The Mac mini hasn't been updated since October 2014, when it was made even more appliance-like than previous generations. Since then Apple's bring-your-own-mouse-keyboard-and-monitor Mac has been missing in action. Here's what we know.

August 20, 2018: Mac mini update once again rumored for this fall

The Mac mini, infamously, hasn't been updated for years. Apple's still been working on it but, for a variety of reasons, could or would never push revisions out the door. Now, it's once again being rumored the company is about to fix that.

Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg:

Will it be at the September iPhone and iPad event, or a Mac-specific event in October? Apple has both split them up to maximize focus, and gone all in in the past. Two events are twice the coverage but double the work, after all.

We'll have to wait and see.

July 11, 2018: Apple planning Mac mini refresh for the fall

Kuo Ming-Chi has issued another of his infamous, supply-chain exfiltrated, research notes to clients. This one, splendidly, included mention of the Mac mini. It remains a product Apple is actively working on, but one the company has somehow failed to push out updated for in the last several years.

From MacRumors:

Hopefully, it'll actually hit the shelves this year.

October 19, 2017: Tim Cook says Mac mini remains an important part of Apple's product lineup

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook,

As reported by MacRumors:

My guess remains that we'll hear and even see more about the next Mac mini in 2018. My distress remains Apple not updating the current design with modern chipsets and ports in the meantime.

April 6, 2017: Phil Schiller says Mac mini remains an important part of Apple's lineup

As part of an exclusive briefing held at Apple's campus in Cupertino, senior vice president Phil Schiller commented — sorta — on the future of Mac mini.

From Tech Crunch:

April 5, 2017: Next Mac mini might not be so mini

Many people have hoped that Apple would replace the existing Mac mini with more of a Mac mini tower, complete with expansion ports. That doesn't seem to be the direction Apple's going, but there is potential for more powerful Macs mini going forward.

Pike's Universum:

Is the Mac mini dead?

Not until Apple officially pulls the plug.

When will we see a new Mac mini?

Best guess — 2018. That's when Apple has teased the new (modular) Mac Pro will make an appearance, at least. It's possible Mac mini will get pushed out to 2019, but the sooner the better. For everyone.

What do you want to see in a new Mac mini?

Mac mini is supposed to be the entry-level Mac desktop, but as MacBooks become the mainstream choice, there's room to do something... geekier. Appliance computing is all well and good but there's also something to be said for a computer than can grow with you.

Mac mini could be both. An easy to use starter system that can have new and better memory, drives, and perhaps even graphics that can expand over time, if and when you need them. Here's what we'd like to see:

• USB C / Thunderbolt 3 ports.
• Legacy USB-A, Thunderbolt 2, HDMI, and SD card ports.
• Kaby Lake processors.
• Quad-core processor option.
• Graphics cards capable of supporting harder-core gaming and VR.
• Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar and Touch ID.
• Space gray or matte black options.
• Gold and rose gold options. (What?!)
• Make it a mini tower — expandability, yo!

How about you?

On Friday evening, I was just getting ready to close down my computer for the day when I got an iMessage from my dad.

"These look pretty slick," he wrote, linking the Jaybird Run wireless sport headphones. "See if you can snag a pair to test and report back?"

It's not that my dad doesn't love his AirPods, which he carries around almost everywhere. But when he's not working on his music or obsessing over an audiobook, my father runs. And I do mean runs. His weekly forays into the mountains would put most folks in their 20s to shame, let alone someone with two grown children, and he holds a number of course records for his age group.

He certainly tried to use Apple's AirPods during his outdoor adventures. "I've run almost exclusively with them since I've got them, and the AirPods are great on the whole," he told me. "Unless you inadvertently brush your ear… and it flips on the ground."

That's not a great feature when you're running on single-person-wide trails with sharp drop-offs. Much as my family grew up treating the wilderness as litter-free holy ground, we also had a hard and fast rule: If it falls off the trail, you don't try to free-climb down a mountain to save it. Especially when the thing in question is a tiny white earbud.

Thankfully, my dad has never had to make that call. But he's definitely more cautious about running with AirPods than he is running with wired earphones.

Back to our Friday evening conversation: I'd seen the Jaybird Run press releases, and the headphones did look pretty slick. Water-resistant, with the same ear cup and wing build as the company's many great wired sports headphones. I plan to test them out myself in the coming weeks, but the Jaybird's battery life does give me pause: Four hours' active use isn't a great option for long-distance runners.

Out of curiosity, I asked my dad to forget the Jaybirds for a moment. What would his perfect "SportPods" set look like?

Form and fit

A good pair of running AirPods needs to have a sports fit. So says my father, and I tend to agree with him. His biggest complaint is also a longstanding issue with the AirPods in general: If your ears don't cradle the buds comfortably, they can slide or slip around and not provide as solid a sound experience as with others.

"For me, [the Airpods] stick out at a funny angle," he said. "I've never had one fall out, but I've reached up to keep my hat on or go by a bush, and had a number of panic moments."

The current AirPods do have a number of third-party options for augmenting their fit, but none provide a perfect experience.

There's also the sound issue: "I've run almost exclusively with [the AirPods] since I got them," my dad told me. "And they don't work well in wind." Because the AirPods don't have any sort of insulation cover, they end up with a quieter overall sound when running in windy weather than their insulated rivals.

Sweat resistance

While neither my father (and his running) nor I and my skating have shorted out a set of AirPods from sweat, that doesn't mean the risk is null — nor that it's worth the risk to damage a set while working out.

"The original Apple wired headphones [EarPods] sucked when they got wet," my dad told me. "When you got to perspiring, they just died." So far, the AirPods have persisted through even his toughest mountain runs, but he's not counting on them lasting forever.

Tech writer and former Apple Genius Jordan Merrick had an issue earlier this year with one of his AirPods shorting out:

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. Several weeks ago, I noticed that my right AirPod had stopped charging. I took a closer look and discovered the telltale sign of liquid damage: green corrosion at the base of the AirPod and a scorch mark where it had shorted out. This was almost certainly due to perspiration.

While Apple replaced the broken AirPod free of charge, the issue prompted Merrick to switch to the sweat-resistant PowerBeats 3 for his workout uses.

But my dad doesn't want to switch; he just wants water resistance for his existing AirPods. He did briefly try Apple's over-the-ear PowerBeats 3, but he wasn't impressed. "Over the ear [headphones] are okay, but they're not as convenient," my dad told me, largely because of the tethered cord that sits on the back of the neck while running.

Jokingly, he noted that the only over-ear experience he'd support is one that would double as ear muffs — to keep his ears warm during cold running mornings.

Even Merrick told me on Twitter that he'd switch back to AirPods were a sweat-resistant model an option:

https://twitter.com/jordanmerrick/status/940300115444682754

Battery

While the AirPods have a solid battery life for most activities, long-distance running is the exception, not the rule. The headset's 5-hour battery falls short on anyone doing all-day hikes, runs, or races.

"I've never had earphones when I've raced — I kept my mind on running," my dad said. "But I'm not everyone, and the longer the better, especially for people that do ultra-long events.

[Those] that do really long things, they have to deal with battery life… One [AirPod] will go out before the other, and it beeps at you when it gets low."

That beep may be helpful to quick-charge an AirPod while sitting in a café or on a plane, but runners don't exactly have the luxury of stopping, taking out their headphones, sticking them in the case, and then restarting.

"I do carry the case when I go run," my dad said, but laughed at the prospect of re-charging on the fly. "You're not going to want to do that; it's something to fiddle with and breaks your flow."

When his AirPods do die out on a run, my dad generally just lets them sit in his ears and continues his stride. He ran with silence for years; losing his audio is frustrating, but he's managed without it before.

The PowerBeats 3 have optimal battery life for the long-distance runner: Their bigger profile allows for a full twelve hours of battery life to the AirPods' 5 hours.

In an ideal world, my dad would love AirPods with the battery power of the PowerBeats. Physics isn't quite there yet, however: Other companies (like Jaybird) rely on bigger wireless buds, and even those don't have great battery life. One of Apple's triumphs is the W1 chip, which provides smarter, lower-cost Bluetooth connections; it lets the company make the most out of its tiny lithium-ion batteries. But can the W1 (or Apple's newer W2) chip really boost battery life all that much without drastically changing the form factor of the AirPods? I'm skeptical.

I think that were Apple to make a set of "SportPods," they'd need to split the difference in size between the PowerBeats 3 and existing AirPods: Provide a slightly bigger form factor — and some sort of insulated ear support — without overly weighing down your head or requiring cumbersome ear clips.

Even an increase in battery life closer to the Beats X's 8 hours could suffice for most long-distance runners (though it's worth noting that the Beats X gets most of that battery life due to the elongated battery packs in its neck cord, something most runners would like to see disappear).

Would you buy AirPods Sport?

So let's take a look at my dad's hypothetical pair of AirPods sport earbuds:

• Sweat-proof
• No neck cords
• Form-fitting earpieces (wings and over-ears optional)
• A little larger in exchange for longer 8-12 hour battery life
• W2 chip

The PowerBeats 3 cost $199.95, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the above theoretical pair at a similar price. (I might even pay $250 for a physics-defying 12 hours of battery life in a similarly sized package to the AirPods.)

Is the added price worth it? An informal poll on Twitter shows an emphatic yes:

https://twitter.com/patrickhmason/status/940299261350068224 https://twitter.com/thatautguy/status/940299601772449793

https://twitter.com/thombullock/status/940300361352351744

It's not a perfect solution. As back-country runner Mathais Eichler pointed out on Twitter, many of Apple's audio playing devices won't quite make 12 full hours without a charge:

As for my dad, he's fully on board to purchase his perfect set of headphones. "After what I have goes bottom-up, of course."

And you?

What do your ideal sport AirPods look like? Sound off in the comments below!

I read a ton of news. Technology. Politics. Entertainment. Culture. Science. You name it, I've read it on my iPhone or iPad. It's gotten better since Apple introduced News.app. It's gotten much better since Apple integrated News.app with the news widget on the Today View.

But it's still not integrated with Safari Reader or Shared Links, it's still not available on Mac or Apple TV, and — stupefyingly — over two years later, it's still not available outside the U.S., U.K., and Australia.

Here's what I'd love to see Apple do with news in iOS 12

The new News

Apple's new News app debuted in iOS 9. It was an attempt to solve a really hard problem—bringing magazines, newspapers, and independent publications fully into the digital age in a way that's accessible and sustainable. The sustainable part is still a huge question mark for everyone, but the accessible part feels really close. It feels like something Apple could iterate on and make simple and system-wide.

Because of secrecy silos within the company, when News first launched it wasn't integrated with the then also-new News widget on the Today View. They were completely separate and, unlike the News app, there wasn't any way to control what populated the News widget.

iOS 10 solved that part. Since then, the News widget has drawn its headlines from the News app, creating a far more integrated, consistent, and useful experience. But only in those two places.

Beyond the app and the widget, what I want to read is still fragmented.

What I've wanted for the last few years is a system-level service that provides a unified stream of news, informed by the initial setup of the News app, improved by what you tap on and like, enhanced by Apple's algorithms and editors, and augmented by what you've saved to read later and by what your friends have shared on your social networks.

Single sourced

News.app and Today View on iOS have already taken a first step in that direction, but there are plenty more left to take.

For example, both Safari and News.app let you bookmark articles to read later. Safari has Reading List and news has the Saved tab. They serve similar purposes but are currently silos, lacking any form of integration.

It would be great if anything bookmarked to Safari's Reading List also appeared in the Saved tab in News — and vice versa.

That way, no matter which app you're in, you have a single, unified view of everything you've bookmarked.

(If Shared Links, killed in iOS 11, were also brought back, it would make a great starting point for social integration — bookmarked-by-you could sit side-by-side (or tab-by-tab) with shared by friends.)

This feature request has been filed with Apple as rdar://35827882.

Where is News.app for Mac?

Photos.app is a great example of Apple turning a loose collection of apps into a cross-device, system-level feature. Since the launch of Photos.app, any image or video I take on my iPhone or load onto my Mac is available and always updated on all of my devices.

News.app, two years post-launch, is still locked on my iPhone and iPad. Despite all the setup you've done, selections you've made, recommendations and curations the system has provided, if you're sitting at my Mac, you have zero access to it. (Aside from reaching over and picking up an iOS device.)

It would be great if News.app worked more like Photos.app and had had a macOS incarnation that would stay in lockstep with iOS so it was only ever a Dock or Continuity-click away.

That way Apple would be providing a single, consistent News experience to all customers, regardless of the device they happened to be in front of at the time.

This feature request has been filed with Apple as rdar://35827959.

Where's the video version of News.app for Apple TV?

News.app lets you read selected, recommended, and curated news on iPhone and iPad. But, if you're sitting in front of your Apple TV and you want to get up-to-date or catch up on something you saved, currently your only choice is the same as it is on Mac — to do it on an iOS second screen.

It would be great if, instead, there was a News.app for tvOS that was optimized for the 10-foot experience. For example, if Apple TV was hooked into News.app, extracted any and all video content found in the articles, and made it available using the familiar For You, Spotlight, Following, and Saved.

That way, you could sit back, grab the Siri remote, and either browse, pick, and play, or simply ask Siri to show you all news or just news of a specific type.

Like News for Mac, News for Apple TV t would go a long way towards rounding out the experience across devices.

This feature request has been filed with Apple as rdar://35828049.

Where is Apple News in the rest of the world?

It hasn't simply been over two years since Apple introduced the new News app in the U.S. with iOS 9, or since it added the U.K. and Australia in iOS 9.1. It's been over two years since we've seen any expansion of News to any other country. And that's beyond frustrating.

Amazon has now managed to ship Echo is Canada before Apple could ship News. Which, given Apple Music launched in 100 countries at once is a huge disappointment.

There are typically all sorts of local laws, partnerships, and other concerns when dealing with content internationally. But that's not the customer's problem. That's Apple's problem.

I think most of us outside the U.S., U.K., and Canada would settle for a pared down News experience over none at all. If governments want to make sure local content is represented and local content wants to make sure they have advertising revenue lined up, and that's taking time — fine. Give us News as a glorified feed-reader for now, let us manually add what we want, and then bring the other features online when and as possible.

Or, you know, build up a team with the sole purpose of making News international, just like Music, just like App Store, and let them loose. Just please don't let them take another two years to get it done.

More like iOS 12, if not sooner.

One of the best things about Apple Watch is how the watch face makes so much data so immediately glanceable. That's thanks to the watchOS take on "complications", They're hyper-dense and provide immediate access to a wealth of information. I've become so dependent on complications that, if I'm ever not wearing my Apple Watch, I inevitably find myself staring at my wrist trying to figure out where they've all gone.

