In less than a week from now, Apple’s annual developer conference — WWDC — takes place in San Jose, California from June 5-9. The event was previously held at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, but this year around, Apple is returning to San Jose to hold its 28th developer conference. While WWDC was previously used by Apple to unveil new hardware and software, in recent years, Apple has solely used the event for unveiling new versions of iOS, tvOS, macOS, and watchOS.
With the iPhone 8 launching later this year on the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, expectations from WWDC this year are pretty high as well. After all, iOS will also be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. While previous iOS releases have been feature-packed in their own right, iOS 11 will release at a time when AI and deep machine learning are all the hype. It’s not just iOS, Apple is also expected to announce new versions of tvOS, macOS, watchOS, and if rumors are to be believed, an Amazon Echo-like Siri speaker as well. So before WWDC starts next week, here’s a quick rumor roundup of all the announcements that Apple is expected to make next week.
iOS 11
Like with every year, the unveiling of iOS 11 is going to be the highlight of this year’s WWDC as well. Apple last gave iOS a major visual overhaul in 2014 with iOS 7. Since then, while the company has tweaked the UI of certain aspects of the OS, it now looks a bit dated. With Apple giving its iPhone lineup a complete overhaul this year with the iPhone 8, it would be the perfect time for the company to give iOS 11 a major refresh as well. More specifically, Apple should look at giving Springboard — the iOS home screen/launcher — a complete revamp since it now feels terribly dated. A revamp of the notification center will also be a welcome addition since even after all these years, managing notifications on iOS is painfully broken.
Despite the interest and hype surrounding iOS 11, rumors have only given us hints at what to expect from the OS. One leak pointed to the OS bringing FaceTime Group calling, which would make one of the most underrated features of iOS even better. Apple is also expected to give the Apple Music app in iOS 11 another redesign as it works on bringing video content to its music streaming service. The next version of iOS should also bring some iPad-specific features much like iOS 9. However, there are no leaks or rumors surrounding them — apart from multi-user support — so it’s anyone’s guess at this point as to what improvements Apple will be debuting with iOS 11 for the iPad. Among other things, Apple is also expected to debut a new system-wide Dark mode in iOS and give its notification system a revamp to make it more functional.
With Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa rapidly improving, a huge focus of iOS 11 is going to be around Siri. Apple’s virtual assistant lags behind the competition in many ways and its high time Apple pulls up its socks and gets in the game. Among the rumored features, Siri is expected to gain better integration with watchOS, tvOS, and iCloud. In addition, Siri will also learn the habit of an individual and start offering them personalised results and suggestions based on it, and unlike Google, Apple will achieve this without sending an ounce of user data back to the cloud.
tvOS and watchOS
Alongside iOS 11, Apple will also be unveiling the next major release of tvOS and watchOS. Similar to iOS 11, much of what the next version of tvOS and watchOS will offer is still under wraps. A few unverified rumors do point to Apple bringing Picture-in-Picture and multi-user support to tvOS 11. As for watchOS 4, it should introduce new APIs that will allow developers to create more powerful apps for the Apple Watch.
macOS
A few years ago, Apple switched to a yearly release cycle for macOS that has led to the OS receiving regular though minor updates. With macOS Sierra focusing largely on under the hood improvements and Siri, it is expected that macOS 10.13 will debut with some major new features. At this point, it’s already given with macOS 10.13, Apple will transition to APFS, which first debuted in beta form on macOS 10.12 Sierra last year. Apple already made the switch to its new file system on iOS with the release of iOS 10.3 earlier this year.
As I mentioned earlier, we have only seen Apple unveil a newer version of its software offerings at WWDC. This time around though, the company is expected to make some hardware related announcements as well albeit minor in nature.
MacBook with Kaby Lake Processors
Apple is expected to announce a minor new refresh for its MacBook lineup with faster and more power efficient Kaby Lake processors. While rumors point to Intel’s Kaby Lake processors making their way into the 12-inch MacBook and the MacBook Pro lineup, the delay in shipment for only the 15-inch MacBook Pro indicates that Apple might not make the Kaby Lake switch across its entire MacBook lineup.
Siri-powered Smart Speaker
With Google Home and Amazon Echo, both companies have managed to take over the living room of many customers in the US. Powered by Google Assitant and Alexa respectively, smart speakers from Google and Amazon let users control their smart devices around them, check their schedule, ask common questions, check the weather outside, and more. Apple is the only major tech company that despite having its own virtual assistant, Siri, has still not taken part in this battle. However, rumors are rife that the company is looking forward to launching a smart Siri-powered speaker of its own at WWDC.
Apple has not really used WWDC to launch a major hardware in years, and there’s still no clarity as to how far in the company is with the development of its Siri-powered Smart speaker. Famed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities believes that there is an “over 50 percent chance” of the speaker debuting at WWDC 2017.
As things stand right now with Siri, even if Apple ends up unveiling its smart speaker at WWDC, it will be behind Google Home and Amazon’s Echo in terms of functionality and features. Thus, it makes more sense for Apple to release its smart speaker later this year when iOS 11 is released with, hopefully, a smarter and powerful version of Siri. We would love to see these features.
Bezel-less 10.5-inch iPad Pro
Before Apple unveils the bezel-less iPhone 8 later this year, the rumor mill is expecting the company to unveil a bezel-less 10.5-inch iPad Pro at WWDC. Apple was initially expected to unveil the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro in March this year itself but likely had to cancel the plan due to yield issues. The 10.5-inch iPad Pro is expected to replace the existing 9.7-inch iPad Pro in Apple’s lineup. Thanks to its bezel-less design, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro will have the same dimensions as the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, with the slimmer bezels allowing for a bigger display.
The chances of Apple unveiling the 10.5-inch iPad Pro at WWDC are very slim especially due to the lack of leaks surrounding it in recent times. If anything, we should expect a 10.5-inch iPad Pro to debut alongside the iPhone 8 later this year or at a separate event that will possibly be held towards the end of this year.
So, what are your expectations from WWDC this year? Are you looking forward to Apple unveiling iOS 11 and macOS? Or are you more interested in the rumored MacBook refresh and the Siri-powered speaker?
