It’s official: WWDC24 will kick off on June 10 with Apple’s biggest keynote of the year. As always, we’ll have a preview of what to expect from Apple’s operating system updates coming this fall. That’s iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS, and probably a few surprises along the way. With less than three months until the big event, he’ll be here before you know it.
iOS 18: Siri
It’s hard not to get excited when you learn that iOS 18 will be the most ambitious iOS update in a very long time. Apple’s big AI push looks awesome and has me wishing for all kinds of cool features in many apps.
But if I had to limit myself to just one feature, I would say: Siri. Siri may be a part of every Apple product, but it’s inexorably linked to the iPhone. After becoming the poster child for digital assistants with the iPhone 4s and somehow entering the collective consciousness as “AI” before “AI” was all the rage, it became something of a default for Apple. Despite some significant improvements over the past couple of years, it is often ridiculed online for not understanding users and giving strange results.
For Apple, Siri East AI and AI are Siri. It is, in a very literal sense, AI personified. Siri needs to make people say “wow” again, like it did when it was new. It must be something that goes beyond the current state of the art in telephone assistants. It’ll take a lot to change the minds of the millions of people who “abandoned” Siri after years of underperformance, but more than anything else, that’s what I want from iOS 18. —Jason Cross
iPadOS 18: multiple users
I’ve wanted this one for as long as Apple has been making iPads. Please let us have more than one user account on our tablets. Like Macs, iPads are common devices, and we’d like to be able to share ours with our spouses and kids without half the apps being tied to our Apple ID.
Since Apple split iOS and iPadOS, several users seemed like a no-brainer for the iPad, but every update came with a lock screen instead of an iPhone instead of a Mac login screen. I hope this year things will change. —Michael Simon
macOS 15: dynamic notch
Ok, I am pretty of course this one won’t happen, but I really wish it would. On our iPhones, Dynamic Island is a great way to quickly see things happening in the background. On our MacBooks, a Dynamic Notch would be a great way to multitask on our MacBooks.
It would work largely the same way: apps that do something in the background would fill the notch, with small interactive screens sliding down when clicked. It would take some getting used to and would obviously require considerable developer support, but hey, if someone at Apple thought Stage Manager was a good idea, it could surely work. —Michael Simon
tvOS 18: customizable TV application
Some of the things I want most on my Apple TV have nothing to do with new operating system features, but rather company policies. Like Netflix supporting the TV app, so it’s in my “Up Next” queue, or game streaming apps like Xbox Cloud Gaming or GeForce Now (Apple now allows them, but Apple’s policies company regarding the way games are sold still draws the ire of developers).
I do think, however, that the TV app itself has gotten worse over the last couple of years. With auto-playing trailers and a strong preference for streaming Apple TV+ content. I have to scroll through many categories of Apple-only content before I get to the “New Shows & Movies” section where stuff from other services is mixed in. As a platform, tvOS pushes Apple’s own services so hard that I’m surprised. was not specifically mentioned in the Justice Department’s recent antitrust lawsuit. —Jason Cross
My ideal tvOS change is to simply allow users to customize the TV app’s home screen, choosing which sections to show or hide and in what order. —Michael Simon
watchOS 11: Notes app
watchOS has undergone many changes over the years, culminating with its biggest overhaul yet in watchOS 10. So we’re not expecting many major changes this year, but we’re hoping for one: a Notes app. We’re not sure why Apple didn’t include a companion Notes app in watchOS 1 or why it hasn’t added one since, but the ability to speak and store notes on the go is sorely needed. —Michael Simon
visionOS 2: user-docked windows
The second version of visionOS must be a big change from the first. A true customizable home view, durable widgets, many more developer tools, faster/better hand tracking, shared spaces and virtual objects, and much more.
But if I had to pick just one thing, it would be the ability to anchor windows to the user rather than the space. Let me “lock” a window and let it follow me, floating in the same relative position around me as I move. —Michael Simon
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