Later today Apples World Wide Developers Conference will kick off with the traditional Keynote Speech. Later in the presentation Apple will more than likely announce iOS 8 and the dot 10 iteration of OS X. For many Apple geeks this is an exciting time. After months of speculation we will finally have an idea what our devices will look like come September, and we may even get hints at significant new products. For Developers, this is so much more. Later today we will have builds of OSX and iOS that let us do more, do it better and do new things. This translates into cool new Apps in a very few months time.
With the Keynote so close I thought we thought we would be desperately original and put together a top list of what I hope to see hope and expect to see today. So in accending order of want (8 = most wanted);
- A toning down of the worst excesses of the iOS 7 visual language.
- A new direction for Apple TV. I have no idea what this is, but the competition is pulling away. Apple needs to catch up.
- Improvements to iTunes Connect. So much can be done here. The purchase of Test Flight might indicate that Apple wants to make Beta testing slightly less unpleasant.
- Airdrop between iOS and Mac. With Craig Federighi leading both OSX and iOS efforts, this has to be a no brainer and would actually make the feature useful.
- More iBeacon and Mesh networking. These are such interesting areas. It needs improving by Apple and exploring by developers.
- iOS Inter-app data sharing, so I can work on the same document in a number of apps. This would be a huge step on the road to making iOS a platform for real work. Hopefully the much rumoured health book and smart home hubs auger well for the implementation of this much needed capability.
- OSX re-design to match the iOS 7/8. This will be interesting. Apples approach of having separate platforms for touch and for Click is the right one at the moment. However, the OS's have been moving closer and closer together in terms in interaction and visual design. iOS 7, moved them apart. The next version is likely to rectify that. Hopefully without damaging the utility of the OS.
- An iWatch. Fitness Trackers are an interesting concept as are Smart Watches. No one has done either right yet and no one has integrated the two properly yet. However, the chances are small of this appearing