My WWDC 2017 Wish List

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I love this time of year.

It’s WWDC season and I usually turn off notifications and non-essential phone calls and texts 1.

I fire up my 3rd Gen Apple TV 2, sit back on the couch and watch the keynote.

Most of the time I am excited about new features in iOS and the Mac, but last year I felt none of that excitement, nothing like iOS 8 and 9 and macOS Yosemite.

So this year, I am laying out not my predictions for WWDC but my WWDC 2017 wish list.

Pro iOS Features

I use my Mac for pretty much everything 3 but I am starting to look at my iPad Pro for work.

Currently, iOS on the iPad is hampered by lack of work-related features like a file system. My wish for iOS 11:

  • Access to a better filesystem: iCloud Drive on iOS 10 was a great sign for filesystem improvements for iOS. I’d like to see that continue. Improve the document picker or do away with it completely. A central repository for files across all apps [^4] would make working on iPad much easier.
  • Drag and Drop: I know that drag and drop is a mouse and trackpad/traditional desktop/laptop paradigm, but that shouldn’t be a reason to not implement it on iOS. The way Readdle hacked the filesystem to actually run a server between two apps to simiulate drag and drop is a pleasure to use. Drag and drop makes sense for finger navigation. I would love to see that come to iOS.
  • Native screen recording: I do a lot of screen recording for this blog. I’d like to not have to be tethered to a Mac to actually record the screen. Apple introduced ReplayKit in 2015 for livestreaming games. It makes sense that screen recording would be the next extension of this.
  • More intelligent photos app: Right now I am using Google Photos for searching my photos. iCloud Photos and Photo Library are still my preferred Photo organization tools, but Google is so far ahead in the AI game that their offering is 10x better than Apple’s current one. I can search for “MacBook” in Apple Photos and I barely get any results even though I have at least 20-30 MacBook photos. Same search in Google Photos returns most of those 20-30 photos. I know Apple doesn’t want to use the cloud to parse information from user data but I think it is hampering their AI efforts. Users really don’t care about privacy as evidenced by Google Photos 4.5 star rating with over 1k reviews.

macOS Improvements

macOS is really a mature OS. The only thing I’d like to see in macOS is relaxed sand boxing rules for the Mac App Store.

I barely get things from the Mac App Store. The Pro apps I need have already left the MAS. I’m sure there are more to follow.

I’d also like to see them rethink the Bluetooth module. Inconsistent, constantly disconnecting from my Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard [^5], Handoff and Airdrop unreliability. Either Apple’s devices aren’t ready for Bluetooth 4 or there’s something fundamentally wrong with Apple’s Bluetooth daemon or module.

snippets for Just Another Software Engineering Blog and videos for this blog. [^4]: Even cloud apps like Dropbox. [^5]: Getting this keyboard in a couple months and I can’t wait. Apple’s flat keyboard has given me some RSI issues after only a couple months of using it. Also, as a programmer, I need a better, sturdier keyboard.

Your WWDC 2017 Wish List?

What are you looking forward to this WWDC?

  1. Everyone except my aging family. ↩

  2. Upgrading my Apple TV in a couple months. I am also probably watching on my iMac. My TV is small and ancient. I’ll be upgrading it, too. ↩

  3. Moving my writing workflow to iPad has been fruitful until I need code ↩

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