What to Expect at WWDC 2020: New iMac, Custom Arm-Based Chip Unveiling, iOS 14, macOS 10.16, and More

[MacHiavelli]

When Apple transitioned to Intel, the process took four years to complete.

This time, things are very different. Apple already has years of experience with Arm chips, and it has a huge Arm instal-base to reference and build on.

I think the transition to Arm will be brutally swift: 12-18 months.

 

[Johnny907]

Yay! The correct capitalisation of Arm.

This was a typo, right? The correct capitalization would be ARM, not Arm, as it stands for Advanced RISC Machine.

 

[swingerofbirch]

macOS 10.16 will rename the Finder to Files and will have a new "For You" section!

 

[CarlJ]

What I’d like to see:

• A stability pass for macOS, so I’d be willing to touch it with a ten foot pole. Call it “macOS Avalon”.
• Bug fixes for iOS. Tons of little things to fix.
• More refinements to cursor positioning on iOS - too often it’s too damn “helpful”, like being unwilling to let me drop the cursor in the middle of a word (“no, I know you touched the middle of this ten character word, but let me help you by putting the cursor at the beginning or end of the word”), ideally including the return of the magnifying glass (make it an accessibility toggle option) - too often the place I want to position the cursor is obscured under my finger - move the finger a little for a better look and the cursor moves to another line. Or it jumps a little bit when you let go, necessitating starting over. Often I just give up and select and retype the entire word, because it ends up being less work than fighting the text input system to fix one wrong letter in the middle of a word.
• Also the text selection code can be damnably perverse at times, “helpfully” extending selections beyond what you were trying to select, and then refusing to select less. Particularly offensive is a behavior where double tapping to select a word will select more than one word, rendering a fundamental capability completely useless. Also, I want a gesture, and an iPad keyboard button (next to undo/redo/paste) for “Select All”.
• Related, I’d like text transformations in the context menu you get when text is selected - things like converting the selection to uppercase, lowercase, or title case. Ideally with an API for user-added transformations. I’d write a bunch of transformations for myself (like sorting lines of text in the range in various ways, looking up included URLs and adding their titles in markdown format, etc.)
• Some sort of support for widgets on the home screen would be nice. Think in terms of keeping the grid, but having an option to enable specific apps to have actively drawn icons, that could be resized to cover 1x2, or 1x3, or 2x2 (etc) normal grid spaces, so they could display updating information. This would be something where the app would start out with the usual 1x1 static icon when installed, and then it’d prompt you to allow it to show you a (possible larger) active icon, and you’d grant it permission just the same way you grant permissions for camera use or push notifications.
• An official and well-supported WeatherKit API for DarkSky, now that they’ve bought it. It had a lovely RESTful JSON interface before. I’d settle for something that gave the same data, but via a Swift API.
• Huge improvements to Siri, so that she can more completely understand sentence structure, and so that she can remember context from one sentence to the next, so we can carry on a rudimentary conversation. As well as some meta syntax - for instance, I want an editing mode, so if Siri is steadfastly misunderstanding, say, a restaurant name, I can say, “let me spell that for you” and then proceed to spell the name.
• I’d like to see AirTags released. If they’re as cute as the Mentos renders, I’d buy a couple to play with. They seem like they’d be fantastically useful for people prone to losing things.
• An Apple TV refresh. Make it even faster and more capable.
• Give me an updated AppleTV remote with the same control layout, but a more ergonomic chassis, so don’t have to put it in an ill-fitting third-party case to make it sufficiently easy to hold and orient in the hand. Hell, they could keep the remote the same if they sold a fantastic first-party case for it that made it more grippy and rounder (like the long since discontinued Griffin SurvivorPlay case, but up to Apple’s high standards).
• HomePod Home Theater. Make a HomePod center channel speaker, or HomePod SoundBar, and, ideally some HomePod Mini speakers that can be used for surround channels (bonus points if they have upwards firing drivers for Atmos). Make them have a very good persistent connection to the Apple TV, or, ideally, an HDMI connection that supports HDMI-ARC (like Sonos does), so any sound that your TV gets from other sources (broadcast, cable box, BluRay, game console) comes automatically through the HomePod Home Theater.
• Heck, maybe combine HomePod Home Theater (whether center channel or sound bar format) with an (updated more powerful) Apple TV, so that the single HDMI connection can send the built-in Apple TV’s content to your TV, and channel all TV sound to/through the HomePod Home Theater. As well as doing all the other HomePod things.
• Release an ARM Mac Developer’s kit. I think Gruber is right and this won’t be a consumer-facing machine, it’ll be for developers only (when they transitioned to Intel, the developer machines were intentionally boring and leased, not sold). I suspect that eventually - not right away, but once they get portable power use and sleep/wake completely fleshed out (lest people start predicting performance of consumer ARM laptops from this) - they may make it possible (for developers only) to run macOS ARM on an iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard.
• I’d like to see a WatchFaceKit for watchOS. I’m not sure if I’d buy any third party faces, but I’d like to write a few for my own use.