I've tried using my iPhone's Lock screen to fill the same need but it just can't do it. It can provide notifications when they come in, but not persistent information when I want it. For that, I'd need Lock screen complications. And I'm hoping for them in iOS 12.

It's complicated

"Complications" refer to any feature on a watch beyond showing the time in hours and minutes. Apple Watch takes advantage of the transition from analog and digital to computational to show more and different types of complications. Almost subconsciously, I'd gotten used to subtly turning my arm and remaining passively, constantly aware of the weather, my activity progress, my calendar, and more.

iPhone has had widgets for a while now but you have to swipe to see them. And widgets are different in kind from complications anyway. Complications are available the instant the screen lights up, no swipe needed. They're also small, so you can really take them in at a glance, and discreet, so they help better maintain privacy.

That's why I'd love to keep the widget sheet, by all means, but also have complications available right on the Lock screen.

Security, privacy — launch-ability

Having complications on the Lock screen would be great for security and privacy. Widgets are currently binary — they're either on or off. You can't filter out ones that might have more personal information and keep them off when you're locked but on when you're open. If you choose to have them viewable, even with Touch ID or Face ID, anyone who picks up your iPhone and starts swiping across can see them.

Notifications are similar. You can turn off previews, or make them Face ID awareness dependant on iPhone X, but as long as they're on they leak some information.

With complications, you could have more options. For example, if notifications on the lock screen aren't private enough for you but you're okay with simple quantities, a complication could show you how many VIP mail or text messages are waiting for you. That way you can easily see that there's something important to check, but you can't see the senders unless and until you unlock your iPhone.

The lock screen could also use complications as a way to launch a wider variety of apps: With a tap you could instantly be in Mail or Messages to check your communications, or in Calendar or Weather for more information about your upcoming appointment or the temperature later in the day. You could even perform simple actions like starting a Timer or Stopwatch.

You'd have to Touch ID or Passcode in, which would make them slightly less than instant. But with Face ID, it would feel instant. Look, tap, in the app.

Many of the same complications that currently exist on the Apple Watch could be translated over, but there'd also be an opportunity to do something uniquely iPhone. They would take some careful thought and planning, of course: The way notifications take over the lock screen would have to be considered, or even reconsidered, for complications not to get covered over or otherwise lost.

Always on

iPhone X has an OLED display and, thanks to its new touch layer, tap-to-wake. That would make complications even more convenient. Just reach over, tap the screen, glance at your complications, and move on. But OLED also offers the opportunity to take things to another level: always on.

Because of OLED's low power characteristics, complications could be left on, in a mid-to-dark gray, all the time. That way, any time you glanced at your Lock screen, you'd be able to see a notification count and take in all the glanceable date, time, weather, and other information you need.

It would come at a cost — everything in mobile is paid for with battery life. But the tradeoff could be worth it.

iOS 12

iOS 12 is already being planned out by Apple. By now, the tentpole features have probably been penciled in and are being sketched out. But that doesn't mean it's too late. That's why I'm writing this. To cast my vote for complications on the Lock screen. And if you agree, let me know!

This feature request has been filed with Apple as rdar://35638751.

Face ID and Touch ID have made it much easier to lock down iPhone X and previous iPhones and iPads so we're the only ones who can access our data. Face ID also — finally! — gives me the ability to lock down iCloud Keychain items so that I have to authenticate in apps and on the web before it will autofill my passwords and credit card information. That way, if I hand a friend, colleague, or stranger-in-need my device to quickly make an emergency call or look up something critical on the web, I don't have to worry about them placing orders on my dime.

(Sadly, Touch ID is currently considered too slow and cumbersome to be forced for web logins but should provide the same protection for in-app logins.)

But there's more on my iPhone and iPad than just my Keychain. There are my emails and messages, photos and videos, calendar and contacts. Apple provided the ability to lock Notes over a year ago but, since then, hasn't extended the functionality to any additional apps. It makes it downright hard to be paranoid.

I'm hoping Apple can address even more of my concerns in the next iPhone and iPad software update, iOS 12.

On board for GuestBoard

Apple could add the option to require Face ID or Touch ID to launch every app. Settings could offer a Secure toggle that engages the authentication system for built-in apps the way password managers and banking apps already do for third-party apps. People and institutions highly vested in security would no doubt love that, but it would add both complexity and an excessive amount of overhead.

A Guest Mode would be a simpler, more elegant solution.

With iOS 8, Apple refactored its system manager, SpringBoard, into several smaller, more focused components. In addition to BackBoard, which was already spun off to handle background tasks, Apple added Frontboard for foreground tasks and PreBoard to handle the Lock screen under secure, encrypted conditions. By extending Preboard with a full-on GuestBoard, iOS could provide a more functional and yet still secure device lending experience.

Similar to how the Lock screen currently allows for emergency calls and even grants access to your Medical ID card without the need to access the Home screen, it would be great if there was a Guest Mode in iOS that could provide access to a secure instance of Phone.app so a lost child could call their parents or WKWebView so a desperate conference attendee could pull up their hotel location.

"Secure" being the key consideration. Lock screen is perpetually torn between security and convenience. You can enable features like Notification Center, message previews, Control Center, Siri, Passbook, and more, and each one provides convenience at the expense of security and privacy. They also expose Apple to potential Lock screen bypasses. Just like you can disable features from the Lock screen, disabling the Guest Mode would allow for individuals to better choose their own balance.

What's more, figuring out the parameters would be a challenge. How many phone calls could a guest place and for how long? How many web pages could they access and for how long? How do you provide emergency access while preventing excessive and unintended voice and data charges? It's always easier to request a feature than to model all the ramifications and implement it in the real world.

But solving hard problems in ways that seem simple and obvious is what Apple does best.

Be our Guest

You can currently create something like Guest Mode using Guided Access. You can lock your iPhone or iPad to Safari and have it stay that way until your passcode unlocks it. You can even use it to restrict an iPad to a game if you want to give it to a child while they wait at a doctor's office or airport.

Guided Access isn't quick to set up, though, and wouldn't be practical in an urgent situation. With Guest Mode, if enabled, you could just swipe, tap, and hand over your iPhone or iPad without having to worry about anyone accessing anything else that's on it — or simply running away with it unlocked.

You could be a good Samaritan without having to risk your privacy, security, or property.

This feature request has been filed with Apple as rdar://35535596.

Mail's VIP — short for Very Important Person — feature is great. It lets you "star" the people most important to you, then enable sound, vibration, and Lock screen notifications just and only for them. It's a terrific way to make sure you're alerted when you get email that matters, and avoid being interrupted when it doesn't. It's so good it shouldn't be limited to the Mail app — it should be system-level and available to Messages — even Twitter and Instagram.

Since Apple's about to start work on iOS 12, here's my pitch for getting universal VIP onto the feature list!

VIP, yeah you get through to me

The line between notification and interruption is fuzzy. To paraphrase a line from The Incredibles, when everything is special, nothing is. When everything gets your attention, you lose the ability to focus.

Right now, my iPhone and iPad only beep or buzz when a VIP Mail comes in. That way, I can be reasonably certain that if they do beep or buzz, it's because something really does need my attention, and in short order. Messages, in contrast, has no VIP setting, making notifications all or nothing. And since my friends, family, and colleagues use iMessage and SMS to contact me when things are urgent or they need to make sure I see something, I can't turn those notifications off — it has to default to all. And that includes the carrier offers, fake cruise contests, and all the other spam that comes in from time to time.

Apple just introduced CallKit for iOS 10, so VoIP apps could better integrate with the Lock and phone screens. Having a VIPKit would be great so apps could fully integrate with the contact settings as well. That way, Twitter, Messenger, Snapchat, and the like could be first-class VIP apps as well.

VIP could also fold in Phone Favorites, which is currently a separate list that, unlike VIP, doesn't sync with iCloud. Conversely, VIP could be made capable of punching through Do Not Disturb, the way Favorites does. That way, if you choose to enable it, you won't miss critical calls or critical messages.

Watch it scale

All of this is even more important on Apple Watch, of course, where the lack of granularity in notifications beyond Mail VIP makes some apps unmanageable.

Overall, VIP moving from a Mail feature to a system-level based in Contacts, available in all apps feels like not only a more functional solution, but a more consistent one. And that's why I'd love to see it in iOS 11.

What's on your wish list?

What would you love to see Apple do with notifications in iOS 12? Let me know!

I've filed this as a feature request with Apple's bug reporter: rdar://19198048. Let me know what you think about it in the comments below!

Updated September 29, 2017 for iOS 12.

Nintendo Switch lets you game like a console in your living room, then pick up and take your gaming on the go. Instead of an Apple TV — or NES! — box, it's more like an iPad that can dock to your TV for room-filling fun. Google's Chromecast achieves something similar but in an entirely different way: through a dongle rather than a dock. Even Amazon's latest Fire TV offers a lot in a small, cheap package.

There's much to recommend Apple TV 4K's dedicated, powerful device approach, including separate local storage, A10X processing, and updates that won't depend on big media houses supporting hundreds of different "smart-TV" platforms. But what if we could have the best of all worlds?

Last year I traveled a lot to do training for some of our new writers. In one of the offices, we had two old-school Apple TVs attached to two big screens on opposite sides of the building. They were used as inexpensive and convenient conduits for AirPlay — Apple's wireless content beaming system — so we could quickly share what was on our Macs, iPads, and iPhones, with everyone in the room.

When I travel to San Francisco I often stay at a hotel that has old-school Apple TVs attached to every television set as well. That way, once you're on the hotel network, you're just a few steps away from AirPlaying any of your stuff to the big screen in front of you. Rather than having to learn a new channel grid or suffer through yet another terrible set-top box experience, you get content that's yours through an interface you're already familiar with.

But those are both exceptions. I'd love a rule.

The Play's the thing

Like CarPlay, which lets your device and content take over the interface of the car — and eliminates the confusion historically associated with everything from upgrades to rentals — AirPlay does much the same anywhere there's a television. It's so great that, when I end up in an office or hotel room without an Apple TV, I miss it tremendously. Sure, I could pick up an extra Apple TV box and make sure I have it with me at all times, but that feels like overkill. I don't really need a box, Siri, or apps for that. I simply need AirPlay.

I need it enough that it makes me long for something like Google's Chromecast dongle — a tiny device that plugs into an HDTV and then simply lets me stream from my iPhone, iPad, or Mac to the big screen. Chromecast Ultra already supports 4K, so I assume a light-weight Apple TV dongle could do the same.

I'd love it if Apple built the basic Apple TV experience into iOS 12, where the logic stays on the iPad or iPhone but the interface and content projects onto your television through the tiny device — AirPlay Express or Apple TV Express, or whatever name best fits.

The TV app already exists on iPhone and iPad. Making it the doorway to Apple TY Express may not be that much of a stretch.

It would be great for offices where all that's wanted is screen mirroring, great for travelers who want the smallest amount of hardware possible in their pockets or luggage — great for anyone who just wants what's in their hands to be up on their TV. And, like CarPlay, it would make hardware updates less of a concern — every time iOS is updated, Apple TV Express would be updated as well.

Room at the bottom

Apple has Airport Extreme and a less expensive Airport Express. The current Apple TV 4K is supplemented on the lower end the previous Apple TV (1080p). But it's still much more expensive than competing streaming boxes. An Apple streaming stick could be a great alternative: The full-on Apple TV for those who want a dedicated box and an Apple TV Express for those who simply want to project content onto a screen right now.

There's any number of reasons why Apple would never make a TV streaming stick. But every time I think about it, I wish they would.

What do you want to see?

Would you use an AirPlay streaming stick? What else would you want to see in iOS 12? Let me know in the comments!

Updated September 28, 2017, to include recent product changes, competitors, and the next big software release, iOS 12.

Since Apple Watch launched in 2015, Apple has announced new band collections every spring and fall to date. In addition to the original sport, leathers, and metal bands, we've seen woven nylon, sport loops, Nike, and Hermès added to the mix, as have a plethora of new colors. As fall 2018 approaches, what might we see from the next round of Apple Watch bands? Let's take a look.

Check out the current Apple Watch band collection

New colors

New Apple Watch band colors are a given: We're expecting new shades for many of Apple's classic bands, including the sport band and classic leather; they'll also likely match any new silicon and leather iPhone cases that the company releases.

Stripes and co-colors have been the rage as of late, but we could also see diamonds, triangles, zig-zags, or anything at all coming up in the Fall.

New link bracelets

Although Apple gave them to some celebrities, the company never released gold or rose gold link bracelet editions. The same holds true for the new ceramic edition. Other watch vendors that offer ceramic cases offer ceramic bracelets to go with them. No doubt, an Apple ceramic link bracelet would be expensive, but it would also glorious.

Additionally, anodized gold and rose gold (to match the aluminum cases) may not be resilient enough for Apple — but I have a suspicion many people would love to see them anyway.

More Nike+ and Hermes

Since Nike+'s release, we've also seen custom Nike+ bands appear in the store as stand-alones; this season should be no different.

All bands in all sizes

Since launch, the Leather Loop has only been available for the 42mm casing and the modern buckle, the 38mm. Sadly, wrists and tastes come in all shapes and sizes, and some would love smaller loops and bigger buckles.

Making all bands available to all people is simply the right thing to do. Hopefully, Apple does it!

Deploy! Deploy! Deploy!

The deployant (deployment in English, and if you really want to annoy the watcherati) gives you the look of a leather buckle but the convenience of a clasp. Apple currently offers one, but only in partnership with Hermès. An Apple single deployment proper would be great for the ceramic Watch specifically. Many other watch makers currently offer deployment, sometimes by default, because the loop is safer — less chance the ceramics will fall and hit hard tiles or floorboards. Versions for the other Apple Watch finishes would be great in general as well.

Lotsa leather options

Rally straps are leather buckles or deployments that have three or more distinctive holes punched on either side. Based on old-time racing gloves, think of them like the Nike+ bands — stylish yet breathable.

Aviators are another leather option. They feature extra-long bands that, traditionally, fit over pilot jackets, and rivets that give them a distinctly detailed look.

Much more metal

Sure, Apple has the Milanese, but what about the shark mesh? And the link bracelet is great, but what about an oyster or engineer? There's more than one way to make a metal mesh or segments steel, and we'd love to see a clever take from Apple on yet more classics.

Whether there's a market for the higher-end bands, I'm not sure. But perhaps they could serve as part of yet more partner plays?

Speaking of partner plays...

It would be great to see more team-ups like Hermès and Nike+, and even more separate endeavors like Coach. What would be even greater would be some sort of mechanism that allowed you to unlock special watch faces when you buy the bands, even separately.

For example, pick up a Hermès or Nike+ strap, enter the code that comes with it, and get the Hermès or Nike+ watch face. Or, as my colleague, Lory Gil put it — like Amiibo for Apple Watch!

