My WWDC 2016 Wish List

Apple WWDC 2016 is in a week and there have been a lot of good articles with predictions and things that they want to see. The most common things have been:

Predictions/Leaks:

• OS X gets renamed to macOS
• Siri APIs and Siri on the Mac.
• New MacBook Pros

Wishes:

• iTunes broken apart or bettered.
• Better watchOS and tvOS.

Here’s me adding to the pile. My wish list:

1. Fix Wi-Fi issues on the Mac. For real. I know they got fixed for a lot of people when Apple went back to mDNSResponder, but not me. I’ve had the exact opposite experience. Bring back discoveryd!
2. Fix Bluetooth audio issues on the Mac. Audio playback with my Sony Bluetooth Headphones is very choppy on the Mac and it gets worse when I’m using a Magic Keyboard and Mouse.
3. Swipe/glide typing on the native iOS keyboard. Gboard is nice but it still crashes at times. The native keyboard “feels” better but desperately needs swipability.
4. Better emoji picker. Just copy the one from the Slack desktop app. It’s near-perfect.
5. System-wide support for the Telugu language on iOS. They support Hindi and Tamil already — what’s wrong with Telugu?
6. Fast ‘Today’ widgets. They are too slow to be usable.
7. 3D touch to bring up the app switcher on the iPhone should work with the home screen as well.
8. Allow custom watchOS watchfaces. The current ones are ugly. Developers can do better.
9. Faster (realtime) watchOS complications. No one uses apps and glances. Kill them if needed but make complications better.
10. Context-aware watchface that learns and shows relevant complications to the user.
11. Detect workouts automatically on the watch, rather than me having to start and stop them with the Activity app.
12. Support for weight training on the watch. The watch has a myriad of sensors. Use them to learn and detect repetitive movements.
13. Make iMessage more like Slack. Increase information density (bubbles are passé), add previews for hyperlinks, have “channels” or smart threads for topics and fix the identity issues (I have a phone number, a gmail ID, an iCloud ID, a me.com ID, so 4! ways this keeps going wrong).
14. Fix the tvOS app switcher. Make it more like Mission Control on the Mac.
15. Change the tvOS color scheme. A dark theme would be perfect.
16. Fix AirPlay/networking issues on tvOS. a) Multiple Apple TVs show up in the network. b) Playing videos from my phone works only half of the time and they cut off abruptly.
17. On the developers’ side, get rid of UIKit and just copy React. (React Native is great but it can’t do many native things)
18. Provide a high-level machine learning framework for use in apps. The current industry are too dense and too “heavy” for the rest of us.
19. Kill iTunes on the Mac. Have a Music app, a Videos app and a Podcasts app, each one with their store built in.
20. Have a ‘Devices’ app to sync stuff with iOS devices. Make sync better. The current implementation is riddled with consistency bugs.
21. Put Apple Music in the Music.app on if you must, but don’t mess up my local music. Applies to both Mac and iOS.
22. Redo the UI of the iOS Music app. The current one is horrible — bad colors, bad layout and terrible contrast. Go back to the basics, please.
23. Get rid of the ugly background texture in the Notes app. It’s the worst.
24. Re-do the App Store apps on both the Mac and iOS. Get rid of the WebViews.
25. Create an app for podcast production. No, GarageBand or Logic Pro don’t cut it. Something simple — with support for templates, ability to add intros and outros, insert ads, trim silences, level vocals, reduce noise. A subscription component to host files would be even better.

All of these will be good to have, but there’s one wish that’s non-negotiable, which is:

Blow our minds!