Apple’s software is very good overall. Although the company has extended its focus to more platforms than ever before: macOS and iOS and iPadOS and tvOS and watchOS and any software that Apple builds for its car that may one day come and its almost certain to arrive soon AR / VR headsets: These platforms have continued to be excellent. We haven’t had an Apple Maps-style fiasco in a long time; the biggest mistakes Apple makes now are much more at the level of putting Safari’s URL bar on the wrong side of the screen.
What generates all this success and maturity, however, is the feeling that Apple’s software is … finished, or at least very close. For the past two years, the company’s software ads at WWDC have been almost exclusively iterative and additive, with few major changes. Last year’s big iOS announcements, for example, were some improvements to FaceTime’s quality of life and some new types of IDs that work on Apple Wallet. Otherwise, most of Apple has just launched new setup menus: new notifications controls, Focus mode settings, privacy tools, that sort of thing.
This is not a bad thing! Nor is the fact that Apple is the best fast tracker in the software business, remarkably quick to adapt and polish new software ideas from everyone else. Apple devices are as complete, durable, stable, and usable as anything you can find anywhere. Too many companies try to reinvent themselves all the time for no reason and end up creating problems where they didn’t exist. Apple is nothing more than a ruthlessly efficient machine, and that machine is working hard to perfect every pixel its devices create.
The best of iOS 15, just in case.
But we are at a turning point in the technology that will demand more from Apple. It’s now pretty clear that augmented reality and virtual reality are the next big thing for Apple, the next supposedly huge industry after the smartphone. Apple is likely to show a headset at WWDC, but as augmented and virtual reality reaches beyond our lives, everything about how we experience and interact with technology will need to change.
Apple has been showing AR for years, of course. But all that is shown are demonstrations, things you can see or do on the other side of the camera. We’ve seen very little from the company about how they think AR devices will work and how we’ll use them. The company that likes to get excited about their input devices will need a few new ones and a new software paradigm that matches. This is what we will see this year at WWDC.
Remember last year, when Apple showed that you could take a photo of a piece of paper with your iPhone and automatically scan and recognize any text on the page? Live Text is a full-featured RA feature – a way to use your phone’s camera and AI to understand and catalog real-world information. The whole tech industry thinks this is the future: this is what Google does with Maps and Lens and what Snapchat does with its lenses and filters. Apple needs a lot more from where Live Text comes from.
Live Text is an augmented reality feature anyway. Image: Apple
From a simple user interface perspective, something the RA will require is a much more efficient system for obtaining information and performing tasks. No one will wear AR glasses that send them Apple Music ads and news notifications every six minutes, right? And full-screen applications that require your unique attention will increasingly be a thing of the past.
We may have some clues as to what it will be like: it looks like “use your phone without getting lost on your phone” will be a topic at this year’s WWDC. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, we could see an iOS lock screen showing useful information without requiring you to unlock your phone. A more visible iPhone seems like a great idea and a good way to keep people from opening their phone to check the time only to be at the bottom of a TikTok hole three and a half hours later. The same goes for the rumored “interactive widgets”, which allow you to do basic tasks without having to open an app. And, if Focus mode gets some improvements, and especially if Apple can make Focus mode easier to set up and use, it could be a really useful tool in your phone and totally essential in AR glasses.
RA will require software to do more, but also go further
I would also expect Apple to continue to bring their devices much closer both in terms of what they do and how they do it in an effort to make their entire ecosystem more usable. With an almost complete line of Macs and iPads running on Apple’s M chip, and perhaps a full line after WWDC if the long-awaited Mac Pro finally shows up, there’s no reason why devices shouldn’t share more DNA. Universal Control, which was probably the most exciting iOS 15 announcement, though it wasn’t shipped until February, is a good example of how Apple seems to treat its many screens as part of an ecosystem. If iOS 16 brings real free multitasking to the iPad (and boy, I hope so), an iPad on a keyboard base is basically a Mac. Apple used to avoid this proximity; now, he seems to be accepting it. And, if you see all these devices as accessories and accessories of a pair of AR glasses, you will need them all to do the job well.
The last time Apple (hell, the last time anyone) had a really new idea about how we use devices was in 2007, when the iPhone was launched. Since then, the industry has been on the path of yes, improving and adjusting without ever really breaking with the basics of multitouch. But the RA will break all that. It can’t work any other way. That’s why companies are working on neural interfaces, trying to perfect gesture control and trying to figure out how to display everything from translated text to maps and games on a small screen in front of your face. Meta is already sending and selling his best ideas; Google’s are coming out in the form of Lens features and brilliant videos. Now, Apple needs to start showing the world how it thinks a future for RA works. With or without headphones, this will be the story of WWDC 2022.