What Apple Watch looks are you looking forward to this fall?

Just because Apple gave us new looks this spring doesn't mean we're guaranteed new looks this fall, but it's one of the easiest ways for Apple to breathe new life into the watch lineup on an ongoing basis. You can change up the look with just a couple quick presses and slides and go from fun to fancy or sport to social.

So, a few new colors would be great. A few new styles, terrific. What do you think we'll see from Apple Watch in Fall 2018?

Updated March 27 2018: Added info about new Apple Watch bands.

Apple Music is Apple's attempt to move from the old buy-and-download model of iTunes to the fun-filled future of subscription streaming. It... got off to a rough start. The free three month trial was great, the utter confusion surrounding iTunes Match, versioning, and DRM, and the overloaded app, not so much.

Last year, Apple Music got refocused and redesigned. The service, at least ostensibly, got simpler and the app, bigger, bolder, and more beautiful. It made Apple Music better, inarguably, but did it make it better enough?

If Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine, Trent Reznor, Boz, and the rest of the Apple Music brain trust asked you what you wanted to see from the subscription service in 2017, what would you tell them?

• Continuity handoff so you can start listening on one device and seamlessly continue on another.
• Apple Music for iCloud so you can access all your music from any browser.
• Separate Apple Music app for the Mac. (And thumbs up/down from Touch Bar on the Mac!)
• Beats 2: Classical, Beats 3: Country, Beats 4: Sports!
• Increased device limit for family plan (four people times three devices = pain!)
• Social sharing for playlists — let everyone become an all-star DJ!
• More original programing like Netflix!
• Apple Music built into AirPods 2!

In other words, what would it take to get you to subscribe to Apple Music, and nothing else, for all your streaming needs?

Back in 2014, Apple gave us the big 4.7-inch iPhone and the bigger 5.5-inch iPhone Plus. To make up for the increased height, they also gave us reachability mode, which yanked the interface halfway down and brought top-of-the-screen controls down into usable range. What they didn't give us, though, was something to make up for increased width and general heft. Something like a one-handed keyboard? It'd be great to see in iOS 11.

Everything old...

It's long been rumored that Apple experimented with a one-handed keyboard to go along with the original iPhone 6 Plus but ultimately chose not to ship it. Recently, that keyboard was unearthed, like an artifact hidden deep within iOS.

Perhaps this specific implementation wasn't ideal, or Apple simply didn't like the idea in general, but the concept looks to have a lot of merit. It also looks more attractive than similar implementations from other vendors of bigger phones.

Thumb happy

Apple obviously isn't averse to variant keyboards. iPad shipped with a split keyboard at launch. It was designed to make thumb typing easier on a much, much bigger screen. (Interestingly, the 12-inch iPad Pro ditched the split keyboard since it was too much, much, much bigger for it to make sense any more.)

Maybe for iPhone Plus, it makes the right kind of sense? It shares the challenge of typing one-handed, and not just because of width, but because of the weight distribution as well.

To use the default keyboard one-handed with an iPhone Plus, you have to be able to reach all the way across or juggle the phone over a bit to get to the opposite side. Biasing the more common typing characters to one side or another minimizes the amount of reaching or juggling you have to do, letting you better balance the weight, and better communicate one-handed.

I haven't had a chance to try the implementation pictures above, but I'd love to. If it made iMessage, Twitter, and other text-intensive tasks easier when I'm out walking, bag across my back, coffee in one hand, iPhone 7 Plus in the other, I'd be ecstatic.

Your wish list?

Would you want a one-handed keyboard in iOS 11? Let me know!

When Apple introduced AirPrint to iOS, they made it incredibly easy to send files right from your iPhone or iPad to any compatible Wi-Fi printer in the vicinity. What the original version was lacking, though, was Print to PDF. Apple recently fixed that by adding "Save PDF to iBooks" to the Share Sheet, but it forces iBooks into the process and offers barely any options. Here's hoping iOS 11 can make it better!

State of the PDF

You don't hear about Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) files very often these days. Originally meant as a way to digitally render printed pages, they never proved dynamic and flexible enough for the web. But for many professions and many industries, they remain a staple. And for many people, PDF files are something they have to deal with all day, every day.

iOS makes it possible now, and with App Store apps, it even makes it powerful. But for casual use, the built-in support is still cumbersome.

Here's how the current Save PDF to iBooks feature works:

1. Go to the content you want to save as a PDF.
2. Tap the Share button.
3. Tap Save PDF to iBooks.
4. Go to the PDF in iBooks.
5. Tap the Share button.
6. Choose Email.
7. Email the PDF to yourself.
8. Open Mail.
9. Open the email containing your PDF.
10. Tap the Share button.
11. Choose the share option you want to use.

If you have an iPhone 6s or iPhone 7 with 3D Touch, you can do it much faster.

1. Go to the content you want to save as a PDF.
2. Tap the Print button.
3. Press firmly (3D Touch) on the preview to pop it into a full-screen PDF.
4. Tap on the Share button.
5. Choose the share option you want to use.

It saves a lot of steps, but it's not at all intuitive, and it's not available to anyone with any other iPhone, or any iPad at all.

A better PDFuture

iOS was built on macOS which, in part, was built on PDF. As such, PDF should just work. With that in mind, here's what I'd love to see:

1. Go to the content you want to save as a PDF.
2. Tap the Share button.
3. Tap Create PDF.
4. Tap on the Share button.
5. Choose the share option you want to use.

With that you could still get "Send to iBooks", but also "Copy", "Send to Notes", "Mail", or anything else available from the Share Sheet.

No intermediation, no lack of discoverability. Just easy, first-class PDF creation on iOS the way we've had it on Mac for years. The circle, complete.

Your PDF wish list?

How would you like to see PDFs handled in iOS 11? Let me know your wish list.

I've filed this feature request with Apple. Anyone with access can view — or dupe! — at rdar://28766039.

Once upon a time iPhone was utterly dependent on iTunes on the PC. It synced everything, it managed everything, and it kept everything backed up. Then came iCloud, which cut the tether and promised us a future post-PC. Flash forward to now and we have iPhones that come with up to 256 GB of on-board storage. While iCloud now offers up to 2 TB of storage, the free tier still tops out at 5 GB. What if iOS 11 could change that?

Comparing Apples to Googles

Google recently made headlines with their new Pixel Phone by Google which, aside from its unabashedly iPhone-like looks, comes with free, full-resolution backup for all photos. Google, in general, has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to free storage, be it for Gmail back in the day, Drive for years, or Photos now.

Apple, on the other hand, introduced iCloud with 5 GB of free storage and, despite cutting prices and upping capacity of the paid tiers over the years, has stayed with 5 GB.

There are some things that iCloud includes "for free", notably iTunes Store and App Store content since Apple is already storing those on their servers and simply has to let you re-download them when and as needed. Most everything else, though, you have to pay for.

You have to pay for Google too, of course, you're just paying in data instead of money.

As I've covered numerous times, for most people paying with money is tangible. You see the cash leaving your wallet or the numbers growing on your credit card statement or shrinking on your bank account balance. Paying with data, though, feels "free". You don't see your intimate pictures and messages drifting up out of your device and onto servers sitting miles and miles away.

Google wants your data to help train its artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision system, and they'll pay you with storage capacity to get it.

Apple doesn't want your data, claims they don't need it to train AI, ML, and CV, so it charges you money for the storage capacity.

But what if Apple didn't? What if they were willing to pay you with storage capacity, just to give you a better experience?

A few dollars here and there...

I always wince when I hear pundits say "Apple should just..." and then rattle off a list of things they'd love Apple to toss into the box or bill of goods. It's always justified by the supposed low cost of each of the freebies, but they're seldom, if ever, added up and then multiplied across hundreds of millions of devices. For a company like Apple, the dimmest bulbs in Wall Street monitor every sub-cent of margins. In other words, there's no such thing as nominal cost at iPhone scale.

Yet Apple spends its budget on iPhone all the time. Chamfered edges aren't purely cosmetic, but they reflect Apple's attitude of doing what's difficult — and expensive — all in the name of a better product.

There's precedent on the software side as well. Once upon a time, iWork apps were paid. It would cost you double-digit dollars to get Keynote, Numbers, and Pages on iOS. Then, one day, Apple made them free for every new iPhone and iPad owner.

You might think apps don't have the same recurring costs as storage, but when you include ongoing development, especially new cloud-based features like collaboration, they do.

Apple used to charge for Mac software updates as well — even iOS updates for iPod touch — and then the company realized there was greater value to be had in giving them away, even if it cost them.

Setting backups free

Photo backup is nice. Device backup is the real prize, though. Right now, if someone really wants all their data backed up, they more than likely have to run back to iTunes on Windows or Mac. That's especially true for Apple's best customers, who likely have multiple iPhones and iPads.

That's not good for us, and it's not good for Apple.

By giving everyone who buys an iPhone or iPad enough free iCloud storage to backup that device, Apple finally cuts that iTunes tether and fully moves us into the post-PC world.

It also makes sure anyone new to iPhone or iPad doesn't see it as a partial, annoying service that pops up out-of-capacity errors every time it tries to backup. Instead, they don't see it at all. It just works. And the experience it creates is one of a peace-of-mind.

No one ever has to worry about backing up a device or, more importantly for Apple, moving to their next iPhone or iPad.

Your wish list?

Would free backups make a big difference to you? What else would you like to see in iOS 11

With iOS 10, Apple has brought "raise to wake" to iPhone. It's great for when you pull your iPhone from your pocket or pick it up from the table, and just want to see your lock screen info. When your iPhone is still sitting on that table, though, and you don't want to pick it up … not so great. That's why I'm hoping we get "tap to wake" as well, either in an iOS 10.1, iOS 10.2, iOS 10.3, or even iOS 11.

Watch this!

When Apple introduced the Watch, convenience was its killer feature. Part of that convenience came with how the screen worked. If you raised your wrist, it would wake up.

If your wrist was already turned though, instead of having to re-turn it, you got a second option: Tap the screen. That would wake it up just as fast.

iPhone now has the former, but it doesn't have the latter. And I can't help but think the latter — tap to wake — would make the convenience complete.

Tap for that!

Tapping to wake a phone isn't a new idea. It's been implemented by other vendors before. Having Apple implement it on the iPhone, though, would be particularly useful.

Let's say you're sitting in a meeting, or having coffee with someone, or just watching the climax to a movie, and you see a notification or many come in. You can't always glance at them in real time, and when you can't, the screen goes back to sleep, making them impossible to glance at.

Sure, you could pick your iPhone up and take a look, but that's super obvious to everyone else in the meeting, across the table, or even just to you as you continue watching. So's hitting the sleep/wake (power) button. Even hitting the Home button, virtual or OG, is more obvious and risks Touch ID blowing through the Lock screen and the notifications you want to glance at.

Reaching over and subtly tapping the screen, though, would be easy and discreet.

False wakes could be an issue, and cost battery life, but requiring a double tap or a two finger tap could minimize that.

Your wish list?

Apple could well consider "tap to wake" on iPhone unnecessary, given "raise to wake" and the buttons. For me, though, it feels natural. Like a little jab to get attention. I use it all the time on Apple Watch, and find myself trying it — even though I know it doesn't work — on iPhone just out of habit.

So, I'd welcome it on iPhone — but what about you?

I've filed this feature request with Apple. It can be found at rdar://28532764.

Handoff — the feature when you can start an activity on one device and continue it on another — was introduced a couple of years ago. Since then, we've gotten the ability to unlock our Macs with Apple Watch and authorize Apple Pay on the web with Touch ID on our iPhones. What we haven't gotten is the ability to start listening to our playlist on Mac and then walk away and have it seamlessly switch to our iPhone. It would be great to be able to start watching The Flash on Apple TV and then, when you're tired, take it with you to bed on your iPad. Maybe Apple's working on something from iOS 10.1, iOS 10.2, or iOS 10.3. If not, I'd love to see handoff for iTunes as part of iOS 11

Handoff all the things

Continuity, which includes handoff, was a revelation. Instead of just syncing data, it synced activity — what you were working on and the state of that work. It led to even more cool stuff, like being able to tell Siri to "remember this" and Siri being able to bookmark what you were doing and where, and take you right back to it anytime you wanted.

Super. Cool.

Even handoff by itself is amazing. You can start an email on your iPhone and then switch to Mac to really pound it out. You can prep a Keynote on your Mac and then make last-minute adjustments on your iPad right before the pitch. You can even start a call on your Apple Watch and complete it on your iPhone. For messaging, browsing, document editing, and more, it's ludicrously great. As long as you're logged into the same Apple ID, and in proximity, everything you do can be started, continued, or finished on all of your devices.

Almost.

Handoff currently doesn't work with anything iTunes — music, movies, TV shows, etc. — or with the Apple TV.

Though Handoff shipped in 2014, Apple bought Beats in 2015 and my guess is that — and the new Apple Music service that followed — complicated matters. Figuring out how to bring the past into the future is no easy task.

Technology alone...

Apple seems to have everything in place to enable handoff for iTunes and Apple Music.

Continuity works by using Bluetooth LE to broadcast activities, then activates the internet, iCloud, or direct peer-to-peer Wi-Fi transfer to make that activity's content available on other devices to continue those activities. So, iMore for Safari on the Mac would trigger Safari for iPhone to load iMore as well. Keynote on iPad would cause Keynote on your Mac to check for the current file in iCloud Drive and, if so, grab it. A half-composed Mail message on the iPhone might push the content of that Mail message right to the iPad.

Doing peer-to-peer Wi-Fi transfer is okay with small files. Trying to push a 1.3 GB TV show file or 3-4 GB movie file, however, is an entirely different matter. That why I've kept this constrained to iTunes and not talked about audio and video files in general.

iTunes and Apple Music content is available on iCloud's servers: That's how we're able to re-download music, movies, and TV shows we've already purchased. It's also how Apple Music can just start playing almost any song any time you ask for it.

So, extending Handoff to iTunes and Apple Music could take advantage of the existing systems. Apple ID would make sure who is involved in the transaction and that they're authorized. Bluetooth LE would take care of proximity and broadcast that you're listening or watching, what you're listening or watching, and where you are in the timeline. Pick up another device, and that request goes to Apple's servers, finds the iTunes content, and starts streaming from exactly that point.

Even more media

Because Netflix and other streaming services work in a similarly cloud-centric way, my guess is they could work in a similar way for Handoff as well. You can already open the Netflix app on any device, find the show you were watching, and resume it. Handoff would just make the process faster — you wouldn't have to open the app and find the show, you'd just swipe or tap and keep watching.

Continuity, like extensibility and on-demand resources, is transformative. It unbundles apps, letting their discreet functionality come to where ever you are. It decouples the interface and changes it from pull to push. It's going to change the way we use our devices.

