What to Expect at WWDC 2021: iOS 15, macOS 12, watchOS 8, New MacBook Pro?

[donguevas]

Here are the few things I would like:

• Add back the calculator widget for macOS (I used that all the time, and find it annoying to open up a calculator app for simple calculations; yes, I understand I can do it in Spotlight, but the widget was so useful
• Provide sidecar capability for Mac screens; I purchased a 2020 iMac as an upgrade for a 2011 iMac, and I really miss the Target Display Mode functionality. Having a work MBP that I could just plug into the iMac and use as a screen was a huge benefit! I miss that greatly, and am running some crazy hack by booting off the work MBP as a external HD and it sort-of-works but has various issues. Having sidecar for any macOS system would be amazing, or even just bringing back the hardware capability in large iMacs would be great—I'd purchase a new one if TDM came back.

Calculator. Very few people used the widget.

1.Add it to open on start up
2.Keep it in the dock
3.Create a keyboard shortcut.

TDM was removed

 

[Tech198]

Instead of all these alerting the user to the potentially privacy bypassing/tracking, why not just do it properly in the first place?

As Apple should be doing seeing which violate app store policies before allowing them onto the store,, other than wait, then give helpful info to users of which app tracks you.. as "the same thing"

because it's not,

Privacy alerts are good, but its not a solution, its a workaround to the failure Apple cannot do. Perhaps they cannot do it due to the volume, so its best to push that onto users decisions.. When these make it into iOS as user have to decide, its always flags head to the likes of Facebook, which would otherwise not know if Apple had done it on the store.

 

[Momof2.1107]

Although I buy a phone almost every year, I am not a phone junkie in the sense that I live on my phone. As such, I am not overly frustrated with the state of iOS, although there are specific changes I would like to see. The same goes for iPadOS and MacOS.

I live on my phone and overall iOS doesn’t bother me. I usually don’t have the many issues that some people seem to have or either I don’t pay attention wether I’m experiencing the same issue.

 

[EvanBatter]

Did you notice the clues provided by Apple?
Have a look at the glasses of the women on the left. You'll see the UTF-16 codes for "Sleeping Face", "Computer" and "Knife and Fork".
Again iMessage bubbles in the eyes of the woman in the middle and a Terminal-icon in the eyes of the man on the right. As we have heard about food-tracking, sleep-options and iMessage improvements, I dont know what could be meant with the computer (maybe a new M1/2), or with the Terminal-icon (maybe shell-support on iPadOS?)

Your thoughts?

 

[MrGunny94]

If new macbook pros are actually delayed until Dec/Jan I'm going to lose my mind. The 16" would be beyond 2 years old at that point.

I guess maybe it would be worth it if it means they move to the A15-based M2 variant with more single core performance rather than just scaling up the M1.

Would be an especially tough decision if they did something like:

July: 16" gets M1 10-core variant only, basic LED, basic wi-fi 6
Dec-Jan: 16" gets M2 10-core variant, mini-LED. Maybe wi-fi 6e/6ghz. That may be worth waiting for.

The biggest problem is that it has been 2 years of suffering lol

 

[kerr]

Would love for a KeyNote to be done with memojis of Tim and the Apple crew.

 

[calstanford]

I for one can't wait for all those 16GB RAM iPad Pro owners to return theirs right after WWDC (30-day window) when they find out all they're getting is some stupid homescreen widgets and some easier multitasking.

 

[polyphenol]

I for one can't wait for all those 16GB RAM iPad Pro owners to return theirs right after WWDC (30-day window) when they find out all they're getting is some stupid homescreen widgets and some easier multitasking.

Which wouldn't help much if they actually need 1 or 2TB of storage. As opposed to buying a 1 or 2TB model simply to get 16GB memory.

 

[Psychicbob]

I’d be astonished if Apple produced a gpu that could rival the 4th fastest consumer card that nvidia produce - would be exactly the sort of disruption that that segment needs though.

It might mean eGPUs for the M series are definitely not going to be catered for by Apple. There’d be no need.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I live on my phone and overall iOS doesn’t bother me. I usually don’t have the many issues that some people seem to have or either I don’t pay attention wether I’m experiencing the same issue.

That makes sense. If I start seeing a problem is when I start looking to see if it's just me or are there others on MR as well.

 

[TimFL1]

I don’t think we’ll see macOS 12 just yet. I think they’re going to ride 11 a little longer than usual while the transition is completing. But I’d be happy to be wrong.

Apple has referenced iOS 15 and macOS 12 already in their open source WebKit repository.

 

[TimFL1]

I for one can't wait for all those 16GB RAM iPad Pro owners to return theirs right after WWDC (30-day window) when they find out all they're getting is some stupid homescreen widgets and some easier multitasking.

It‘s a 14 days window now, so probably none of said owners will return theirs.

 

[George Dawes]

Will there be new iPhones ?

 

[Fomalhaut]

If new macbook pros are actually delayed until Dec/Jan I'm going to lose my mind. The 16" would be beyond 2 years old at that point.

I guess maybe it would be worth it if it means they move to the A15-based M2 variant with more single core performance rather than just scaling up the M1.

Would be an especially tough decision if they did something like:

July: 16" gets M1 10-core variant only, basic LED, basic wi-fi 6
Dec-Jan: 16" gets M2 10-core variant, mini-LED. Maybe wi-fi 6e/6ghz. That may be worth waiting for.

