The lead up to Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is always rife with rumors and speculation. But so far this year, the leaks have been few and far between, and most of what has leaked into the public eye has been on the mystery side. Take, for example, Mark Gorman from Bloomberg who is usually a very good source He said last week-With nothing else in the way of explanation – that iOS 16 will contain some “recent Apple apps”.
Let’s assume for a moment that this isn’t just a resurgence of the ’90s slang And that the apps in question are not “funky,” but rather that the company intends to release new and/or updated versions of some of its built-in apps on iOS. This certainly sounds promising, and as you might imagine, I have some ideas about what exactly this could (or should) entail.
weather
It’s time, Apple. After 12 years, the iPad deserves a Weather app. I know it’s not the most exciting development, but come on: you’re already offering home screen UI widgets with updated interfaces that are almost apps of their own. And I find it hard to believe that Apple spent whatever money I spent on Dark Sky not taking advantage of it on all of its platforms. (While we’re at it, some integration on the macOS side, especially as we say a Mac-like menu bar widget, wouldn’t go wrong either.)
It’s time to bring the Weather app to your iPad.
apple
The Weather app has always been a strange absent on the tablet. Did Apple think that people who use iPad don’t care about the weather because they usually use the device indoors? Regardless, the latest version of Weather on the iPhone showed the company could rival the best of what third parties have to offer, so let’s finally come up with an iPad that kicks and screams into the modern age. Just in time for summer!
wallet
Apple has increasingly entered the payment systems over the past few years with Apple Pay and Apple Card. Even the recent minor update to iOS 15.5 made an interesting change by adding the Send and Request Payment buttons to the Wallet app, functionality that was previously buried in Messages. But one aspect of finance is still missing: analysis and budgeting tools.
Yes, if you have an Apple Card, you can see the color combination that tells you which areas you spend your money on or issue your transactions as documents to import into another tool. But it would also be beneficial if the company could provide more tools that are intrinsic to financial health, helping consumers understand exactly where their money is going.
Think less of a wallet and more of a ledger. Apps like Mint and Personal Capital have great potential in this area, but if Apple is serious about expanding its ways of working with money — and has already announced that it will open access to Tap to Pay in the coming months — then there could be value in offering Apple a more holistic view. Help consumers manage that money responsibly.
Email, phone, messages and calendar
The advantage of the apps built into the iPhone is that they take care of the needs of most people. email? I understood you. Telephone? check. Messages? Yeah. Evaluation? certainly. These apps – and most of the time the tasks they do – are pretty ordinary. However, this inferiority also means that users rely on it to get things done. It is necessary. This makes balancing difficult, because you don’t want to change it for the sake of change, but you also don’t want to leave it stagnating to the point where it feels stale.
An overhaul of the calendar app is scheduled.
foundry
Mail and Calendar are a great example of two apps that have not budged in the past several years and, as a result, are teetering on the verge of antiquity. While third-party email apps have been pushing the envelope (if you’ll excuse the phrase) with features like smart filters, snooze reminders, and more, Mail has finally succeeded in adding multi-colored tags.
Likewise, Calendar, which revolves around an app as simple as you can find on the platform, has finally added the ability to recognize video calls (two years into the pandemic), but could reconsider how events are displayed on multiple calendars, or improve Process it for natural language, or add support for scheduling events between multiple parties.
Finally, Messages, one of Apple’s most popular apps, should improve its cross-platform compatibility with Android (instead of penalizing special iOS users by raiding a slew of messages about people who “like” a message), and implement better filtering. to spam unsolicited texts (whether via SMS or iMessage), and extend useful Tapbacks to include any emoji.
These things might not be exciting, but they could potentially be major quality-of-life improvements for the audience using these built-in apps — which is probably the majority of iOS users, given that many don’t bother replacing them with third-party apps.