We've already gotten the next generation Apple Music service and the all-new Apple TV. All we need now is handoff to tie it all together. Here's hoping iOS 11 can deliver!

Your wish list?

What would you like to see for handoff and continuity in iOS 11? Let me know!

We've filed a feature request for Handoff for iTunes with Apple: rdar://25024354. Dupes appreciated. Also comments below if it's also a feature you'd like to see!

Right now, if I hand my iPhone or iPad to someone to see a photo, social media posting, make an emergency call, or check out a website, I'm also handing over access to all my messages, personal photos, and even passwords and credit cards. iOS 10 has just shipped, and iOS 10.1, iOS 10.2, or iOS 10.3 might have a trick or two up their sleeves. But Apple's already hard at work setting up for iOS 11, and one of the things I'm hoping makes the feature list is optional Touch ID and password protection for every app.

Touch ID everywhere

That's far, far easier to write than to engineer of course. Apps are interconnected. With Photos, there's the ImagePicker that lets you pull images and videos into other apps. With Messages, there's the Share Sheet extension that lets you send almost anything to almost any one. With Health, there's syncing data both into and out of other apps and even accessories.

Managing all of that at the app level — which is what the Touch ID API allows everything from password managers to bank apps to do already — is one thing. Managing all of that at the individual item level us quite another.

In other words, you don't get asked for Touch ID or a password simply to open the Notes app. You get asked for Touch ID or a password to open protected notes inside the app. That same kind of granularity could apply to other apps, depending on the type of data they contain.

For example, Messages could allow the protection of individual conversation threads. Health of entire categories. Photos could offer both protected Albums and protected pictures and videos.

Albums would require passcode or Touch ID to open, individual pictures and videos would be visible and accessible only when the protected album was unlocked. Neither would show up in Moments, Collections, Years, or ImagePickers outside the protected album.

Scaling security

Protecting the entire app, like a password manager or bank client, could make sense for Notes, Messages, Health, and other apps as well. It could be enabled on an app-by-app basis in Settings, the same way Notifications or Location are. Toggle on and you're asked for your passcode or Touch ID. (Whether or not per-app passcodes would be beneficial or burdensome is another question.)

Protecting the individual items, like in Notes for iOS 9.3 might only make sense in some specific cases. Either way, just like Notes, it would let us keep any health, financial, picture, document, password, or other data safe and secure, regardless of what it is or where we keep it.

(If done right, it might even obviate the need for a Guest Mode and GuestBoard.)

App Store apps could even move their Touch ID options out of the per-app settings and into the unified Touch ID settings, making for a more consistent experience.

The biggest issue is the passwords themselves. Notes requires you to create a specific password just for Notes, which then also allows Touch ID to "fill" it. Having to create — and remember — an app-specific password for each app would be odious if not impossible.

Currently I only remember my 1Password app password, and copy out everything else to paste in for my banking app, even Notes when it doesn't come immediately to mind.

Perhaps Keychain could help here, perhaps I'm just leaving in a beautiful dream world. Either way, here's hoping Apple is already working on something like that for an iOS 10 update... or iOS 11!

What's on your wish list?

What do you want to see when it comes to iOS 11 app security? Let me know!

I've filed this as a feature request with Apple: rdar://24817355. If you have any ideas about securing iOS at the app or item level, let me know below!

At WWDC 2016, we got a preview of iOS 10's bigger, bolder new design language, but unlike the new version of tvOS, dark theming was conspicuously absent from the forthcoming iPhone and iPad operating system. I understand why the company chose to exclude it, but quite frankly: This is a mistake.

The reasons for (and against) a dark mode

Partial interfaces with dark dressing have been found in the iOS 10 code base, which might indicate Apple is still exploring the possibility. Since it's only a few screens for a few apps, though, it also might indicate Apple hasn't really made up its mind.

Many assume a future iPhone or iPad will use AMOLED display technology, like Apple Watch, and will need a power-saving dark mode to make the most of it, also like Apple Watch. Since 3D Touch is currently dependent on LED, though, and a future iPhone or iPad is, well, still in the future, I'm going to address why it matters even in the here and now.

As Rene has written about time and time again, there are many good reasons to institute a Dark mode or system-wide Night theme. White screens are hard on the eyes, even with Night Shift enabled, and a Dark mode may also help users with accessibility issues more than the standard Invert Colors option (which helps, but not much). Several default apps in iOS already support a Night mode, including iBooks and Maps; many third-party programs offer the option, too. And iOS 10's custom Color Filters accessibility option already allows users to tweak colors across the spectrum for various vision ailments — why not create a version of that picker that only affects toolbars and widgets?

Additionally, the iPhone and iPad are the odd devices out at this point: The Mac has a Dark mode. Apple TV is getting a Dark mode in the fall. Apple Watch has a de facto Dark mode thanks to its OLED screen.

But despite all the potential good will toward a dark theme, there are still arguments against it. For one, it takes engineering hours to reengineer graphics, and there are quite a few apps that would need to be reworked. Think about iOS 10's new notification and widget bubbles: Third-party designers and developers specifically would have to make sure that any content they include looks great on both the light-grey theming and a darker option.

There's also the question of just how many users would turn the thing on in the first place: With so many exciting ongoing projects at Apple these days, it's hard to dedicate weeks and months to an ultimately-niche feature.

Choice is wonderful

Here's the thing: With over one billion iOS devices, "niche" no longer means what it once did. Even if only 1 percent enable a Dark theme on iOS 10, we're still talking about ten million devices. Even assuming only a fraction of those billion devices are actively used, we're still talking about hundreds of thousands of users. On iMore alone, an informal poll resulted in over 2600 people claiming they'd upgrade or switch to iOS from Android to have a Dark theme, with 829 "possibly interested" and only 292 "Not interested."

There's precedent for multiple themes to fit user choice, too: The iPhone and iPad have had them externally for years now. If you want an iPhone with a white faceplate or a dark one, you can buy one directly from Apple — no external mods required.

Multiple iPhone colors may have been discussed as a "niche" market at one time, but that time is long gone: iPhones, iPads, Watch models, and even Macs have adopted multiple case colors.

If the supply chain can manufacture hundreds of hardware options to help users find the best fit for their style and computing habits, I bet Apple can spare the engineering hours to finish up Dark mode and launch it alongside iOS 10. What say you?

We've filed this feature request with Apple. It can be found at rdar://19760524 (closed as a dupe of rdar://11786790). Do you want a system-wide dark or night theme? Let us know below!

iPhone OS launched nine years ago this June; in that time, we've gone from iPhone to iPad, no third-party apps to the App Store, and from something brand new to something running on a billion devices around the world. Yet on the eve of WWDC 2016, there remain many features we'd love to see iOS 10 branch out and conquer.

Let's start with the setup assistant. It's gotten… rather long and involved. What could Apple do to make setting up a new iPhone or iPad easier and quicker?

Serenity

Much as I loathe the current setup assistant, I'm not sure what Apple could do to simplify matters without taking away initial device functionality. It's a pain for me, but I set up an iOS device as new almost every month; the average user may only see the assistant once a year, if that, and it may not be nearly as arduous a process for them.

I do think that Apple should make the process of restoring from backup a little swifter: Most backup-related material could hypothetically be done over the air (like restoring apps) after the system is in place, but iCloud backups still often take 45 minutes to two hours to restore properly. It'd be nice to see a faster method for getting the end-user a working device more quickly after restoring from backup.

Bader

I'm going to start off a little ranty: I really, thoroughly dislike the new iPhone setup routine. It's long, yes, but it's increasingly disjointed and confusing. Worse is when you need to restore from a previous device; setting up the device as new forces you to reinstall and reconfigure all of your apps manually, while restoring from iCloud (which is the more common scenario over a local Mac backup) is an all-or-nothing affair. The problem is that there is usually a considerable amount of cruft in my iCloud backups. I like Android's solution here: selective restoration of apps and settings. If that were possible, I'd probably spend less time downloading and logging into the 30 or so essential apps I use every day.

On the iPad, the setup procedure has not been optimized for the larger screen real estate, which is very unlike Apple, and gives an unfavorable first impression. So let's change that, too, while we're at it.

Lory

It's been a long time since I've set up an iPhone from new. I usually restore one from a recent backup. But, even when I'm syncing content from a backup, the setup process does take a long time. For a brand new iPhone or iPad owner, this could probably seem daunting. It might be helpful if Apple implemented a way to enable the setup features only when you are about to need to use them. For example, Apple could postpone requesting you to decide on Location Services until you actually open the Maps app or another app that requires the feature.

Mikah

Hold up, is it actually called setup buddy? You learn something new …

I do get tired of going through the setup process over and over and over and over again, but I think I prefer it to the alternative: not having nuanced control over the basic settings for my device. I mean, most settings have a Skip button — if you don't feel like setting something up, just skip over it. I guess if there's anything I'd like to see changed, it's that iOS would get a little smarter about knowing whether I'm setting up a brand new device or just updating the operating system on a device I'm currently using. Rene's Manual vs. Automatic paths are essentially what I'm looking for.

Gartenberg

It's actually gotten better over time. Remember the first iPhone. I talked to a few new users, they had no issues with the current setup. Longer time users might have some complaints but hard to do much better

Rene

I'd split Setup Buddy into two paths at this point: manual and automatic. Manual would let you individually toggle and set up each and every feature. Automatic would have you log into iCloud, setup Touch ID, Siri, and Apple Pay, and set everything else to default. Then, at the end, give the option to review settings, and the ability to go back through it at any time.

Siri is on everyone's short list. How can Apple's digital assistant capture more natural language hearts and minds?

Serenity

Siri needs reliability, speed, and smarts to truly vault over the rest of the voice assistant pack. And some sort of access to third-party apps.

Bader

We've spoken about this at length, but Siri needs to graduate from virtual high school. The assistant is pretty capable already, but I want Siri to be able to plug into third-party apps so, in addition to starting a playlist from Apple Music, I can do so from Spotify or TIDAL, or (god forbid) Google Play Music.

And let me input text to chat with Siri instead of relying almost entirely on voice. Spotlight search is already pretty good, but let's take that one step further.

Lory

Siri needs to be better at learning how we talk. If I use a lot of "ums" and "ers," it should learn my style and adjust accordingly. It should take into account regional accents and people who speak using a secondary language. It also needs to get better at understanding vagaries. I'd really be happy if the first time I asked Siri to do something, it got it right.

Mikah

Wait, didn't we talk about this recently? ;)

I want Siri to take a few pages out of the Amazon Alexa playbook. I want to trust my virtual assistant again; right now I opt out of using Siri as often as possible, because it disappoints me more often than it does what I ask it to do. If Apple could improve Siri's success rate, open it up to third parties, and improve upon its existing capabilities, I'll be a happy camper. But that's a lot to ask, so we'll see!

Gartenberg

Siri needs to become HAL 9000 but without the locking me out of myself and trying to kill me. For the foreseeable future? It's all more smoke and mirrors, AI is a long way off. I hope

Rene

Voice ID has stopped accidental and malicious activations, but intentional ones still aren't reliable enough. I'd also like to have alternate activation phrases and the ability to type rather than talk to Siri. And yes, Siri Voice Free.

An API would be great, since the more services the better the overall service, but it would need to handle competing and colliding apps and services gracefully, and work internationally. No small feat.

I'd also love more of "this". "Remind me about this" is great. "Share this", and letting me send anything to iMessage, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc., "Read this" and having any text converted to speech, "Protect this" and having it lock down, and so on would be phenomenally convenient.

What about the venerable Home screen? Can Apple let Siri and Spotlight slowly take over, or does it need a re-thinking? iPad-specific?

Serenity

I've spoken at length about my iPad home screen desires, so I won't expound on those too much more here. Needless to say, we're about to hit iOS 10 — not only is 10 a significant milestone, but it's a pretty good excuse for taking another look at the Home screen and the purpose it serves. Personally, I would love to see some widget/Notification Center integration straight on the screen, rather than endless rows of apps and folders.

Bader

I rarely use the homescreen to launch apps anymore. I either swipe down to launch from Spotlight, or already have it open and 3D Touch on the left side of my iPhone 6s Plus to quickly open the multitasking menu. The problem right now, though, is that many apps added Spotlight Search capabilities with iOS 9, but there is no way to prioritize those listings. I often want to jump into Transit app to check when the next 505 streetcar is coming (the name of the line), but typing that into Spotlight brings up a number of results before it figures out that I am talking about Transit App.

On the iPad, I want better density on the home screen, and improved keyboard shortcuts for getting around.

Lory

I love the idea of the Home screen being something more like a dashboard where you keep widgets similar to how the Today view in Notification Center works. I use spotlight more often than not when looking for an app I want to open, so there really is no need to keep apps on the Home screen at all. I would be much happier if I could use a widget that showed me the current temperature or upcoming calendar events instead.

Mikah

This is going to upset a few people, but I'd love to see an Androidy Home screen. I like widgets, I like nuanced control over the placement of my apps, and I like hiding or showing apps at my discretion. Forgive me for the blasphemy, but I think Android is superior when it comes to the Home screen paradigm.

As it stands, I mostly use Spotlight search to find and launch apps I use less frequently. My most used apps exist on their own on my Home screen; the rest are stashed in folders labeled with single letters (I don't have the time or the desire to organize them).

Gartenberg

a screen of icons worked… for the first iPhone. Even folders don't work. It's time to think beyond grids of apps and folders of apps

Rene

As much as some people turn their noses up at the Home page, the static grid of icons is what's made iOS accessible to the widest group of people in the history of computing. The "minus one" Home screen has recommended apps, that offer a dynamic alternative, and Spotlight and Siri allow for targeted launch on demand. 3D Touch even lets you launch straight into actions inside apps.

That said, I think I'd prefer recommended and favorite apps in Notification Center, so they're available everywhere and at any time. Rich notifications would be great as well. With extensibility, features can be pulled from apps and shown anywhere. Why not in notifications?

For iPad, I'd still love it if Apple gave it a distinct, tablet-optimized Home screen, the way the company has Watch and TV. I know Apple sees Home screen as a portal and not a destination, and I have a hard time imagining what would be valuable enough that sacrificing consistency with iPhone would be worth it, but it feels like there could be something there. And not just multiple picture-in-picture apps.

Speaking of which, better and more consistent ways of switching apps in Split View would be so nice. Left/primary one way and right/secondary another way just adds to cognitive load. Also, make it view based rather than app based, so multiple instances of the same app are possible, and add the ability to drag and drop data and objects between compatible views, and the sky's the limit.

I'd also love to be able to lock any app or data item with Touch ID or a password. That way, if I ever need to hand someone my iPhone or iPad, my messages, photos, documents, and other content could still be safe.

