An iPad Weather App. Finally.
Some thoughts on WWDC22…
This year’s WWDC was being at least somewhat touted as an important moment: people were being invited to Cupertino once again to see other human beings and interact with human beings that work at Apple. And, presumably, some of them would get to watch the keynote address in person. Like we used to do when the world was young and less infectious. And the rest of us would watch the livestream of this event at home in our pajamas as we’ve grown accustomed.
Except that’s not what actually happened. As it turns out, the people who went to the Space Ship HQ would watch the exact same pre-recorded keynote video as the rest of us.¹ Except they’d be cooking in the hot Cupertino sun. It’s like the people who go to a sporting event just to watch the game on the giant scoreboard. Only there was nothing else to watch. There were no people doing it live down below. Sure, some Apple execs came out to say a quick hello, but then it was: “roll the tape!”
Anyway, this is at least somewhat understandable. We are still in a pandemic. And Apple has gotten pretty good at putting these recorded keynotes together. Mind you, I think a “digital native” company like Snap has gotten even better at them, but Apple is pretty good. It’s hard to complain. Unless you’re sitting in the sun baking like a fish in the oven. Suckers.²
Tim Cook came out looking nice and cool and casual. Relaxed. Was his jacket perhaps the same shade of blue as the forthcoming new MacBook Air?! Regardless, I dug the lewk. His intro was unsurprisingly developer-heavy. Cook said there are now over 34 million Apple developers. He then quickly handed the reins over to Craig Federighi, who more so than ever, felt like the real MC of the show.
iOS 16
“The biggest update ever to the lockscreen” looks great. While Apple has spent years porting features from iOS over to macOS — and increasingly, vice versa — this is something new: Apple porting over Apple Watch features and paradigms to the iPhone. And it makes sense.³ Compared to what Google has been doing on the Android customizable design front, iOS was looking stale.
Widgets too! And the ability to swap between different lockscreens — again, just like Apple Watch. (And nice that these can be tied to certain Focus settings.) Notifications from the bottom. Live activities for obvious things like sports scores, but also less obvious things like tracking an Uber ride. Clever.
But perhaps the best new feature: the ability to “celebrate” album art. Myself and others have been clamoring for this for years. For a company that was once and ostensibly remains so focused on music, this was always weird and amiss. A legit finally.
Messages has entered the 2022 chat. Editing, unsend, and mark-as-unread. Two finallys in a row!
The new Dictation stuff seems solid — I use it all the time and the ability to move between voice and touch (mainly to edit) is most welcomed. I think this was also the only mention of Siri in the entire keynote.
Touch-and-hold to move subjects of images is amazing assuming it works as well as it did in the (again, staged) demo.
Apple moves into the Buy-Now-Pay-Later space without calling it that, instead calling it simply Apple Pay Later. Four equal payments over six weeks with no interest. Seems a bit specific until you hear that it works everywhere Apple Pay itself does. There’s no extra implementation needed. That’s a huge moment for the space given the increasing ubiquity of Apple Pay.
Apple Maps continue to look more like SimCity, in a good way, I think.
The sportsball updates seem nice albeit simple. No talk of NFL Direct Ticket… yet.
The ability to easily set up a new device for kids looks great. The iCloud Shared Photo Library makes sense, some features which Google Photos has had for a while, but nice to have it baked into the iOS Photos app.
The Safety Check features feel important and timely in the news. And part of that is because of Apple’s own AirTag faux pas (and subsequent over correction).
I still have a hard time getting excited about the smart home stuff, as I just don’t use any of it. Perhaps that’s why Apple is so happy and eager to work with their rivals on the Matter initiative/standard?
CarPlay is available on over 98% of cars in the US?! There’s clearly some fine print there. I must rent every single car that doesn’t have it. But it’s still going to be an impressive number on the integration side. The “sneak peek” of next gen CarPlay sure feels like it took learnings from Apple trying to make their own car or full carOS or both. If so, it’s good to see them getting some ROI out of a project which has clearly been a fiasco of fits and starts. “Vehicles will start to be announced late next year…” wait — is this the start of Apple’s actual car project?! They’re pre-announcing something for late 2023 when it’s not even mid 2022?! Is this their ROKR announcement?
WatchOS 9
The Riddler — er, Kevin Lynch (come on, they look the same!) — takes the stage to give some updates, none of which seem too big. Small aesthetic tweaks. The Metropolitan font/style looks slick. Banner notifications for Apple Watch are nice!
Craig — not that Craig — Bolton got most of the screen time to give us updates about running in a nice Aussie accent. Sleep updates. Heart health updates. Medication tracking. All great stuff, but this is a developer conference, right?
Also, Lynch is now in charge of the Car project, right? RIGHT? One last Apple Watch keynote hurrah?⁴ Where’s Jeff Williams?⁵
Mac
The Johns — John Ternus and Johnny Srouji — continue their ascent with the unveiling of the M2.⁶ The continued relentless focus on power performance. We’re still on 5nm (as expected), but it’s “second generation” whatever that means. Apparently it translates into 18% greater (CPU) performance (versus the M1). And these chips can now have up to 24GB of RAM. Up to a 10-core GPU (two more than the M1— a 35% improvement in performance).
