Between Monday, June 7th and Friday, June 11th, 2021, Apple held its annual worldwide developer conference (WWDC) fully online, like last year.
In case you don’t know, the first day is always kicked off with a presentation called the “Keynote”, during which Tim Cook, (the CEO) and his team paint a picture of what is coming up in the world of Apple.
This session was jam-packed with information about the next versions of the operating system running on iPhone, iPad, the Mac and Apple Watch.
There were no new hardware announcements though.
The purpose of this post is not to give you the most complete coverage of this event.
If you’re interested, the Mon 7 June Keynote replay and all its announcements are available at https://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2021
Because I understand that you may not have the time to watch the replay of the keynote, I’ve prepared a short summary with my 3 main takeaways:
The overlap between iOS, iPadOS and macOS is increasing
The penny finally dropped that humans are social beings
iPadOS is still more iOS than macOS
1. The overlap between iOS, iPadOS and macOS is increasing
It is the first Keynote where I felt so strongly the need for Apple to artificially spread major announcements throughout the presentation.
It was artificial because, at the end of the keynote, it appeared that most new features actually applied to all the future operating systems.
For instance, they kicked off the Keynote with iOS 15 by announcing new FaceTime features, like Grid View, and later on improvements with notifications and text recognition within pictures.
Well, those features will also be available in iPadOS 15 and macOS 12 Monterey.
It’s the same with Weather and Maps improvements, as well as the Quick Notes feature that was introduced during the iPadOS 15 section of the Keynote.
During the macOS 12 Monterey reveal, they showed new Safari features that will be ported to iPhone and iPad too.
Talking about macOS, the Shortcuts app, which allows automating tasks on iPhone and iPad, is coming to the Mac as well.
And if you have played with Automator in the past, you’ll be pleased to know that Shortcuts on macOS 12 will be able to open and import Automator scripts natively.
In the same way that it’s dead simple to reset an iPhone or an iPad via Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings, it will be a similar process for Macs running macOS 12 Monterey, but via System Preferences.
Another feature that is coming to the Mac is AirPlay.
It will be possible to use a Mac running macOS 12 Monterey as an AirPlay receiver, either for audio or for screen sharing.
On a side note, this capability is already available for current (and earlier) versions of macOS through third-party solutions, like AirServer which I use almost every day or Luna Display (which I also have).
The demo that I found the most impressive was for Universal Control.
This will allow Mac users to use their Mac keyboard and mouse/trackpad on up to 2 nearby devices, whether it’s another Mac (running macOS 12) or an iPad (running iPadOS 15), without needing to pair them.
And it will also be possible to drag and drop files from an iPad to the Mac, and vice versa.
Now, some of the new features announced for macOS 12 will only be available for M1 Macs, since they share the same processor architecture as the iPhone and the iPad.
Among those, let me cite Portrait Mode in FaceTime, Live Text in photos, the interactive 3D Earth globe in Maps and on-device dictation.
2. The penny finally dropped that humans are social beings
Another predominant new feature introduced during the Keynote was SharePlay .
This technology allows several people, despite being physically distant from each other, to listen to music or watch movies together, via FaceTime.
And the good news is that Apple is providing tools to third-party developers so they can integrate the technology in their own apps.
For instance, Disney+, Hulu and HBOmax will be among the first to offer SharePlay capability when iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS 12 Monterey will be released in Fall this year.
FaceTime received a slew of additional features, like Spatial audio for group calls and Voice isolation.
Another neat thing is the ability to send FaceTime links to people who don’t have an Apple device so they can join a FaceTime call via a web browser, even from an Android device or Windows PC.
Finally, Apple realised that people share photos, videos, songs, TV shows, and web articles via Messages all the time.
Well, in future OS versions, pictures that were shared via Messages, will automatically appear in a “Shared with you” section in the Photos app.
The same will happen in the Music, Podcasts, and the TV app, as well as Safari and Apple News.
3. iPadOS is still more iOS than macOS
In one of my previous Apple Newsflash issues, I mentioned my anticipation for iPadOS 15 to better take advantage of the M1 iPad Pro hardware.
Secretly, I also wished that iPadOS 15 would evolve to a point where I would feel less constrained by it, in a way that it would somewhat mimic what I can do on macOS.
Well, it didn’t happen and I sensed it when the first feature that Apple announced for iPadOS 15 was Widgets on the home screen.
Yes, because the iPad screen is bigger than the iPhone one, we will also have bigger widgets, while, the same time, it anchors iPadOS in the same paradigm as iOS.
The next feature announced was Multitasking.
Yet again, Apple brought mild, albeit welcome improvements to Split View mode and the addition of a Shelf for managing multiple windows of the same app.
It’s an improvement but nowhere near the flexibility of managing app windows on macOS.
To finish off this section, I’ll mention Swift Playgrounds for iPad, which provides a way for people to learn how to program in Swift, the language that Apple uses for some of its own apps.
Well, the next version of Swift Playgrounds will provide a means to build apps and submit them to the App Store Review team directly from iPad.
This is a significant step towards native app development on iPadOS, but still very far away from what’s possible with Xcode on the Mac.
Conclusion
So there you have it!
In summary, I believe that thanks to a common processor architecture, Apple will continue its march towards a uniform set of features across its entire range of operating systems.
I’m happy to see an effort on Apple’s part to bring people together. Yet at the same time, the cynic in me wonders if this was just a reaction to the changes brought by the pandemic and whether it’s too little, too late, or not.
Finally, I wished Apple had brought bigger and bolder changes to iPadOS, while, at the same time, I’m pleased with the direction it is taking and especially the increased interoperability with macOS.
And you, what do you think about the announcements Apple made during the WWDC21 Keynote and which feature caught your eye the most?
