on a M1 MacBook Air having that extra port free is really nice.

I was excited to see the M2 get a RAM upgrade as well. You are no longer limited to 16GB of unified memory instead you can go up to 24GB. While I was rooting for 32 its really nice to see Apple increasing this because like storage space having more and more RAM can extend the life of a machine and improve its day to day usage. When the benchmarks come out it seems like it’ll be a nice improvement over the M1. I don’t feel the need to upgrade though. Apple Silicon is way better than Intel but like the Intel days I don’t think year over year improvements are gonna be that noticeable day to day. I expect the same to be the case when the M2 Pro, ProMax, and Ultra come out.

Mac Pro

Curiously they didn’t show the Mac Pro. They teased its arrival during the Mac Studio announcement and with the 2019 Mac Pro being shown at WWDC I found it really odd to be missing during the keynote. I guess we’ll see it at an October Mac event. I guess the Apple Silicon Mac Pro needed to skip the M1 series chips because Apple couldn’t make the machine they wanted with it. Thats so much of the fun with Apple silicon they can wait and make hardware they want with chips they can control. I definitely am not a potential Mac Pro customer but its still a fun computer to see and read about. So I will be excited to see its story when they finally show it.