The first Mac to get the M2 chip: as expected: the MacBook Air. The world’s best-selling laptop. And now it’s actually getting redesigned around the M2 chip. I have my small nits — no white option for the keyboard 😢 — but it unquestionably looks great. Goodbye tapered design. 20% less volume. 2.7 pounds — would have loved to see this drop down to the fighting weight of my old beloved 12” MacBook, which was closer to 2 pounds, but that’s another nit.⁷ It has a far larger 13.6” screen, after all. And MagSafe (which frees up one of the USB ports). And yes, a headphone jack. Profiles in courage.
It’s sort of interesting it’s still called the ‘MacBook Air’ given the iconic “wedge” look is gone. Apple easily could have called this simply the ‘MacBook’ again, but they undoubtedly feel like they made a mistake in doing that the last time. People seek out the Air. Again, the most-popular laptop.
A similar rationale also seems to indicate why we still have the 13” MacBook Pro with the “old” design, including the maligned TouchBar. It’s apparently Apple’s second most-popular laptop. Which highlights the importance of price points above almost everything else. And so it remains, now with M2 brains inside an Intel body.
Did I mention the new Air comes in a new deep dark blue color called ‘Midnight’? I still wish Apple would have more fun with the Air and give us some iMac-like colors, but this new color will do for now. Very slick. (And perhaps those other colors will come with time...)
A new power brick with two USB-C ports! 😍
macOS
Ventura! Not Ace. Not Robin. Just California. It’s a good name, I think?
I’m less optimistic about the marquee Stage Manager feature which seems… sort of complicated? It’s just a way for people to not have to use Minimize-to-Dock/Mission Control/Spaces? But it’s one of those things where you’ll have to use it to see how it works. The real reveal is that files will no longer have to be shoved into grid mode as they were before. You can now make your desktop as cluttered as you’d like, apparently!
Spotlight on iOS seems great — and something a little weird to highlight in the macOS section?
Mail updates! To take the app into 2005.
The Shared Tab Groups element of Safari was mentioned so briefly that it almost doesn’t feel like Apple itself is sold on it? Passkeys seems like a much bigger idea — logins that can’t be phished or leaked. But as the company made clear right there in keynote, “the transition away from passwords will be a journey.”
Next up, Apple made the 400th pitch to game developers to develop for Mac.
Continuity Camera is both cool and yet fairly embarrassing for Apple. Obviously you should not have to use your iPhone camera to give yourself the best possible camera while sitting at your Mac.⁸ Especially if that Mac happens to be using a display which costs $1,600. Using a third-party stand (as Apple doesn’t offer a first-party one — “working with Belkin”) is just salt in the wound. On the other hand, “Desk View” is the type of thing that seems impossible. Optical magic.
And with that, Craig — again, star of the show — literally runs off, like Tom Cruise, silver locks flowing, to…
iPadOS
He kicks off with a lot of talk about how macOS and iPadOS continue to get closer together. Obviously. But then — WEATHER FOR IPAD. Sweet Jesus finally. It was utterly ridiculous that Apple allowed a core feature of iPadOS to be owned and monetized by the shitty Weather Channel website. No longer.
Collaboration seems powerful. FreeForm seems fun/useful. A newsfeed for Game Center — yay? “Desktop-class apps” is a humorously direct name as it implies that iPad apps haven’t been good enough to date (true, of course).
The ability to change the resolution of iPad is… a choice. As is virtual memory swap. Both remind me of… Windows machines circa 1998.
Stage Manager clearly makes more sense for the iPad than it does for macOS. OVERLAPPING WINDOWS. iPad: Windows Edition! I do wonder if an iPad + an external display is now good enough to be a “desktop-class” computer.
Wrap
And that’s that. Tim is back — in the foyer — 1 hour and 45 minutes in.
Overall, it felt like a good enough keynote with some weird filler choices and moments. The immediate stars of the show would appear to be the iOS 16 lock screen and the new M2 MacBook Air. But you shouldn’t overlook Apple’s Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) play, as it would seem to be yet another step towards Apple becoming a full on financial institution. A bank. And while Apple talked surprisingly little today about AR, it’s clearly going to be under the hood in a bunch of the software updates as we continue to build towards what’s next.
Might WWDC23 be all about realityOS? Will it actually fully take place in actual reality this time? Would that be ironic? Do virtual suns burn as hot? Future’s so bright you need to wear AR/VR ski goggles.
¹ I think those of us watching at home were on slight tape-delay? The tweets from the audience seemed to roll in faster than I was seeing the action on screen. Maybe my connection was slightly delayed?
² Yes, of course I wish I was there. Still have not been to the Space Ship! Just have seen it from afar.
³ Especially if the next iPhone has an always-on screen as the Apple Watch does (and many Android phones have for years).
⁴ Maybe that plus the fact that the iPhone is borrowing so heavily from Apple Watch is why it got some stage time for minor updates. I mean, poor tvOS!
⁵ It might be telling if Williams is on stage sans Lynch to unveil the next hardware iteration of Apple Watch in the fall…
⁶ Here’s Johnnie! (No sign of Jony, of course.)
⁷ One that also may be resolved next year! But it might be in the form of a MacBook Pro?!
⁸ Yes, yes, many iPhones cost more than many Macs. Maybe just relaunch the old school (and beautiful) iSight camera?