 

[JLOAKS]

The very first front-facing iMac redesign since October of 2009.

See you in 2031 after this.

 

[-DMN-]

I think we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. I’d be surprised if we see much more than OS updates.

Agreeded

 

[The Game 161]

Just hope we see some good features

 

[aleni]

Honestly the iMac mockup looks so lazy. It looks like a big ass ipad pro with a stand. I much prefer the iMac to keep the chin, but a much smaller one with a black apple logo and front facing high quality speakers on it.

 

[CarlJ]

I think we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. I’d be surprised if we see much more than OS updates.

Hardware we are likely to see at WWDC:

• a new iMac, because it’s useful to developers - probably not MBPs because they’ve already had semi-recent updates.
• AirTags - because they can be immediately useful to consumers, but developer can also (perhaps?) program against them.

Most of the other hardware being bandied about (including by me) is unlikely to be announced during the keynote. Possibly in announcements alongside WWDC, but not during the keynote.

 

[Warped9]

I am really interested to see a new iMac and what they do with it. I have a mid 2011 I’ve upgraded with an i7, 32GB RAM and 500GB SSD which runs really well, but I’m stuck at High Sierra. It was that or spend $3300 CAN on a current customized iMac. Something that looks like an oversized iPad Pro, maybe with a bit more interesting design, but seriously upgraded even at the entry level might convince me to switch. And I would be happy with a 23in. display.

I would prefer to have DIY upgradable RAM. I could get by with 256 SSD, but 500 or so would be better. Also multiple ports with both USB-C and USB-A would be appreciated by a broad range of customers.

The current refreshed MacBook Air is now what and priced where it should have been when it was introduced a few years ago. Hopefully a new iMac will be that from the start.

 

[Dave245]

I’m really looking forward to seeing the new redesigned iMac (IF they announce it).

 

[Spectrum]

Is the new iMac going to have a wonky screen then?...interesting design language...

 

[Zdigital2015]

As I’ve said in other threads, I’m pretty sure the 23” iMac is going to be an A13Z-based Developer Transition Kit that no one but certified devs will be able to buy. There is going to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on Monday.

EDIT: I meant an A12Z, sorry...needed more coffee before I commented.

 

[nt5672]

I'd like to hear that AAPL has Kicked Off work on a 2nd iOS App Store, "one for Adults" that does NOT include ANY Game Apps & does NOT include Apple Arcade !

And of course, NO Little Kids apps !

If that doesn't happen, I'd like to see AAPL add "Filters" to the iOS App Store App section of the Settings app:

[specifically, three switches]

1.) NO Game Apps

2.) NO Apple Arcade

3.) NO Little Kid Apps

Not going to happen. Apple target demographic is not adults. I'm talking about behavior, not physical age.

 

[JosephAW]

I hope MS is paying attention to the ARM switchover. This is their chance to win over Mac users back over to Windows if Apple drops x86 support.
Would be a good time to release something like Windows 11 GUI built on a Unix foundation on x86.

 

[mscice]

ARM cpu from apple will blow intel out of the water ... looking forward to ARM

Apple will make most powerful machines with having full control over
- OS
- hardware

 

[alex2792]

iOS 14, MacOS 10.16, ARM Macs and an antitrust investigation.
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How much time are they going to spend on AR that 1% of their base uses?

AR without the glasses is utterly pointless, not sure why Apple makes such a big deal of something that’s nothing more than a novelty.

 

[Scottsdale]

I just bought a high-ish spec 16” to last me several years primarily because of this. If the Mac loses x86 VM capabilities I’ll be jumping back to Windows.
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So Apple’s answer to revamping the aging home screen will be to give us probably one of the only few options that could actually be worse and more dull?

