Apple WWDC 2021: What to Expect and How to Watch

UPDATE 6/7: Here's everything you missed in 8 minutes:

WWDC 2021: iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 in 8 minutes

Original Story:
It seems like Apple just launched iOS 14, which (finally) embraced widgets and icon-organization features, among other things, making an even stronger competitor to Google's Android. The tablet-specific iPadOS saw similar big advances.

Though version 15 of both mobile OSes likely won't be released until the fall, developers will get their first cracks at iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 at next week's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), while the rest of us will get details about what's on tap.

The online-only developer conference kicks off with a 10 a.m. PT keynote on June 7. Watch live at apple.com/apple-events. Breakout deep dives will run through June 11, but Apple doesn’t publish session details ahead of time, so we don't yet know what they'll entail.

Ahead of WWDC, though, Apple has teased "exciting new updates [for] all Apple platforms," which also includes macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Here's what the rumor mill says is on tap.

What's in Store for iOS 15 and iPadOS 15?

With iOS 14 such a major refresh of Apple's mobile OS, it’s likely that version 15 will be a tick rather than a tock release—that is, more of a fine-tuning than an overhaul.

We can expect Apple to dig in even further with its privacy story, the one differentiator it’s been pushing compared with Android, though Google's OS has nevertheless added strong new privacy features of its own in recent versions.

Apple will omit anything that tips new features in its next iPhone, which observers are calling iPhone 13. One possible welcome new feature that’s sort of a hardware-plus-OS thing is an always-on display—a useful feature that Android phones have boasted for years. It’s helpful to be able to glance at the phone sitting there on a table and see the time without having to turn it on. And of course, support for any new hardware needs to be added to iOS and iPadOS, should something like AR glasses see the light of day.

Bloomberg reports that both iOS and iPadOS will get new notification capabilities, letting users change how they’re delivered based on whether they are “driving, working, sleeping or custom categories of their choosing.” iOS already has a driving mode that suppresses messages, but it’s not very smart in my experience: For some reason, it can’t figure out that I’m driving if I’ve got Apple Maps directions on and am traveling at 60mph.

We could see updates to iMessage, though it’s unlikely that Apple will open the messaging technology to other platforms, given its longstanding walled-garden approach. The Bloomberg report states that Apple may be looking to make iMessage more of a social network competitor—beware yet another “stories” feature. One thing we’ve seen in every Apple event for years is new emoji, Memoji, and the like.

iPadOS 15 may catch up to iOS in flexibility of widget placement. The leading tablet OS also lacks iOS’s wonderful App Library feature, which lets you instantly clean up pages and pages of icons. I’m hoping for a revamp of the platform’s awkward abundance of similar gestures and confusing Slide Over and restrictive Split View modes.

A 'Minor' MacOS Update

WWDC usually features Craig Federighi, Apple's well-coiffed SVP of Software Engineering, getting pretty amped over macOS, but he might have to keep that excitement in check this year. According to Bloomberg, the 2021 macOS update will be "minor" since last year's Big Sur was a pretty big overhaul.

The main question mark here is probably what moniker Apple will pick for macOS this time around. As 9to5Mac points out, Apple trademarked a number of California-related names starting in 2013, when it first started using local points of interest as OS codenames with Mavericks. A number of those names have been abandoned, 9to5Mac says, but two remain: Monterey and Mammoth. We'll have to see if either are successors to Big Sur.

There's always the possibility we'll get some hardware to run that new OS, from MacBooks to an M1 successor. WWDC is usually a software show, but device launches are not unheard of.

Last Hurrah for Apple tvOS?

Apple's April 20 press event featured a new Apple TV 4K, and the company is pouring millions into its Apple TV+ streaming service, with some success. But Apple's TV offerings aren't limited to its own products. A variety of third-party TVs support AirPlay 2 streaming without the set-top box, and the Apple TV app is available on rival platforms like Amazon Fire TV and Android. So as 9to5Mac points out, "having a tvOS doesn’t make sense anymore."

The site tips a now-deleted Apple job listing for someone to work on "homeOS," which is not a publicly announced Apple product. It follows an April Bloomberg report about a more serious focus on smart home devices at Apple. Who knows if that comes to fruition; at WWDC, we'll probably just get another Ted Lasso trailer, which is fine by me.

watchOS 8: Fitness and Accessibility

Last year's watchOS update added handwashing detection, dance workouts, and sleep tracking features to the Apple Watch. This year, rumors about what's coming to Apple's smartwatch-based OS are thin. PhoneArena suggests we might see Assistive Touch as an accessibility option, and blood sugar monitoring is also a possibility. New watch faces are a pretty sure bet, but we'll have to wait and see.