Control Center is easier — the evolution from static to dynamic content will make it more valuable all on its own.

Oh, and complications for the Lock screen please. Being able to see activity, weather, scores, calendar and reminders, and other small snippets of data and information would be fantastic.

Messaging is hot, hot, hot. Does iMessage need to evolve in a Google and Facebook bot world?

Serenity

Please! iMessage is one of my most-used chatting platforms, but I find myself missing bits from Slack, Facebook Messenger, and GroupMe, including support for inline links and gif searches. And what about emoji reactions? Third-party keyboards make this partially functional, but I'd much prefer a built-in iMessage toolbar for such things.

Also, I mentioned this in our OS X roundtable, but I would love for iMessage to treat group messages properly, and combine messages from the same person (but at different numbers) so they aren't all in separate threads.

Bader

I like iMessage, but I do want peer-to-peer money transfer support, in-line link expansion, and improved deactivation handoffs. This is a pretty specific problem, but as someone who regularly turns off iMessage while testing Android devices for Android Central, I often leave my friends in iMessage purgatory, where messaging me in an existing thread results in an error instead of automatically sending it as an SMS. I don't know what Apple can do to fix this, but perhaps even a prompt to create a new non-iMessage SMS thread would go a long way.

Lory

I don't think iMessage needs any kind of updates or changes. I am very happy with the features that Apple's native chat app comes with. You can send videos, audio clips, or text. You can use third-party keyboards to grab GIFs and stickers. I think bots have the potential to greatly improve convenience in our daily lives, but I don't think iMessage needs to participate in it. You have a choice when deciding to use a third-party chat app like Slack, Hangouts, or Messenger, but every cell phone uses some sort of texting feature and I wouldn't want to worry about what types of data my iPhone's text service was collecting in order to provide me with convenience.

Mikah

I don't need bots in my iMessage app, but man-oh-man do I want iMessage to be more like Slack! Heck, I've all but memorized all the Slack emoji shortcuts. It'd be so awesome to react to messages with emoji like I can in Slack. Doubling down, it'd also be nice to see link expansion in iMessage.

Daniel mentioned peer-to-peer money transfer; I don't know why Apple hasn't done this already. The latest hotness is totes sending money to your friends with an app or some other service. If Apple wants to supercharge Apple Pay adoption, peer-to-peer money transfer is a fantastic way to do so.

Gartenberg

I love messaging. It works. Please don't try to fix it.

Rene

I'd like confirmation dialogs so I can't accidentally send anyone a selfie or my location. The ability to favorite messages would also be helpful, as would moving VIP from a mail-only feature to a Contact-level feature so I can be notified for some but not all messages.

I'm not sure if "bots" of the future of messaging, but the ability to @siri, @notes, @calendar, etc. and immediately shoot text commands, queries, and strings without having to change contexts would be sweet.

Sending money would also be great, though would require far broader support, including peer-to-peer tap-to-Apple pay and a way to get money out of the system.

Camera and Photos, what needs to happen there?

Bader

I would like a native Professional Mode in the Camera app, or the option of defaulting to a third-party camera app from the lock screen. One or the other, Apple.

I'm thrilled with the Photos app, though. iCloud Photo Library works perfectly, and syncs quickly with its Mac counterpart.

Serenity

I'm with Bader: More manual features in the default Camera app, please. I love shooting with apps like Obscura, but the convenience factor is much lower; and when it comes down to it, I'm more likely to launch the Camera app from its shortcut than manually finding an app from the home screen.

On the Photos side, GIF support. Please. The lack of GIF display (and iCloud Photo Library archive support) is painful.

Lory

I've never been particularly impressed with the interface of the built-in Camera app. Zoom, for example, is painfully behind the times. You still have to use two-finger pinch to zoom in and out. How about a single-finger drag? I can't stand that all of the options and tools are right on the camera viewfinder screen when taking photos. I'd like to be able to hide them, so I can use the entire iPhone screen, unobscured.

The Photos app is pretty decent on iOS, especially on the iPhone. Content is organized chronologically in your personal collection, plus you can access content from various albums, including smart albums that automatically separate certain pictures based on available data, like Selfies, Panoramas, Snapchats, and more. The iCloud Photo Sharing feed is a little clunky. I'm not a fan of the Activity folder. It could use an updated interface design.

Mikah

Give me more power over my camera if I want it. I know there are loads of nifty third-party apps that offer up all the control in the world, but there's some sort of psychological block for me: I don't quite feel right taking control of the camera outside of the camera app. I know, weird.

As for Photos, leave it be! It's fast, it's friendly, and it's nice to look at. I guess if there's anything I'd like to see added here, it's more discovery features. I enjoy it when apps like Google Photos or Timehop send me a notification telling me to "remember X day." Apple should borrow this feature for Photos.

Gartenberg

The brilliance of camera is I don't need to futz with settings. If I want to do that, I'd use a Leica. I want camera to be simple and make all the hard decisions for me. I would like more control over cached files that Google Photos gives me

Rene

You can search for Faces in Photos, but only if you've set them up on the Mac. I'd love that to become native to iOS as well. Anything to make finding photos and videos faster.

I'd like a normalization of what starring means on iOS as well. In some apps it's bookmarking, in others biasing. What I'd really like is for anything I star to automatically go into an easy-to-find folder, and be cached locally and never purged.

Also, Live Photos folder please.

Okay, we've braced ourselves… Apple Music, go!

Serenity

Haven't I complained enough about Apple Music for one lifetime? No? Okay. My biggest picks for iOS 10 are an interface declutter, custom offline support for tracks, and making For You even better.

Bader

I'm with Lory: do a better job separating offline content from online, and break out iCloud Music Library content from Apple Music. And give me lyrics support.

Lory

I know that some people have been through a lot of pain and suffering in terms of Apple Music, but I've been fairly satisfied with the service, overall. I'd like Apple to get rid of Connect altogether because it seems like a waste of effort for all parties involved.

The user interface on iOS is a little awkward. It isn't easy to figure out how to access content by artist, album, or song unless you are familiar with the interface. If you turn on the "Only Downloaded Music" feature, you might accidentally confuse yourself when you can't find playlists you created, but haven't downloaded for offline listening. But the mechanics of the app work for me. I haven't spent the past 10 years crafting the perfect digital music library, though. So, I'm easier to please.

Mikah

Meh. Meh, meh, meh. Meh.

"Make it better" isn't a helpful request, so I'll say this: Restore my faith in Apple Music by making sure it does a better job letting me know what music is mine and what music isn't mine and helping me understand why sometimes I'll open up the app and all the music I downloaded for offline listening is suddenly not available locally anymore.

Oh, and I agree with my colleagues: HELLO, WHY DON'T I ALREADY HAVE LYRICS IN THE MUSIC APP‽

Gartenberg

ack. I don't like music anymore. The app that is. Too much pushing me to subscribe, a lousy UI. This needs a lot of thought, think first iPhone

Rene

Apple Music has an impossible job. Unlike most Apple apps, it lacks opinion and so tries to cater to too many disparate use cases for it to do any of them well.

I only ever use Music via Siri: "Play Mistachuck" and Mistachuck I get. Others want all nine versions of the same Ozzy song they've ripped and carefully tagged over the years. Let iTunes Match serve the old case, Apple Music the new, label both cleanly, and don't let them mess with each other's data.

For me, Continuity for media would be the biggest improvement Apple could do. That way I could start watching on my iPhone, handoff to Apple TV when I get into the living room, then handoff again to iPad when I want to retire for the evening, and never have to stop watching.

Any other Apple apps you'd like to see changed? Maps, Mail, Calendar, News?

Serenity

It'll never happen, but: Let me set my default routing app in Settings. I'd love to use Maps, since the app is actually quite good, but the data is just terrible in New England where I drive. On more than one occasion, I've been taken down strange side streets or unpaved roads; it's just not worth the hassle. The company could also improve its traffic data; Google is outright smoking Maps thanks to its Waze integration. (Google's new "multiple stops" and "search while on a current route" features are also must-haves for Maps.)

Bader

Let me hide or delete apps I don't use, like Maps, Mail, Calendar and News. I use third-party equivalents of all of these, and resent the increasingly-full "Rotten Apple" folder on my home screen.

As for the apps themselves, Maps needs better traffic data (for Toronto, at least) before it will replace Google Maps or Waze. Outlook or GTFO; I haven't used native Mail since Google turned off Exchange support for Gmail, because IMAP. Calendar? Fantastical 4 Lyfe. News? Bring it to Canada and we'll talk.

Sorry, I know that's not useful, but I can't talk about apps I don't use.

Lory

I don't use very many of Apple's built-in apps because there are so many third-party apps with better design aesthetic. I don't like the way the gestures work in the Mail app, or that you can't swipe to delete a message.

The calendar app is too plain. On iPhone, there is no weekly view in portrait mode and the combination monthly view with to-do list seems too packed. I'd also really like to be able to connect third-party apps like Trello or TripIt.

I was so disappointed with the Maps app when it first launched that I've never been able to get back into using it, even though I know Apple has made major improvements since it launched. However, it still lacks some important features that are essential for me. Until very recently, the Maps app didn't even have transportation data in my city, which is California's state capital. It's not like I live in a small, rural town or anything. The nearby business search feature could use some work.

What I'd really like, is to be able to hide built-in apps that I don't use. Sure, I can stick them in a folder and ignore them, but there should be an option to toggle them off on the Home screen if you don't use them. They could still be accessible from Spotlight search.

Mikah

Spoken like a bunch of power-users, I get the feeling most of us don't use many of Apple's built-in apps. As for me: * Maps: I use Google Maps. I used to use Apple Maps, but I started using Google Maps again four or so months ago and I've not looked back since. I find the voice direction and detailed turn-by-turn directions, coupled with the accuracy and always-up-to-date maps available on Google Maps to outweigh the benefit of Apple Maps OS-level integration. Bring all those things to Apple Maps and I'll switch back! * Mail: I use Airmail. Airmail syncs everything and then some across all my devices, it offers snooze support, it handles Gmail accounts better, it's feature-rich, and it gets me to Inbox Zero faster than any other mail app I've ever used. If iOS Mail brings in snooze support and syncing across devices (both iOS and macOS), I'd consider trying it out again. * Calendar: I use Fantastical. The day iOS Calendar makes it as fast and easy as Fantastical to set an appointment is the day I consider switching back. Probably still won't, though. * News: I use Twitter. No, seriously. I tried using iOS News for a time, but it always ended up giving me a bunch of news I didn't care about (no matter how many times I tried to provide feedback).

Gartenberg

It's hard to pick, so many third parties have exceeded but that's OK. Apple should be pushing developers to go far beyond native apps and show what's possible

Rene

When I clean-installed iOS 8, I started fresh and didn't download any apps I didn't need. Eighteen months later and I'm still using all of Apple's built-in apps and I'm as efficient and productive as ever. I don't use my inbox as a to-do list nor do I reduce it to zero, so I'm fine with Mail. But, as with all things Apple, search needs to be improved. I can find things faster using Spotlight from the Home screen than from within Mail, and that's flabbergasting.

I'd also like News to be a system-level service, combined with Siri recommendations, and Siri Reading List and Shared Links, then put the combined list back into all of those places. One News to rule them all.

Maps just needs to keep getting better. No mapping service is good enough, so constant improvement is all there is.

What about the App Store, what can Apple do there?

Serenity

In a nutshell, "Fix it." There's a lot of good inside the App Store — curated lists, great recommendations, and fantastic apps. But they often get buried in the noise. I'd love to see an App Store that looks more like For You in the Music app: a combination of custom-created and algorithmic information that gives you the best apps based on your tastes and past purchases.

Bader

Better search. Better search. Better search.

App discover has improved since Phil Schiller decided that the Featured panel should be updated more than once per week. I love the emphasis on local content and independent developers, and a renewed focus on pay-once utility apps over freemium games.

That said, discovering the myriad hidden gems on the App Store, especially on the gaming side, is still too difficult. I would love the equivalent of a personalized For You panel based on the apps I've downloaded and used.

Lory

Discovery in the App Store has been nothing short of abysmal since day one. I have been pleased with the way Apple staff takes care to spotlight certain apps and games that stand out, but it still seems like a lot of great content still gets lost in the constant barrage of daily app releases. I'd like one section that literally just shows every single new app that comes out every day. That section could have filters, like genres or current star ratings, but I want to be able to make those decisions myself. Why doesn't Apple let us see every single app that gets published in the App Store?

The search function in the App Store is also the worst I've ever used. How is it that I can type in the exact name of an app and it shows up tenth on the list, or sometimes not at all? Please, Apple, take some time to perfect the search function in the App Store.

Mikah

I want Genius for the App Store: "You launch this game more than any other game on your iPhone. You might also like …" I know, I know, we're pretty Google with that, but think about it: Apple already displays this information in your battery settings — why not make use of it to help you find apps that you'd enjoy?

Other than that, I hope Apple continues to do more of the same Re: App Store featuring. It's been nice opening up the App Store every day to find new apps worth checking out. It's a great change from the weekly features of yesteryear.

Gartenberg

It's tough. If I knew the answer I'd work for Ron Okamoto but it's hard to find new cool apps. It's something I hear over and over. "How do I stand out in the app store without knowing Phil Schiller's email?"

Rene

Yeah, better search. I get that iTunes infrastructure is from a previous age, but search is a solved problem. Like Serenity says, "For You" for Apps would be fantastic. So would App Store for iCloud.

I'm not sure what the future of apps is. Extensibility, which sets features free from binary blobs, Continuity, which syncs activities between devices, and App Thinning, which sends only the assets and content an app needs, when it needs it, have all fundamentally changed what it means to be an app.

How Apple continues to adapt to and push this future is what I'm most interested in seeing.

Xcode for iPad, is it time?

Serenity

I want it. But I don't know if we'll get a "full" version. I think something like Playgrounds for iPad is a much more likely start on the mobile platform, with full Xcode coming down the line.

Bader

The iPad a computer, right? So, yes.

Lory

The only thing I've ever used Xcode for is to take screenshots of my Apple TV, so I'm definitely not qualified to make a statement on whether it should be made available on iPad, but I will anyway. If Apple wants consumers to think of the iPad Pro as some version of a replacement for the laptop, then they should make programs like Xcode available on them. The iPad Pro doesn't have to look and act like a PC or Mac, but it should at least have most of the same content available in one form or another.

Mikah

Yes. Yes, please. If the iPad can run everything it needs to without a hiccup, this absolutely should happen.

Who knows, maybe Xcode for iPad is the thing that finally gets me to get serious about developing for iOS!

Gartenberg

iPad is a PC, treat it as such.

Rene

If it's done in a way developers can make full-on apps, then absolutely. A platform that can be used to develop its own apps is a full-on platform.