I assume Apple will continue selling the final 16” MacBook Pro w/Intel CPUs in two configurations for a long time after this transition starts. Just like Apple did with the 2012 pre Retina MBP or the 2015 MBP.
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It seems highly likely that we'll see a new Apple TV. Jon Prosser (who I find annoying but has had a pretty solid track record) suggested that it has been ready to go for the last couple months or more. It might not be a significant update, but a welcome one considering that the current version is almost 3 years old!

Is it going to be new just for the sake of newness? I like the fact the AppleTV 4K has had staying power!
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Could the new iMac be an ARM machine to be added to the current Intel-powered lineup?

The existing 21.5” and 27” iMacs would get internal upgrades (SSD instead of fusion, processor bumps) so as to get one more sales year out of them, also leaving them as a safe and known option that would appeal to most consumer buyers.

The new 23” ARM model with the new physical design would serve as a soft launch for the ARM range and, being a single model, wouldn’t immediately threaten sales on the existing product line. It would, however, put the new architecture physically into the hands of the Mac developer community, so they could really go to work building the Mac/ARM software future. No doubt some early-adopter private buyers would also pick one up but devs would be the real target market for this model.

Further, having such a single ARM model out there would also allow any bugs or deficiencies in the design (physical or logical) to surface and be fixed before the new architecture was rolled out en-masse 10-12 months later.

So, a single ARM iMac now, expanding to a full range (totally replacing the Intel machines) some time early-mid next year.

I’d even hazard that a 12” ARM MacBook might appear later this year to serve the same ‘pathfinder’ function in the laptop lines.

I have pitched the idea of a dual processor setup. ARM and Intel. It would really make sense for developers in a new iMac to test apps and etc. Give the capability to autoswitch between Intel and ARM just like Apple does GPU versus on chip graphics switching. I know people think it’s too much, but the ARM CPU wouldn’t hardly need any power and it would save so much power when the Intel CPU goes into a sleep state. I still think it makes sense in MacBooks too at least for the next several years.

 

[Moonjumper]

This was a typo, right? The correct capitalization would be ARM, not Arm, as it stands for Advanced RISC Machine.

No. Arm is correct according to Arm Limited. The name was originally an abbreviation, but is now a noun.

https://www.arm.com/company/policies/trademarks/guidelines-trademarks

 

[ipedro]

I think the transition to Arm will be brutally swift: 12-18 months.

Was that a pun? 👀

I do agree that the transition will be faster than Intel, given that where Apple was then (a total niche, minuscule market share) and where Apple is now (market leader with iOS, Mac far more widespread), given how so many major apps required complete rewrites while today major apps like Adobe’s suite have already started transitioning to ARM via iOS/iPadOS.

I think that the transition will be different:

For consumer Macs, it’ll be nearly instantaneous. I can even see an ARM Mac being introduced right away since it’ll work with many apps out of the box. For many developers, it’ll be a flick of a switch in Xcode.

For pro computers, like the Mac Pro and probably the MacBookPro, I can see both ARM and x86 chips side by side on the same motherboard for years to come. Mac Pro users will always have to install Windows for industrial applications that will never make Mac versions.

 

[bn-7bc]

I just bought a 16 inch MBP. What's the main difference between Arm and Intel processors? I'm completely ignorant when it comes to that. I will be pretty bummed if they release a new 16 inch MBP with them and it's significantly more powerful than the one I just bought though.

The ISA for one, CISC vs RISC

 

[Lepton]

I think we gat a new 27" iMac, a 13" laptop with ARM CPU for developers only, and the AirTags. Remember in the PowerPC conversion developers got a special computer to test on? Had to turn it in afterward..

 

[bn-7bc]

It's just a different architecture. Meaning binary (compiled) code is not compatible between x86 and ARM.

It doesn't necessarily mean it'll be faster or slower, the only sure thing is that if ARM Macs still run x86 code it will run slower, through emulation. Apps will have to be recompiled for ARM to run at a decent speed.

And no more Boot Camp or running Windows or Linux virtual machines on Macs. (Maybe Linux ARM VMs.. but I doubt we would have good VM capabilities for some time.)

It might be possible to run an Arm version of linux, tho drivers might be a problem

 

[cmaier]

This was a typo, right? The correct capitalization would be ARM, not Arm, as it stands for Advanced RISC Machine.

Nope. That used to be correct, but they changed their name/logo.

 

[bn-7bc]

Will be interesting to see what is featured. I hope iOS 14 at least has one killer feature but I understand the need for stability.

personally I hope the rumor about finnaly beeing able to set default apps in ios/ipad os is true, that is the one thing that annoys me on er regular basis