With less than 5 hours to go, here are my final predictions for what we will see unveiled at WWDC 2018.
tvOS 12
Who knows what will be added to tvOS this year. Last year all that was announced was that Amazon Prime was launching later in the year. Everything is up for grabs here.
watchOS 5
I’m expecting new APIs for developers such as audio streaming over cellular, opening the game up to 3rd-party apps such as Spotify. New watch faces are a given, and maybe 2018 will be the year of 3rd-party watch faces in watchOS. This is a possibility seeing as a reference to this was found buried in iOS code a while back, and it’s a feature people have been asking for since Apple Watch launched in 2015.
macOS 10.14 Mojave
Performance and stability will be the focus of macOS 10.14, especially on older hardware. A leaked screenshot from a few days ago showed off a system-wide dark mode, the Apple News app making its way to the Mac and a redesigned Xcode 10. There will also be a push towards rejuvenating the Mac App Store, bringing it more in-line with the iOS App Store redesign from last year, and preparing it ahead of cross-platform apps in Fall 2019.
The name Mojave comes from Apple’s recent trademark filings for the name, and the aforementioned leaked screenshots depicted the OS sporting a desert desktop background.
As long as macOS gets more stable and reliable, and there is some sign of future development, i.e. the Mac App Store being prepared for new cross-platform apps, then Apple would be sending a strong signal that the Mac is by no means dead. Especially with the fabled 2019 Mac Pro launching next year.
iOS 12
Just like macOS, the focus here will be performance and stability, with most killer features that were due this year being pushed back to 2019. There will be some new introductions however, including improved parental controls, coupled with Apple’s equivalent of Google’s ‘digital wellbeing’ feature; designed to help us spend less time on our devices, a redesigned notification system getting its first major overhaul since iOS 5 in 2011, an always-on minimal OLED lock screen for iPhone X, and of course, ARKit 2.0.
ARKit 2.0 will introduce new features such as support for 2 devices seeing the same object at the same time. Apple is really pushing AR development and Tim Cook loves it. I’m sure this is all in preparation for the AR headset launching in 2020.
iOS 12 will probably appear a bit lacklustre on the surface, but it’s all about slowing development down and making the OS more stable. If you remember when Jony Ive hinted that by September 2019 the iPhone X software experience could be completely different from what it was at launch, I reckon he was referring to the iOS redesign which has now been shelved for next year.
HomePod
HomePod will get updated to iOS 12 too, hopefully bringing improvements and new capabilities to Siri.
Hardware announcements
Hardware announcements will be minimal if any. The new iPad Pro models will not be announced until the Fall. There will be a refresh to the MacBook line, further showing Apple’s commitment to the Mac. MacBook Pro will get silent keyboard upgrades and a 6-Core i7 model with 32GB RAM.
Wildcard: This keynote will see the unveiling of the Retina MacBook Air replacement, but it won’t ship until Q3 2018.
:))