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Apple WWDC21: Expect Big Things
Apple’s annual developer event promises updates to all OSes and maybe one new one
Consumers get excited about all of Apple’s big launch events, the ones where the Cupertino tech giant unveils a passel of new products intended to brighten their days, improve their lives, and help them get more done.
I like them, too but the real juice comes from Apple’s annual, information-packed Worldwide Developers Conferences (WWDC). This is where Apple charts the roadmap, not for just current and future products, but the software and code that underpins all of it.
Look at it this way:
- The iPhone is just a slab of metal and glass without iOS.
- Apple TV is a black plastic brick without tvOS
- Apple Watch is merely pretty jewelry without watchOS
- The iPad is an unwieldy aluminum and glass slab without iPadOS
- The Mac is an attractive desk ornament without macOS
The nitty-gritty details, often dealing with programming languages and connective tissue like all the various kits (HomeKit, HealthKit, ResearchKit, CareKit) and APIs, can be a little hard to digest for consumers, but these are the things that help build the Apple ecosystem and connect it to a wide array of third-party devices and, most importantly, the apps you run on all of them.
Like last year, this year’s WWDC which kicks off on June 7, is an all-digital event, a limitation that tends to compress the critical keynote presentation into a more digestible duration for the desk-bound, video-stream viewing set (it’s debatable how long anyone can watch a video presentation). That said, I have a feeling that this will be one of Apple’s bigger, more impactful WWDCs.
iOS 15
Last year Apple introduced one of its biggest changes ever to the iPhone home screen, adding customizable widgets that reveal old photos, news, weather, or pretty much whatever you want.
This year I don’t expect that kind of visual sea change, although I do think there may be some hints that the carve-out for the iPhone’s TrueDepth module is going away. I expect Apple to hide the camera and other sensors under…