Developers will still want and need Macs for workflows and power, at least for a while, but the ability to code from iOS will be transformative.

HomeKit, how does it become more of a thing?

Serenity

More devices, and a central HomeKit app wouldn't be too shabby. The third-party options aren't bad at all, but this is a place where Apple could drive adoption of HomeKit acccessories with a great app and advertisements for the products in the HomeKit universe.

Bader

By talking about it! A HomeKit hub would be a good place to start (though an optional download, please!), but Apple really needs to take ownership of this category by grouping disparate experiences into a single place. The Apple Store app isn't the right place for this, either, because HomeKit products are primarily app- and Siri-based experiences.

Lory

The first suggestion on my list is price. Apple doesn't have very many partners in the internet-of-things department, and the ones they do have are producing high-end products. HomeKit would probably get more love from consumers if there were a bigger variety on what it costs to outfit your home with the latest technology. This would likely require Apple partnering with more companies and lowering the cost for developers to certify their products.

My second suggestion is a HomeKit app, one that acts as a hub for everything you have connected to it. It would be great to be able to open the HomeKit app and set a lighting scene, adjust the temperature, and time the door locks all at the same time, instead of having to open individual apps.

Mikah

Repeat after me: HomeKit app. HomeKit app. HomeKit app.

Did it work? I thought if we said it three times, a HomeKit app would appear.

Gartenberg

ack. It's a mess. I need to control all my stuff from one place. Third party apps shouldn't be needed

Rene

Home.app. There are third party apps that do the management, but if third-party apps are needed to do the management, it's a good indicator Apple needs to take ownership. So hopefully the internal tool gets polished and made external.

From there it's just the more accessories the better. Once you experience the magic of Siri controlling your home, you want it for everything.

Then you want it to do more of everything.

Bottom line time — what else would you love to see from iOS 10?

Serenity

Apple's direction for iOS for the next ten years. We got multitasking in iOS 4, iCloud and Siri in iOS 5, Maps in iOS 6, a new design interface in iOS 7, Continuity and HomeKit in iOS 8, and Smart Search in iOS 9. iOS 10 is a chance for Apple to take all of the features of the past and set a roadmap for future mobile greatness — and make the iPad a first-class computing citizen, while the company's at it.

Bader

iOS 9 introduced so many iPad-specific features, it almost felt like the iPhone was overlooked. Context and improved Spotlight Search have proven useful, sure, but I'd love to see Apple recommit to making the iPhone the best pocket computer in the world. A better home screen; more powerful camera app; improved notification workflow. Those are the easy ones. The one I'd really love to see, as a mobile payments geek? Making Apple Pay into a fully-functioning platform, with an open API that leverages its existing convenience and security.

Lory

I'd like to see better practical use for Siri, major overhauls for the built-in apps, and a bunch of new wallpapers, especially Dynamic wallpapers. I'm bored with floating bubbles. At least give me some new shapes.

Mikah

Make Siri great again for real this time. I think if I'm going to have a virtual assistant across my devices (including macOS if rumors hold up), I want it to be powerful and helpful and accurate and trustworthy. Apple, I hope you're looking at Siri and telling it to get its act together for the good of all Applekind.

Other than that, just the typical desires: more battery life, fewer crashes (already rare), feature-rich apps, and a matter transporter.

Gartenberg

A lot of things, I won't likely see. I think it's time for a new UI, something that feels well beyond the first iPhone. We're not there yet.

Rene

My list goes on! Lock screen complications, so I can get activity, weather, scores, and other data without having to open my iPhone or iPad. System-wide night mode or theme engine, a customizable Control Center, rich notifications with enough interface inside them for deeper interactions, FaceTime conference calls, leaderboards and challenges in Activities so those of us who are extrinsically motivated can compete with each other on the road to fitness, A Synergy-style hub where communications are aggregated by contact, not locked in app silos. Yeah, on and on...

iPhone is the most important device I have. It can never be too convenient, so anything that makes doing more easier, I'm all up for. iPad is the future of computers, so anything that makes it as powerful as possible without losing its approachability, I'm also all up for.

Those are the north stars. Make my life easier and let me do more from anywhere.

I love my iPad Pro, and using it as my sole laptop over the last six months has been an exhilarating look at working on the go sans Mac. But it's not without challenges and workarounds. For the iPad Pro to truly take the next step into the laptop computing world, we need more.

Earlier this year, I polled Twitter and iMore readers, asking for their top picks in regards to iPad Pro software improvements. Here are the top twenty improvements we're hoping to see Apple implement as part of iOS 10 when it's previewed later this month.

Multitasking

Slide Over and Split View were great first strides into the world of iPad multitasking, but with iOS 10, it's time to take working in multiple apps to the next level. Splitting the screen in half makes perfect sense for the iPad, and I'm not calling for an iOS future cluttered with windows; as-is, however, Split View is clunky and in need of a turbocharge.

There are a few different fixes to make multitasking truly a stand-out part of iOS 10, but the biggest piece of that puzzle is fixing the Split View picker itself. Scrolling through a lengthy list of every app you've ever opened that's Split View compatible was a good hotfix. For iOS 10, I'm hoping for an app picker that's organized, searchable, and even might reflect my home screen. And for even better navigation, let's add a Split View launcher to each app window, rather than Command-Tab (if a hardware keyboard is installed) relegated to switching the left pane, while the right pane uses the default swipe-down screen.

Though I don't expect it to show up as soon as iOS 10, my secret end-game hope is for a more Mission Control-style view of my iPad: Multiple "screens", each of which can hold multiple full apps or two apps in Split View. Instead of switching from app to app with a four-finger swipe, you could switch from Split View to Split View.

Sometimes you just want to look at multiple documents in Notes, compare several PDFs or emails, or have two browser windows open at once. There are some apps that attempt to provide this functionality, but you're ultimately using two different programs — not the most user-friendly experience. If iOS 10 let you add multiple instances of each app to Split View, it could open up a lot more flexibility where the user was concerned.

A no-brainer addition: If I have Photos and Mail open, for example, let me drag a photo from the Photos app to a new Mail message. I get why this wasn't an iOS 9 addition — when you're moving data from one sandboxed application to another, you want to be sure you're not compromising security or providing a messy gesture interaction — but it seems an absolute must-have for advancing the iPad experience in iOS 10.

As of iOS 9, you can't use Split View in the Music app, Settings, or the App Store, among others. This is as crazy as some of Apple's apps not being sandboxed on OS X: If it's technology the company wants third-party apps to embrace, all Apple's system apps need to do it. (And it's just confusing to the average user to tell them that only some of their apps can use multitasking.)

Files

From the beginning, iOS has strived to take the file system out of the computing experience, hiding your files inside their respective apps and removing any idea of a Desktop or Finder. But even without those traditional computing methods, users need to work with files, and they need those files to talk to multiple programs. It's just the way of the world. As such, here are a few thoughts on how Apple could let users do more with files without necessarily porting over the Finder.

When Apple introduced the (optionally-hidden) iCloud Drive app that let you see all your iCloud-stored documents, power users rejoiced... only to realize that the app was, in fact, fairly limited in its capacities.

While you can store files, create folders, and open documents in other programs, moving and renaming files is a clunky experience, and only PDFs and images open up in anything resembling OS X's (and iOS Mail's) Quick Look — everything else gets automatically punted to the app it originally belonged to.

Not only could iCloud Drive improve its appearance and organizational options, but features like batch renaming, zipping/unzipping options, offline access, and sharing Drive files could make the app a lot more compelling — and move people away from using apps like Dropbox.

File transfers are a big part of the iCloud Drive problem: it's currently tricky and weird to move or open files from some programs to others, and certain file formats still aren't usable on the iPad Pro.

Mail is the biggest offender when it comes to file movement: Unlike its desktop cousin, Mail has no real way to download multiple attachments, and if those attachments are PDFs or images, they often load inline, confusing users on how to download them or otherwise move them into another program. For example, my mother recently got an iPad Pro for marking up sheet music; she frequently receives emails with 10-12 separate scans of a PDF page. Currently, there's no real way for her to batch download all those PDF pages into PDF Expert or another PDF-combiner; she has to manually tap each one, then tap the share button. It's tedious, and it'd be an easy fix.

When iCloud Drive was introduced, Safari also gained the option to upload directly from iCloud — or another cloud-based location, like Dropbox. Unfortunately, most of these screens only allow you to add one file at a time, even when the website form you're uploading to supports multiple file import. (The one exception is importing images directly from your Photos library, but if you do so, you'll be uploading those JPGs and PNGs as "image.jpg"; there's no way to name them before upload.)

Fixing this would go a long way toward improving my online web workflow — and I suspect the workflow of many other folks as well.

This is a big one for photographers and designers alike. You can technically import RAW files and PSDs into iCloud Drive or Dropbox, but good luck actually editing in Raw or importing a Photoshop document in any app available on the store today. This isn't due to lack of processing power: If my iPad Pro can edit dual-stream 4K video or create a 40-layer document in Procreate, there's no reason why it shouldn't be able to import a similar document. But right now, there's a limitation on what apps can and can't open; in iOS 10, that needs to disappear, stat.

Another huge boon for those with limited internal storage space or photographers and videographers: Let iOS recognize externally-mounted file systems, perhaps through the iCloud Drive app, and let us add content to them. SD cards can be imported from, and you can recognize some storage options with third-party apps, but those apps are often junky and slow-moving. Apple's powered USB adapter provides all the power you might need for an external drive; now it's just time for the software to support it.

The System

iOS is approaching its tenth iteration, and what better time for an overhaul and rethink than a milestone? When it comes to iPad Pro, the iOS home screen feels hopelessly outdated, and certain system limitations prevent the tablet from really taking hold in certain markets. iOS 10 could change all that.

I'm pretty sure I've been asking for this since the very first iPad — and its overly-spaced grid of app icons — appeared, but I'm feeling good about this change actually happening in iOS 10. What better time to rethink how apps are displayed on the iPad? The grid makes a lot of sense for the iPhone, but on a 12.9-inch screen it looks more like wasted space than actual app organization. (And, in all honesty, I currently use the Spotlight search bar to launch apps about 95 percent of the time on my iPad Pro, rather than tapping on icons.)

While the iPad Pro in our home is solely my device, there are many families and groups who operate otherwise: Anyone with kids knows the pain of endless folders of iPad games, or adults who have to sign in and out of their respective accounts to use iCloud. But I suspect that multi-user support is, at last, coming — in large part due to the education market.

After many pleas for a multi-user option, Apple debuted the feature in iOS 9.2's education package; school administrators with iPads for classrooms can configure them to support multiple children and their data and apps — all without taking up precious storage space on the device.

I'm hoping that this was Apple's initial test run into making multi-user a reality for all iPads, not just education-configured models: The company had to do most of the heavy lifting when conceiving multi-user for education, and now has months of in-classroom usage data to help refine it for the average user.

Though it appears halfway into this article, this feature is one of my personal top three for iOS 10 — in part because it's a must-have for podcasters, musicians, or anyone looking to record audio. Right now, the iPad can only pass audio into one app at a time: If you're using Skype, for instance, you can't hop over to GarageBand and record your mic locally.

There are apps like Audiobus that attempt to solve this problem with special code in each app, which allows them to talk to each other; unfortunately, developers on each side of the app need to implement that code before it works — in other words, no Skype audio in GarageBand.

If Apple truly wants to position the iPad as the creative professional's device, giving creative pros the tools they need would be a big step in the right direction.

Getting audio right is a big step; letting developers work on the iPad Pro opens up another big sector where the tablet is lacking: coding. Save for a few smart HTML/CSS editors like Coda, writing any sort of code and committing it to a central database is next to impossible on the iPad — and you're completely out of luck if you want to try writing a program for the iPad on the iPad.

When it comes to bringing something like Xcode on the iPad, I firmly believe the answer is not "if", but "when": It's a huge undertaking — and requires a definitive rethink on how users manipulate their code and interface — but at the end of the day, if you want users to build apps for your platform, they should be able to build apps on that platform. I'm not expecting a full version of Xcode for iPad when iOS 10 debuts, but something like Playgrounds for iPad would be an incredible way of opening the door to coding and compiling on a tablet computer.

Largely, iOS has kept to the same sort of text selection shortcuts throughout its entire life: The tap to select and edit-handle-maneuvering was novel when it debuted, but on an iPad Pro, it can get tricky — especially when in certain apps that want to grab entire paragraphs rather than single words or lines.

The iPad's software keyboard does offer two-finger-tap-and-drag to move the cursor and select, but after doing so, you don't get the same pop-over as you would if tapping and holding on a word; that kills a lot of gains from the precision, since users can't paste data (URLs, for instance) after moving the cursor appropriately. Adding that pop-over after two-finger iPad interactions would solve most of my text-selection woes, but I'd love to see Apple at least entertain a text selection rethink.

Apps

There are absolutely great system and third-party apps for the iPad Pro, but iOS 10 could make both a great deal better. The next big version of iOS gives Apple a huge opportunity to rethink some features in its own apps and vastly improve the third-party ecosystem with incentives and a strong framework for aspiring professional software developers.

The market for excellent, professional iPad Pro apps is a difficult one, and it's one many folks smarter than me have spent thousands of words discussing. App Store economics make it difficult to charge a high price for semi-pro or pro apps, and Apple currently seems uninterested in helping change that. But if the company wants the iPad Pro to flourish, it needs to rethink that attitude.

Hardware is not the limiting factor to great iPad apps — it's all about good developer support. Apple has eschewed the idea of free trials and shareware on iOS in the past, but a redesign of the App Store in iOS 10 might open the door to such things for professional apps. $1 or in-app-purchase games are all well and good on the iPhone, but a professional photography editing program or audio editor can't rely on in-app purchases or yearly subscriptions paying for its development costs. If Apple wants pro software on the iPad, then developers need to be able to charge pro-level prices and not get punished for it.

Right now, the Music app looks like a wide-screen version of its iPhone cousin — all that extra space is filled up with white background, save for a column-view of your personal music, and even that isn't particularly attractive. The Mini-player in full screen is perhaps the biggest example of this insanity: The album art takes up two-thirds of the screen, with tiny touch targets for play, pause, shuffle, and Up Next. Music is also one of Apple's stock apps that doesn't yet support Split View.

All that needs to change in iOS 10. The app needs to be more functional and less a blown-up clone of its small-screened cousin, and Split View is a necessity. I almost wonder if it would make sense for the Music app to create a pop-over similar to iOS 9's picture-in-picture option: Tap a button to let the Music mini-player hang out as an overlay on any of your apps or Home screen. Maybe pop-over mini apps should be an option for all developers...

When iOS first debuted, it made sense to avoid the advanced-user trickery of the Mac OS's smart searches — the operating system was built for a smartphone, and Mail rules or smart photo searches seemed like unnecessary complications.

