WWDC 2012 Wishlist/Predictions
Author Name • June 10, 2012 08:47 PM
I've come a long way this past year in developing my skills as an iOS developer. I've released one app to the App Store that I did as a contract job, and I've got another one ready to go but I'm waiting on an icon to be designed. I've also built a calendaring app at work to view shared Exchange calendars for our conference rooms.
Anyway, I digress. Tomorrow, the fine folks at Apple will stand on stage and announce the first details about iOS 6, among some other things. I don't have any grand vision for where iOS and Mountain Lion will go (I think it's pretty good as it is), but here are some minor tweaks I'd love to see:
iOS 6
- When I'm texting a person and I change my mind and want to call them, I should be able to easily call the person, perhaps by just touching their name and selecting "Call" from an AlertView.
- Shared iCloud Photo Stream capability. My wife and I both have our own iCloud account, and it would be nice to be able to "subscribe" to her Photo Stream, and vice versa, so we each have all of each other's photos.
iCloud
- Web-based galleries, publishable and editable via Photo Stream. If I just shot some photos and want to make a gallery, I have to upload them to Flickr, or somehow save them from my iPhone to another web service. iCloud already does Photo Stream, which means the data is in the cloud. There should be a simple interface to "publish" a set of photos to a gallery on icloud.com and share it, all from iOS.
iPhone 5
- New MagSafe plug. The huge iPhone charging cable needs to be shrunk down. MagSafe has been an awesome improvement over "normal" cables, and Apple can do the same thing for iPhones/iPads. Also, like Mac MagSafe connectors, it needs to be bi-directional. New cable connector standards that only go in one way should be outlawed.
New Hardware
- It's time we see new Mac Pro's (this is a developer conference), as Marco pointed out. And maybe we'll even see a body redesign?
- It's time to switch the entire laptop line into Air models, and just call it one name (I'd be fine with MacBook Air being the unified name). The choice really should just be between 11", 13" or 15", and hopefully we'll see larger SSD capacities.
Apple TV
- I have no idea what to think about the Apple TV rumors. I could see them opening up the platform for serious development with a new Apple TV SDK, but I'm not sure what kinds of apps I really want on my TV. I do think there is a lot of room to grow with AirPlay technologies.
That's all I've got. Nothing revolutionary, but I hope to be wowed by something truly new and remarkable tomorrow, not just evolutionary updates to everything.