I’m an introvert, so I don’t get excited (at least outwardly) about many things. But I’m really excited about many of the new features announced at WWDC coming to iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura.
At past WWDCs, I’ve been interested in only one or two of the features that are announced. A lot of the features come across to me as “fluff” which is nice, but not particularly useful to me. This year was different. It seemed to me just about every feature was practical and helpful. Some were features I’d hoped for several years but just gave up on. Others were entirely new concepts that I can’t wait to work with.
As I wrote about recently, I detect a shift at Apple; that in both hardware and now software, Apple is really listening and responding to what users want and need. The presenters introduced several of the new software features, “This is one of the most often-requested features we’ve received from users.”
Some of The OS Features I’m Excited About
- Mail. Apple Mail has felt abandoned for a long time.
- You can now schedule when an email will be sent in the future. Occasionally, you want to write an email now, but not send it for a day or two.
- If you change your mind about an email you’ve sent, you can cancel an email before it’s delivered to the recipient’s box. Ever forget to add an attachment? Yeah, me too.
- You can set a reminder to reply to an email in the future. Maybe you can’t respond to an email when you first see it but don’t want to forget about it.
- Search has been significantly improved.
- Messages
- As in mail, you can now unsend a recent message. I’ve sent messages to the wrong person or realized sending it was a mistake after the fact, and it was too late to do anything about it. Now I’ll be able to call back the message before it’s delivered.
- You can now edit a message recently sent. Autocorrect often changes important words in my message so it’s not understandable, and then I have to send a second message correcting the mistakes.
- Window Management on the iPad and Mac; Stage Manager
- Multiple, resizable windows come to the iPad. In the last couple of years, we’ve been able to have multiple app windows open on an iPad, but the system for managing these have been awkward and difficult to remember. That’s all changing now with user-sizable and moveable windows.
- A brand-new window manager, Stage Manager, comes to the iPad and Mac. Working with multiple windows on a Mac has always been messy, especially with multiple overlapping windows on the same desktop. I’m anxious to try Stage Manager, which groups unused open windows in an easily visible and accessible way.
- The Weather App
- When my wife and I got our first iPad, the first question we had was, “Where’s the weather app?”
- The weather app is finally coming to both the iPad and Mac. Hooray! I probably check the weather app more frequently than any other app, and Apple’s weather app, with its great animations, is my first preference.
- Maps
- I use Maps all the time to give me directions to a location I’m unfamiliar with. But up to this time, it’s only been able to provide directions from a single starting point to a single ending point. However, sometimes I lump errands together, and I have to drive to multiple locations all in one trip.
- Now, Maps will allow you to chart multiple stops on your trip and give directions for each.
- The Health App
- A new feature, Medications, will allow you to enter your medications and receive notifications when it’s time to take your medications. This will be a great feature for anyone who has prescription medications but forgets to take them.
- But wait, there’s more! Medications will also compare your medications to a trusted medical database and inform you if there are conflicts between your medications. Particularly for older people who tend to have multiple medications prescribed by different doctors, this can be a serious issue, even resulting in death.
- iPhone Lock Screen
- For the first time, the iPhone Lock Screen will have multiple ways to customize what appears.
- You’ll be able to highlight favorite photos, customize font styles, and display a set of widgets to get information at a glance.
- iCloud Photo Library
- It’s been possible to share photos with other family members, but it’s been a somewhat awkward, multistep process requiring you to set up a shared album, and select photos.
- With the iCloud Shared Photo Library, Apple says, “Choose what to include based on a start date or the people in the photos. Once the shared library is set up, you can share photos instantly right from Camera, choose to share automatically when other shared library members are nearby, and get smart suggestions for adding photos to the shared library in For You.”
- Continuity Camera on the Mac
- For most of us, the best camera we own is our iPhone. The cameras on Mac laptops and the new Studio Display are nearly as clear and bright.
- Continuity Camera allows you to simply bring your iPhone close to your Mac, and it becomes your Mac camera. Third-party developers will have brackets that will hold your camera on the top edge of your Mac display.
- This will be a giant improvement for those of us who use our Macs to participate in Zoom calls and FaceTime calls to friends and family. Our faces should be much clearer and brighter.
- System Preferences Reimagined on the Mac
- Aside from color and more of them, system preferences on the Mac look similar now to those on my original Mac in 1984. It had become unwieldy, and it was often difficult to find settings.
- Apple has completely reimagined the app, similar to the Settings app in iOS and iPadOS. It’s now called System Settings.
- It should allow for much better and more logical organization of settings, and be similar to the layout in iOS and iPadOS. That will make it easier for users of multiple devices to move between systems and have familiar settings organization.
It’s a Great Time to be an Apple User!
I could list many more features I’m excited about, but I think 10 is enough for one post. Anyone has to be crazy to download a beta version of new operating system software on their primary iPad and iPhone. But I think I’ll do just that when Apple releases the public beta next month!
With all the great new hardware and now great new software, this is a great time to be an Apple user! We have great iPhones, great iPads, great Macs to use, and now equally great software to power them.