As time progressed, Apple added under-the-hood smart mailboxes like the Attachments folder, but the company still hasn't offered customizable smart mailboxes, music playlists, or photo searches. That should end in iOS 10, especially on the iPad Pro: We're losing out on a lot of valuable data by not being able to build our own smart options, especially when those options are niche and may never fall into public favor. (If Apple had introduced smart photo albums back in iOS 7, for instance, it could have avoided years of journalists clamoring for a stock Screenshots folder.)

I understand why smart caching exists on iOS, especially for lower-capacity devices. But even so, I'd love the ability to mark certain files, photos, videos, music, or mail messages as "always-downloaded" — protecting them from getting cache cleared off the device And being forced to rely on the iCloud-stored version.

There are many reasons to want locally-stored files — going somewhere without Internet access, for instance — and while I appreciate Apple's desire to make things simpler for most users and ensure they don't eat up their storage space, it's also infuriating to those of us who need certain files readily available, Internet connection or no.

I've been begging for a version of Preview on iOS for at least four years, and I'm doubling down on it for iOS 10: With features like Markup and more users than ever interested in viewing PDFs and marking up documents, it seems weird to have those features live only inside Mail. Instead, a system-wide Quick Look — powered by a new Preview app — would make the process more seamless and give power users a native app to work from. Preview on iPad Pro could also solve a lot of Mail's problems with properly displaying attachments and unzipping files.

Miscellaneous fixes

Like Apple's "tiny things you missed in this version of iOS" slide, I've got plenty of other nitpicks: Mail's terrible multi-folder search, permanently preventing websites from loading the mobile version of a page on the iPad Pro, updates to Pages and Numbers, and (in my dreams) mobile versions of Logic and Final Cut to pave the way for pro apps on the platform. But there are only so many engineers working on iOS 10 in Cupertino and only so many hours in the day and days in the year.

What are your biggest hopes for the next version of iOS and the iPad Pro? Let us know in the comments!

At I/O 2016, Google revealed that it would be adding text input into Android Wear 2.0. That means people with Android-based smart watches will be able to reply to text messages using an on-screen keyboard. It's something I've always wanted on my Apple Watch, and something I very much hope Apple adds with watchOS 3.0.

My colleague, Daniel Bader, disagrees. He thinks Apple should not add a keyboard to the Watch. I understand his point of view. Apple Watch has a tiny screen, and a tiny keyboard it is probably a cumbersome way to send a message. I want it anyway.

With Android Wear 2.0, Google is handling text input in three ways. You can use canned responses via Smart Replies, a handwriting recognition tool, which allows you to draw letters and numbers on the screen that are turned into text, and a swipe-to-type keypad.

Smart Replies let you respond to text messages and emails but without much personality. Even though I've customized my canned responses, my friends can always tell when I'm using my Apple Watch. They sound broad and impersonal.

Handwriting recognition is still clumsy and awkward technology, especially when you only have about an inch-and-a-half to write. Apple Watch's Digital Touch is proof that there is still a lot of work to be done to advance handwriting on wearable devices.

The swipe-to-type keyboard, however, has advanced leaps and bounds over the past few years. Plus, you can shrink the keys down pretty small and still manage to type the right words. If you've used the Minuum keyboard for iOS, you know it can work almost like magic.

Apple Watch currently relies on Voice Dictation for custom replies, but I don't like talking into my wrist, even when I'm alone. It feels silly. Plus, Voice Dictation doesn't work very well and I oftentimes end up reaching for my iPhone anyway.

The idea of this companion device, like Apple Watch, is to help me stay connected to things that are important without having to stare at a phone all day. But without an on-screen keyboard, I'm constantly pulling out my iPhone to stay connected. That defeats the purpose.

Although an on-screen keyboard would probably be awkward and clunky, it couldn't be any worse than yelling into my wrist, or using a bland pre-made response that makes my friends think I'm mad at them.

With Android Wear 2.0 and the on-screen keyboard, Google is providing an additional option for its customers. I'd love it if Apple used watchOS 3.0 to provide the same option for Watch customers like me.

Do you want an on-screen keyboard on you Apple Watch? Tell me why or why not in the comments!

A Siri that's based on typing rather than talking is something I've had on my wish list for years. iOS 9 got us some of the way there—Spotlight merged, in part, with Siri to provide for better, more contextual search and access to a wealth of useful information. In other words, queries have largely been handled. What's left is the ability to execute commands, and that's why I continue to hope for more in iOS 10.

Siri 'voice free'

Since its debut as part of iOS 5 in 2011, Apple has made incredible progress expanding the company's virtual personal assistant, Siri. It's moved onto our roads with Eyes Free and CarPlay, onto our wrists with Apple Watch, and into our living rooms with Apple TV. It speaks more languages than ever before, including Chinese and Hebrew, and is beginning to handle multi-language queries so you can ask for an English movie in French, for example. Siri can even do Voice ID now, so it can better differentiate your voice from others'.

No matter how enabling and useful Siri is, though, there will be times when it's simply not possible or socially acceptable to talk out loud to our phones or tablets. In those situations, being able to type "Cupertino weather" or even "Text Georgia I'll be late" would be incredibly useful.

iOS 9 made the first one possible. Simply pull down the search box from any Home screen or swipe over to Siri Recommendations on the "minus one" Home screen, type in "cupertino weather", and you get your answer. The second one, however, remains a beautiful dream. Type in "text Georgia I'll be late" and get... some offers to search the Web, App Store, or Maps.

Nature language is powerful. Siri has shown that for voice. The new smarter search has shown that, in part, for text. So has apps like Fantastical. It lets you add calendar appointments and reminders by merely typing them.

What makes this feature so tantalizing is that Siri can already handle commands input by text. Once you've made a voice query or command, an "edit" button appears. I can say "what's the weather in Cupertino" and Siri will tell me. Then I can tap the "Edit" button, change the text to "Text Georgia I'll be late", and Siri will quickly execute the input-via-text command and prepare the message.

That's what makes it so easy to imagine doing the same absent the first step: pulling down or swiping over into the search box and typing out the command to begin with.

Quick access to quick actions

Multiple points of entry into the Siri system don't increase complexity—they increase accessibility. If you don't want to access Siri via text, keep using voice. Can't use voice? Text is there for you. By making text an option, it opens the full range of Siri functionality to even more people in an even wider range of circumstances.

There are a lots of precedents. Quicksilver, LaunchBar, and Alfred have all offered text-based quick actions on the Mac for years. Just Type from webOS and Type and Go from BlackBerry have tried the same on mobile. Launch Center Pro has even made an icon-driven version work as far as current iOS limitations will allow.

With text-based access to Siri's engine, "Text Georgia I'm be late" is just one example of the type of quick-action that could be efficiently typed out. "Tweet Guy Wow, arrow was bananas!" could instantly send your status to social media. "Meeting with Mikah and Lory at 6 pm tomorrow" could add an event to your calendar.

I realize many people might not find this functionality valuable, especially since, in the years following my first request for it, iOS 9 has gotten us some of the way there. For people for whom typing is second nature, and for anyone with low or no hearing who still wants to tap into full-on Siri, however, it could be invaluable.

Like Notification Center, Control Center, the fast app switcher, or Siri over voice, no one has to access them who doesn't want to. This isn't about adding complexity—it's about increasing accessibility.

An (even) smarter search

There's a lot I'd like to see from Spotlight and Apple's text-based search in general, including and especially how it works on the stores. Nearest-neighbor and automatic search widening are all solved problems. Typing "Twetbot" should return "Tweetbot", just like it does with Google. Typing "Twitter" should absolutely return the most relevant, not just the most character-matching, results as well. It's incomprehensible that, decades after fuzzy/sloppy search became a thing, this still doesn't work on one of the most popular platforms in the world.

Likewise, there's a lot to talk about when it comes to the core Siri technology itself, especially with how it does—and doesn't—interface with the other apps and accessories that are increasingly important in a world where phones are not longer being built as platforms but are now the foundation upon which broader platforms are being built.

I'll save that for a future article, though. For now, iOS 10 is coming, and I'm hoping an even smarter search system, with quick action command support, will come with it. Type "fav" into Siri if you agree. Type "retweet" if you don't.

I've submitted this feature request to Apple: rdar://26213732.

I've used Apple Music almost every day since its launch last June. I started because we were writing a book on the subject, but I genuinely like the service: Its custom-curated playlists are excellent, and even though it relies too much on drum-and-bass tracks, I often turn on Beats 1 in the car before I even consider flipping on terrestrial radio. I'm even listening to an Apple Music playlist — Best of French House, Vol 2, for those curious — as I type this.

But the service isn't without its problems — issues largely tied to the way you listen to music, via Apple's often-clunky iOS and Mac apps. And on the heels of a Bloomberg report suggesting that those very same apps might see an overhaul this June, we decided to put together our top wants and wishes for Apple Music 2.0. (Special thanks to all of you on Twitter who replied to my tweet on the matter.)

First things first: Fix the interface

The Music app and iTunes both badly need a interface overhaul. Rumor has it Music was originally much simpler, and iTunes is apparently always on the cusp of new and better redesign. Right now, though, there's a lot of stuff crammed in each app — and poor iTunes has to deal with video, podcasts, and other media, too. Apple has also focused on big, beautiful album art rather than maximum amount of information on-screen, which reduces what users can see and interact with at any one time.

The iPod was simple: Five buttons and a clickwheel. Click to go forward, menu to go back. Today's Music app has lost much of that simplicity, sending new users down endless nooks and crannies, leading to confusion and general uninterest in the app and service.

I don't think the interface is hopeless, however — just over-cluttered. And with a few simple fixes, users might find a whole lot more to like.

Apple Music's best section, and the one that most easily sells users on the service, is For You: It takes your artist and album likes and gives you a list of playlists and new/old artists alike that you might love.

But the way the Music app is currently laid out, you can really only see two playlists at a time (or four albums) on the screen — and that's if you're rocking an iPhone 6s. On an SE, the experience is even worse.

As much as I like album art, there's no reason to make these covers so prominent. I care about two things when browsing this section: The title of the playlist, and the play button.

Funny enough, there are actually sections of Apple Music that do this right: Apple's Editor and Activity playlists display their content in easily-readable lists with small thumbnails; tap on one to view the playlist, and tap on the album art or first song to begin playing. I want that interface style in For You — this will make it easier to find playlists and artists that really matter.

At its core, the More button ("•••") is not a bad idea: It reduces the number of buttons on the screen, making screens easier to read. But so many different options have been hidden under those three ellipses in so many different circumstances. The latest Apple Music update simplified this menu somewhat so it wasn't just a never-ending list of menu options, but the icon-based pop-up isn't great, either. To the average user, "Play Next" and "Add to Up Next" are indistinguishable — yet they both get options in the More menu.

You can also tap the album art to get to the full album a song is from, but you can't do the same with playlists. (In fact, if you start playing a playlist and leave that screen, there's no way to get back to that playlist without remembering its exact name or re-finding it in For You.)

I don't have a good proposal for a More button redesign — maybe incorporate swipe gestures a la Mail for more-obscure options that most people don't need, or realize some use cases simply can't be carrier forward? — but one thing's for sure: it needs a change.

For You makes sense as its own tab. But New and Radio can conceivably be one tab: Rename it Explore, as some have suggested, put Beats 1 in the top carousel, and put other streaming stations below. And while I wouldn't mind if Connect faded into the background, if Apple still wants the underlying framework there, your Connect feed could live as a tab under Explore, too.

This would simplify the Music app's tabs to For You, Explore, and My Music: One is your custom-curated music suggestion area, one for exploring Apple Music's library and radio options (or, if you're Apple Music-less, it can be a direct link to Beats 1 and the iTunes Store), and the last focuses on your library.

This also allows for the return of the Playlist tab (which previously you could only access if you disabled Connect) alongside My Music. Playlists having such prominent billing could also address a longtime complaint from some folks who wish to have their local libraries and Apple Music collections separate, by offering smart playlists that contain "All Apple Music" and "Liked Songs".

Improve For You

As I mentioned from the start, For You is one of my favorite Apple Music features, and a big selling point for the service. But there are some small improvements that would elevate the service even further.

Last year, Spotify launched Discover Weekly, which uses an algorithm to create a playlist of new music and artists you already know and love for your week ahead. It's brilliant, it's often spot-on in its music choices, and if Apple isn't working on something similar but better, the company should be.

Right now, For You suggests an assortment of albums in-between its playlist recommendations, ranging from artists you love to artists you might like. I'd love to see more awareness on the app's part: Have Radiohead songs in your personal music library? I want to see a play button for "Burn the Witch" at the top of my suggestions. Did a new album from an artist I love just drop, but it's not available on streaming? I want to see it anyway, along with a link to either buy it on iTunes or add it to a Streaming Notifications playlist ("Notify me when this artist/album is available on Apple Music...").

I currently have no idea why Apple Music suggests the albums it does. Sometimes, I take chances on them, but by and large, I stick with the playlists, and find new artists from those compilations. I might be more likely to tap on a new album, however, if the app aligns it with music I've been listening to: "Because you like Tegan and Sara, try Best Coast."

Add more Beats stations

Beats 1 is by far one of my favorite radio experiments, and their DJs are smart, witty folks with great taste. But taste is subjective, and while I don't mind being exposed to new hip-hop tracks, there are some folks who would prefer a Beats station with different genres. I trust Apple Music's playlist curators in other genres; time to hire some Beats DJs for alternative, classical music, country, kids, and international stations. (I would be fascinated to turn into a Beats K-Pop station, for instance.)

Kill Connect (or make it better)

Sorry, Apple: Ping 2.0 just isn't working. I like the concept of Connect — getting alerts from bands you love about in-progress songs, or playlist curators on their next compilation — but the Connect tab is confusing, it's difficult to figure out how to follow people, and weirder still to try and follow what's going on.

Until the company has the staff and the drive to make Connect the top music discovery social network it can be, it doesn't deserve to be a central spotlight inside the Music app or iTunes. It can still exist under the hood — you can follow artists, and have new audio or video from them pop up under the Explore tab — but it doesn't need its own section.

And while we're at it, if you're shooting for a social network, make it social: Let me follow my friends' musical tastes — heck, if I like them enough, maybe even suggest albums or playlists they've listened to recently in For You. And please, let us subscribe to their published playlists so that they auto-update when changes are made.

Improve search and play

Apple Music's search and discovery features aren't bad, but they need to be better. It still drives me crazy that you can't build smart playlists in the Music app, or even use Boolean searches — they would obliviate a lot of complaints about currently being unable to sort your tracks in any meaningful way.