I'm happy to wait for a new core microarchitecture (aka "M2") if the July release is "only" a scaled-up M1. It may take longer than 6 months though. Hopefully we will be pleasantly surprised by an announcement at WWDC.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Will there be new iPhones ?

At WWDC? Unlikely. Expected Sep/Oct 21.

 

[DMG35]

I really hope we get new MacBook Pro's today. While I really like my 13" M1 I'm desperate to go back to a 16" powerhouse.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Did you notice the clues provided by Apple?
Have a look at the glasses of the women on the left. You'll see the UTF-16 codes for "Sleeping Face", "Computer" and "Knife and Fork".
Again iMessage bubbles in the eyes of the woman in the middle and a Terminal-icon in the eyes of the man on the right. As we have heard about food-tracking, sleep-options and iMessage improvements, I dont know what could be meant with the computer (maybe a new M1/2), or with the Terminal-icon (maybe shell-support on iPadOS?)

Your thoughts?

Eat. Code. Sleep.

 

[seek3r]

Did you notice the clues provided by Apple?
Have a look at the glasses of the women on the left. You'll see the UTF-16 codes for "Sleeping Face", "Computer" and "Knife and Fork".
Again iMessage bubbles in the eyes of the woman in the middle and a Terminal-icon in the eyes of the man on the right. As we have heard about food-tracking, sleep-options and iMessage improvements, I dont know what could be meant with the computer (maybe a new M1/2), or with the Terminal-icon (maybe shell-support on iPadOS?)

Your thoughts?

Shell support on iPad is doubtful, but if it happened I’d be ecstatic, might sway me back into the “buy” camp for a new iPP!

 

[sdz]

ublock origin coming to Safari?? 😁 Wake me up when that happens.

 

[Apple_Robert]

ublock origin coming to Safari?? 😁 Wake me up when that happens.

There will be no one left alive. lol

 

[TriBruin]

I can see 11 being the last Intel version, with 12 being AS-only. It would make sense as to why they would jump to 12 so early. (We are only on 11.4 right now.)

Not a chance and would kill Apple with many Enterprise and Educational customers. For many reasons many of those customers can't or won't move to AS quite yet.

 

[Stephen.R]

I can see 11 being the last Intel version, with 12 being AS-only. It would make sense as to why they would jump to 12 so early. (We are only on 11.4 right now.)

As of macOS 11, Apple has seemingly dropped it's ridiculous "no major version changes ever" versioning system.

So 11.4 is not 'equivalent' to 10.4 in terms of the type of release, it's 'equivalent' to 10.4.4.

When they transitioned to Intel, 10.4 (Tiger) was the first (public) version to support Intel CPUs. It was released about 8 months before the first Intel Mac.

The following release, 10.5 (Leopard) was released 2 1/2 years after tiger, or 1 year 10 months after the first Intel Macs, or 1 year, 2 months after the PPC Mac was replaced by an Intel equivalent for sale, and was the final version that supported PPC Macs - but it was 'current' until August 2009 - a full three years since the last Mac to transition to Intel was released.



There is essentially zero chance Apple will not support Intel Macs with macOS 12, unless they also make a return to their much saner, 2-3 year major OS release schedule.

If macOS 11 is 'current' (not just receiving security updates, I mean the current release version) for 2 or 3 years from it's release date (i.e. if macOS 12 is released in 2022 or 2023) then sure, macOS 11 may well be the last macOS to support Intel Macs.

 

[Stephen.R]

I’ve got an idea…..the keynote is about 30 seconds. Craig comes out and says we are doing a snow leopard year. No new features. We are gonna fix everything we’ve gimped for the last two years. You’re welcome……one can dream.

In all seriousness though this just restarts the cycle of massive amounts of bugs come fall before they iron half of them out by spring 2022. It’s getting old.

The funny thing about this is - when they did a "snow leopard year" it wasn't even a 'year'. They were doing macOS releases every two years back then, and still felt it was necessary to 'stabilise' things.


I'd be very happy if they found a middle ground between their chaotic current schedule and their versioning system.

Give us a new major family of releases (iOS, iPadOS, macOS) say every two or three years, with feature improvements in dot releases (i.e. a 12.1) as they're 'ready' throughout the in between years.

A new 'major' version is not justified every 12 months, and realistically we're at the point where features need refinement, rather than ground breaking new features that drastically affect the entire OS and require a new version.

Conversely, the previous ridiculous naming scheme of never doing a new major version was just ridiculous.

 

[jonnysods]

I can't help but feel all these headlines are pretty much spoiler alerts for what is to come. I know they are just rumors, but I would like to be slightly surprised on Monday by one thing. It really is what people want from the event though, but if everything that is revealed is something that I previously read about, that's going to be a bummer.

I mean we do know a few things, and can predict the pattern of WWDC keynote but I feel there have been less leaked things this year vs other years.

I think they always let us down a little though as our expectations are so high.

 

[jonnysods]

Yeah, and Reddit is pretty much the same. A lot of the headlines are also coming from "legit" sources like Bloomberg too, even if they are just leaks. I mean Monday is supposed to be Apple's Super Bowl and I have a feeling people will see it as a "dud".

I don’t know why they think it’s the super bowl - it’s primarily a developer focused event. I think the spring and fall keynotes are big. WWDC does give us a few ideas on direction things could head though