We’re tired of typing and calling out our numbers to people. So, naturally, we can’t wait to try out NameDrop in iOS 17. In 2023, that’s exactly the kind of technology we should have. We also hope that the updates to Airdrop will make it more reliable because we’re also tired of restarting our devices just to get Airdrop working. Has anyone else experienced annoying issues with Airdrop?
For someone who stopped journaling a while back, I wonder if the new Journal app will help me reignite the passion. It was the first announcement I got really excited about during the WWDC23 Keynote. We are curious to see how Apple has integrated it into the Photos app. It could simplify journaling for a lot of us, and make it cheaper too. Good journaling apps are now expensive.
iPadOS 17
We first learnt about interactive widgets on Android, on the Samsung Tab S8, a few months ago. So, this is certainly not new technology. But, we love interactive widgets so much, that we are excited to try them on iPadOS. Then we’ll compare them to the Android ones, to see which one is better. Interacting with widgets on the homepage simplifies life. We can’t believe we only getting them now.
iPadOS is finally catching up with iOS, or is it? I mean, we can finally customise our lock screen, but we can do cooler customisation on iOS with Standby. Will Standby be available on iPadOS too? That wasn’t very clear from the Keynote.
We also love the new stickers. Even though they were mostly demonstrated on the iPhone, I can’t wait to see if they will work in note-taking apps on the iPad. That would be awesome!
The best update is definitely PDF annotation features coming to Apple Notes! We can now autofill forms, even if they are scanned (impressive). But even more exciting is how we can finally annotate our PDFs in the app’s workspace. About time! Annotating PDFs in a separate window was just annoying.
macOS Sonoma
We are happy that we no longer need to swipe to view our widgets in macOS Sonoma. It’s also cool that they dim on the screen when we are working in different apps. Widgets are also more useful now that they are interactive. We can’t wait to try them out!
Web apps will simplify the way we work in Safari to help us access information faster. We can’t wait to try it and see if it’s really as amazing as we think. On the other hand, we are not keen on sharing passwords. Something as simple as opening the wrong email can compromise my security and everyone else sharing my passwords. We’ll have to learn more about this, it’s quite concerning.
Vision Pro
Vision Pro is an interesting concept, but its practicality is questionable. Apple normalised AirPods, perhaps they can do the same with Vision Pro. It feels lonely and detached, though. But seems to make more sense for movies and studying. Actually, it makes more sense for studying than for movies. I don’t know about you, but I love sharing my movie experiences. And a common screen (especially if we’re sitting next to each other) is a big part of that! At that price, most families won’t be sharing experiences on the Vision Pro.
We have so many questions: can two people view the same apps simultaneously? At the moment, I can just turning my computer to show my mom the new presentation I am working on. Would that be possible, if we both were using the Vision Pros? I think this would have been more impressive if everyone could see it, not just the person wearing the Vision Pros. Apple didn’t share any specs for the Vision Pro and we can’t help but feel their announcement was a bit premature.
I just lost $200 to Uncle Dan on the operating system name for the Vision Pro. I argued that Apple couldn’t be that predictable. But they are: VisionOS lost me $200! I guess it was obvious, but I was just hoping. I thought vOS would have made more sense, but I guess not.
Verdict
We feel Apple’s innovation slowed down this year. There would have been no problem with just announcing software updates only. But we’re a new-product-driven society and even Apple feels the pressure. Now we have M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max, M2 Ultra and probably next we’ll get M2 Berserk! No sight of M3 anytime soon. Apple should probably invest more in their software development programs, and slow down hardware development when they don’t have anything new. We understand!
