What I expect from Apple tomorrow at #WWDC20

Will Apple get things right with iPhoneOS and iPadOS 14?

It’s that time of the year again.

Excitement, leaks, rumours.

Since WWDC20 is fully online due to the pandemic that’s upon us, Apple servers are going to hit all time high during the keynote. Apple is always good at that. But that’s least of my concern.

That’s because iOS 14 (rumoured to be called the iPhoneOS) is THE update I’m looking forward to.

No one has taken Animoji as seriously as Apple

iOS and iPadOS needing a cosmetic change is long overdue. You may argue that why change things people have been using comfortably for years? What purpose does that really serve?

The word to focus here is “comfortably”. iOS at this point is too familiar now. I’m honestly bored. Not because of the UI, but how iOS still handles apps, and the way you have to go by what Apple thinks is the right way to use apps.

The brief time I Jailbroke my device, I realised the immense possibilities it hold and how incredible the hardware is. Even with 30 odd tweaks installed, the phone didn’t even budge. No battery or performance issues.

The current iOS home screen is mess. It’s literally the same thing since 2007. It has probably got as many changes as America under Trump. Ya just the cosmetic stuff that’s actually of no use.

Sure the icons look better and they have added a lot of small changes over the years but take a look at this –

The home screen is literally identical for over a decade

Okay first things first.

The Phone app

Big changes needed here. Let’s go through them quickly.

– Voicemail!

From the first iPhone I used (iPhone 4), we in India didn’t have anything called a voicemail / visual voicemail. Neither most of Asia.

Why the option still exists is still a mystery. Maybe give an option to disable it rather than laying around like a graveyard?

– Incoming call screen

You know how iOS completely disables the iPhone when you get a call? You don’t need to hack someone’s phone to make it unusable. Just keep calling them until they turn on DND or airplane mode. Then you can do the same on Whatsapp call.

Apple we really need something to dismiss the calls in the background. Really can’t wait a whole year for that to happen.

iMessage

You know how you want to send a picture on iMessage and you take 2 mins to do it? Every message application makes it easy to send to your recent favourite contact. Something like this would be nice rather than typing the name again and again if you want to send something.

Super minimalism can help, but not here!

Apple News

Why it takes over 2 years to roll out a news app is beyond me. Maybe there are technical issues that I’m unaware of. But reading is what I use my phone primarily for and the App not available in my region doesn’t make sense. Maybe a global rollout for useful apps like these?

Changing the region to US does the trick but still can’t access the stories

Notifications

Apple did a great job of making some sense of the lock screen notifications on iOS 13 but it’s still a mess. Similar notifications are not grouped and finding anything useful from that is still cumbersome.

Lot of potential here

Settings app

If I want to change a setting of an app, I have to scroll to the end of the list to find it. The more apps you install, the longer the settings app grows.

Why not categorise it into 4 simple options

1. iCloud

2. Wireless

3. Applications

4. General

Siri

Siri is a module that has a lot of potential but Apple seems to have forgotten that it has the most important button on the iPhone dedicated to it. Siri should be less intrusive too. Why take up the while screen? Something like the MacOS?

3D Touch

For devices that already have 3D Touch, why not disable the Haptic Touch? It’s a small thing but much needed if you ask me and other who still use it. Apple deciding to remove the 3D Touch hardware is just disappointing. It was the as revolutionary as the mouse, click wheel, multi-touch. Remember the original iPhone Keynote?

:(

Garbage collection

iOS has been notoriously bad at keeping apps in memory since iOS 13. I have personally seen 100’s of threads on reddit and elsewhere about this same issue. iOS is literally loved because despite having less than 2 gigs of RAM, iOS 10 could keep almost 40 apps in memory. Well you can hardly keep 5 apps on older iPhones now.

A close all button would be nice too

What else do you think iOS needs to polish?

Leave your reply in the comments or on Twitter

I’m at @ssaig

Thanks for reading