WWDC23

It’s DubDub Day! Just like last year, I’m going to sneak in just under the wire with my wishes for this years announcements. Also like last year, I’m going to stay in my lane. All of the usual suspects have already weighed in with their coverage of the annual rumor mill, as well as their own insightful expectations. These are just a few things I’m personally hoping for, almost none of which will be headline news.

• FaceTime video messages

  Like voicemail, but for FaceTime. I’m just going to keep hoping for this until they finally ship it. The only reason I have to be optimistic for this to happen this year is because the rumors surrounding the headset all suggest FaceTime is one of the key experiences. I suspect that traditional voice-only phone calls are going to feel out of place in mixed reality, so it could make sense to support FaceTime video messages (to more fully replace the voice-only calls + voice mail experience) when the recipient can’t pick up. Plus, FaceTime messages could be a reason to put the headset back on! One can hope.

• Support clamshell mode in Stage Manager on iPadOS.

  I really felt like I nailed this one last year when I had guessed we were going to get proper external display support for iPad. For me, this was the most important improvement we got in Stage Manager, and now a year later I’m hoping we get Stage Manager support with the iPad display disabled (a.k.a. “clamshell” mode). In the iPads on-again/off-again venture to redefine what it means to be a computer — which now includes support for Apple’s own “Pro” apps — I think it’s high time I can hook my iPad to a display + keyboard + mouse and forget that it has a touchscreen at all.

• A standalone Keychain.app

  Many others have reported this one, but it has been on my list for a while so I’ll chime in here as well. Apple has clearly been making all the moves necessary to justify a dedicated password manager app. And spelunking into Settings.app to retreive passwords is just bad UX at this point. But beyond just improving the UX, I’d also like to see Apple be the first player in the war on passwords to support exportable Passkeys.

• Mail Extensions on iOS

  I’m hoping Apple follows in the same pattern it did for Safari Extensions with Mail Extensions. It announced the Safari Extension framework for macOS at WWDC20 and they brought them to iOS at WWDC21. We already got the new MailKit at WWDC21, so I thought for sure we’d see Mail App Extensions come to iOS last year. Alas there was no mention, thus my anticipation that we’ll see them come to iOS this year.

• Map Extensions, APIs, and Shortcuts

  Apple Maps got off to a rocky start when it launched back in 2012. But Maps has improved a LOT over the years, and I think as it approaches its 11th anniversary it’s time to turn Maps.app to 11. I’d love to see Apple open up Maps.app to developers with three key improvements:

  1. Maps Extensions. Maps.app already has an integration of sorts with Yelp, but users don’t have any choices for alternatives; an Extension framework could give users more choices without degrading the experience.

  2. Places/Collections APIs. Apple Maps core mapping and navigation experience has improved such that it has almost completely replaced my use of Google Maps. The only remaining gap is that I have almost 1000 places saved in Google Maps Lists (a collection of places I’ve been in over dozen countries), but I can’t bring them all to Maps.app because it has a 300 place limit. Even if I could migrate them, I’m not sure I’d have the patience to do it by hand. But if Apple gave us new APIs for Places and collections or lists, I can imagine dozens of scenarios that could open up for developers - not the least of which would be migration tools to help users move from Google Maps.

  3. Shortcuts support. If we’re going to get new APIs, then we might as well also get Shortcuts support!

• Spotlight Extensions

  I can’t take credit for this one, but since I heard Federico Viticci mention this on the AppStories podcast (“Our iPadOS Wishes”), I keep thinking how useful this could be.

That’s it for me! Time to make some popcorn!¹ 🍿