There's also an issue with history: Currently, there is a history button in the search field, but it just tracks your search history; you can only find your listening history by tapping the Up Next button in Now Playing, and it only keeps track of individual songs — not the playlists they come from.

This is especially annoying if you've selected a playlist in For You or from New, explored elsewhere in the Music app, and want to get back to the playlist — unless you remember where you first found it, or its exact name, you're out of luck finding it again.

Give Siri more to do

Using Siri with Apple Music is perhaps the easiest way to actually interact with the company's subscription service right now: Siri understands a lot of Apple Music-related commands, including finding music more or less like whatever's currently playing, liking or disliking songs, and selecting playlists.

It's on that last bit where I'd like to see Siri improve in version two, however. Currently, if you know the exact name of a playlist, you can request it; unfortunately, ask Siri to play "songs for driving," and the assistant will try to find the closest playlist that matches that title. If that turns up with nothing, Siri will attempt to play the first track that includes "driving" in the title.

In an ideal world, I'd love this to work like asking Siri for "nearby gas stations" when you're navigating: Query driving songs, and Siri will pull up the top ten or fifteen activity-based playlists, then ask you if you'd like to listen to the first one, or something else. If something else, she moves on to the next item.

Improve offline access

Many things have changed since the iPod made it possible to take songs in your pocket on a cross-country flight. Wanting to listen to music while offline or otherwise without an Internet connection has not. Unfortunately, the Music app makes this exceedingly difficult due to iOS's need to cache-clear: You can add things to your library, and even save them offline, but getting them to stay that way sometimes feels like an exercise in futility. I've frequently downloaded multiple albums before a flight, only to find that three of the thirty songs don't work, or other songs I thought I'd downloaded had been cache-cleared before my trip.

The old Beats Music app actually had a pretty elegant solution to cache-clearing: Since it was already downloading bits from songs when you streamed them, it automatically saved the last 30 songs you listened to in addition to whatever you'd designated as your "offline library"; if you turned off data, you'd always have those 30 songs available to you, even if you'd forgotten to save anything else.

I'd personally love for that feature to return in Apple Music, but over that, I'd take my offline music just staying offline. I understand that iOS wants to automatically free up space to make my experience better, but there's a happy medium here: If you're going to dump my cache of offline music, maybe at least give me a pop-up warning? "Your phone has fewer than 30 percent storage remaining. Would you like to clear some of your saved music to make room?"

This would also help with Apple Music's other major data problem: The service is a big, giant cellular hog, especially when you use it in the car. I've frequently killed two-thirds of my data for the month streaming during trips — even if it's just streaming the same two or three albums I'd listen to normally.

What would you change?

I've made my list; what do you want, iMore readers? More separation between your music and Apple Music? Student plans? Better iCloud Music Library matching? Let us know below.

iOS 9.3 brought greater personalization and curation to Apple News, but I'm hoping iOS 10 brings something more—system-wide integration. That's because I read a ton of news. Technology. Politics. Entertainment. Culture. Science. You name it, I've read it on my iPhone or iPad. But not in the same place. Instead of a single source for everything interesting, I have a bunch of little places scattered about the system, some that overlap and some that don't, but none that give me everything that I want.

News debuted just last year in iOS 9. It's an attempt to solve a really hard problem—bringing magazines, newspapers, and independent publications fully into the digital age in a way that's accessible and sustainable. The sustainable part is still a huge question mark for everyone, but the accessible part feels really close. It feels like something Apple could iterate on and make simple and system-wide.

Right now, it's the opposite of that. There's the "minus one" page to the left of the Home screen. That's the Siri + Search page where, at the bottom, I get a list of news. I have no idea what criteria is used to populate the list, but it certainly seems to have absolutely no connection to "For You", the personalized front page of the Apple News app.

"For You" is populated based on the choice of publications and topics I made when I set Apple News up, and recommendations based on what I've tapped on since. It makes no effort, though, to integrate the articles I've saved to Reading List, nor the ones pulled for me from my social network Shared Links.

I understand why: All these features were built by separate teams with little or no knowledge of each other's projects. Still, I'm left with experiences that are isolated, all pieces of the same puzzle—my picks, my recommendations, my shares, my... whatever the heck "minus one" is pulling in—that aren't being put together.

Instead, imagine a system-level service that provides a unified stream of news, informed by the initial setup of the News app, improved by what you tap on and like, enhanced by Apple's algorithms and editors, and augmented by what you've saved to read later and by what your friends have shared on your social networks.

Just like Photos is now core to the experience, so too could be news: Integrated together and synced across all Apple devices.

That way, the results on the Siri + Search page would be consistent with the For You page in News, and the Reading List in Safari. There could even be a toggle to show just recommended, saved, or shared if you want to see exactly what came from where.

The same content could be put it in News and Reading List for Mac, just the videos could be pulled and queues in News for Apple TV, and alerts on anything that ranks as important could be sent via notification to Apple Watch.

That's what I'm hoping iOS 10 — and tvOS 10 and watchOS 3 — brings us: News nirvana.

Update: Originally published November 20, 2015. Updated May 3, 2016.

The newly updated 12-inch MacBook sports a sixth-generation Intel Skylake Core-M processor, better graphics, faster flash storage chips, and an optional rose gold finish. I've already posted my 12-inch MacBook review, but now I want to know what you want to see next?

• Second USB-C port.
• Thunderbolt 3 support.
• Built-in LTE cellular networking.
• 720p or 1080p FaceTime camera, even if it requires a bump.
• Return to the traditional arrow key layout.
• Intel Core i5 or i7 support, even if requires a fan.
• 14-inch display option.
• ARM processor, multitouch display, iOS-based operating system.
• Metallic purple finish option. (What?!)

The current MacBook is obviously opinionated and forward thinking, so why not offer some forward-thinking opinions of our your own? If Apple's product team asked you what they should pack into a future version, what would you tell them?

See at Apple

It's hard not to look at the Google Chromecast and wonder if Apple could make something like it. Don't get me wrong: I love the new Apple TV. With Siri support and the ability to run apps, it's clearly what I want in my home now and in the near future. But it's not something I can easily put in my pocket and travel with — be it between cities or simply between offices.

Last week I was at our Canadian HQ doing training. There we have two last-generation Apple TVs attached to two big screens on opposite sides of the building. They're used as inexpensive and convenient conduits for AirPlay — Apple's wireless content beaming system — so we can quickly share what's on our Macs, iPads, and iPhones, with everyone in the room.

When I travel to San Francisco I often stay at a hotel that has previous generation Apple TVs attached to every television set as well. That way, once you're on the hotel network, you're just a few steps away from AirPlaying any of your stuff to the big screen in front of you. Rather than having to learn a new channel grid or suffer through yet another terrible set top box experience, you get content that's yours through an interface you're already familiar with.

The Play's the thing

Like CarPlay, which lets your device and content take over the interface of the car — and eliminates the confusion historically associated with everything from upgrades to rentals — AirPlay does it anywhere there's a television. It's so great that, when I end up in an office or hotel room without an Apple TV, I miss it tremendously. Sure, I could pick up an extra Apple TV box, previous or current generation, and make sure I have it with me at all times, but that feels like overkill. I don't really need a box, Siri, or apps for that. I simply need AirPlay.

I need it enough that it makes me long for something like Google's Chromecast dongle — a tiny device that plugs into an HDTV and then simply lets me stream from my iPhone, iPad, or Mac to the big screen.

Apple could go so far as to build a basic Apple TV experience into iOS 10 or iOS 11, where the logic stays on the iPad or iPhone but the interface and content projects onto your television through the tiny device. That would be like the original Apple Watch. It could allow for a level of multitasking and handoff — where streams are transferred over rather than merely streamed — but it could also add overhead and result in a less than ideal experience.

If so, the interface and management, such as it is, could stay on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and the video simply stream to the stick — AirPlay Express or Apple TV Express, let's call it. (Not Apple TV Shuffle.)

It would be great for offices where all that's wanted is screen mirroring, great for travelers who want the smallest amount of hardware possible in their pockets or luggage — great for anyone who just wants what's in their hands to be up on their TV. And, like CarPlay, it would make hardware updates less of a concern — every time iOS is updated, Apple TV Express would be updated as well.

Room at the bottom

Apple already has Airport Extreme and a less expensive Airport Express. The current Apple TV is already supplemented on the low end by the previous Apple TV. This would be an evolution of those concepts: The full-on Apple TV for those who want a dedicated box and the future of television in apps, and Apple TV Express for those who simply want to project content onto a screen right now.

There's any number of reasons why Apple would never make a TV streaming stick. But every time I think about it, I wish they would.

Would an Apple TV Express interest you? If so, how would you want it to work?

I have two Apple TVs: One for my living room, and one for my much-tinier office TV screen to test tvOS betas and take screenshots. I didn't intend to pick up two Apple TVs — a result of my sister and I not coordinating and buying our parents the same Christmas gift — but I'll admit, having one for testing purposes is pretty nice when your job involves writing about Apple TV.

Setting up that second Apple TV, however, wasn't so nice. That's because, unlike your iPhone or iPad, Apple doesn't back up your Apple TV apps and settings to iCloud. If you purchase a new Apple TV and want to set it up, you're doing so from scratch.

Apps, begone

When it came to the third-generation Apple TV, you didn't have to set up much: You needed to enter a Wi-Fi password and your Apple ID, and hide any pre-installed apps you didn't care for. The fourth-generation Apple TV is a different beast entirely, largely because of its app population.

When you buy a new or second Apple TV for your house, you can automatically set up your Wi-Fi and Apple ID, but when it comes to reconfiguring your apps — and any personal data within them — you have to do it one-by-one, via the Purchased screen. Apple kindly offers a Not on This Apple TV section so that you can quickly see what apps you're missing, but it's a hassle: You can't batch download apps.

Those apps also don't retain their data and preferences unless they've been syncing to iCloud. If your games offer iCloud sync, you might retain levels and power-ups, but if they don't — or if the implementation is done poorly — you're starting over.

A version of iCloud's backup service for Apple TV could fix much of this, allowing you to keep your app data intact, avoid lengthy app re-downloading, and save your Settings customizations. Even if you didn't have a second Apple TV, a backup is useful in the event your current hardware breaks for any reason.

The other backup problem

Even with Apple offering a backup service, there's one problem iCloud can't fix. Many Apple TV streaming apps have their own separate usernames and passwords; if I have to re-download Hulu to a new Apple TV, that means reentering my information to log in.

This has been a problem since the first iPhone backup, to no great surprise. Apple doesn't want to be responsible for saving your personal logins inside an app, nor does the company want to make it easy to get into your other accounts if someone nefarious manages to execute a restore.

But there has to be an easier way. Some apps have built in pseudo two-factor authentication on the Apple TV as a way to avoid slide-typing with the Apple TV remote or praying password dictation works as promised: When you launch an app for the first time, it displays a six digit code and asks you to visit a website on your Mac to confirm you want to use your account on this Apple TV. This is a much nicer process, overall, for reactivating accounts.

Given the iPhone's support for Bluetooth and tap-activation, however, this could be even easier: For example, if you have the Hulu app on both your iPhone and new Apple TV, the Hulu TV app could prompt you to "tap" your iPhone to the Apple TV to transfer login data — just as you do during your initial Apple TV setup.

The design factor

Apple had a lot of work to do on the new Apple TV before it shipped last November, and important features got left on the drawing table for it to ship on time. That included high-value stuff like Dictation, full access to iCloud Photo Library, and some Siri commands — all of which are in the latest tvOS 9.2 update.

As such, I understand why backing up or restoring from backup wasn't at the top of the Apple TV and tvOS team's list: Ultimately, I don't think most users are going to have multiple Apple TVs, and the need to restore from backup is (hopefully) rare.

But there is a need there: App developers who install beta software may need to restore malfunctioning Apple TV units. Those buying a new Apple TV for family members may want to set it up with a lot of the same apps or logins as their own. And if your own Apple TV breaks, iCloud backup can save you a lot of the heartache of reassembling your app collection.

What do you think, iMore? Would you use an iCloud backup service for Apple TV, or are there more pressing matters Apple should deal with? Let us know in the comments.

When I was a kid, I got my Dad's old Newton MessagePad 2100 — Apple's original personal digital assistant — as a "hand-me-down". I put that phrase in quotes because it really wasn't so much a hand-me-down as it was a "hand-it-over": After a year of intermittently playing with his 2100, I claimed it for my own.

While I may have... exaggerated some of the Newton's abilities to my awed classmates — I distinctly remember saying to a teacher "I'm going to scan the blackboard and have the Newton take a picture of your notes", ha ha — in 1999, there was nothing I loved more than demonstrating its handwriting recognition. It was almost guaranteed a "We're living in the future!", if not a "Oooo, let me try!"

Much as I hated longform writing and as terrible as my penmanship was, there was still something pretty magical and otherworldly about writing block or cursive letters and having them transform into digital text. By the year 2000, I had convinced most of my teachers that I could turn in typed work, but I probably saved future Serenity's penmanship from becoming truly atrocious because I had that Newton MessagePad. I was constantly writing and doodling with it.

Sixteen years later, the Newton lives again with my Dad (though probably in a storage box somewhere), and I've got both an iPhone and an iPad Pro to obsess over. But while there are many miraculous features I could demonstrate, handwriting recognition tricks have yet to make it to iOS.

Egg freckles and handwriting troubles

There are plenty of reasons why Apple hasn't yet implemented system-level handwriting recognition in iOS: For one, you need an exceptionally good pen input, and — until the introduction of the Pencil — no third-party stylus had the precision or the lag reduction to be a truly useful tool.

There's also both the processing power and stigma to consider. Like Siri, handwriting recognition works as a transcription service; in order for it to translate your physical marks into typed characters, however, it needs a substantial dictionary and the power to transcribe your words using your phone's processor or online servers. That means more cloud infrastructure or more powerful iOS devices — or both — as well as the engineers to craft a smart dictionary.

If you've ever dealt with Siri errors, imagine the problems that might result from poor handwriting, or trying to decipher the difference between lowercase, upper case, and cursive letters. And indeed, early Newton models got a lot of flack for mistranslating the written word, though later models — like my dear 2100 — saw significant improvement.

I also wonder, along those lines, if our collective penmanship hasn't become so disastrous that transcribing it into digital text would be an even bigger headache than previously imagined. Many primary schools no longer teach handwriting, and most of us write more words with a virtual keyboard than we do a pen and paper.

In the end, we're talking about a minor feature, hardly requested, that likely takes a backseat to all the more important projects Apple has in the pipeline — if the company's engineers are thinking about it at all.

Handwriting our way forward

But despite all the potential problems with handwriting recognition baked into iOS, there's a part of me that still wants to see the feature come to the iPad — even if it's only a beta baked into the Notes app.

We now have a top-tier stylus option for iPad in the form of the Pencil, and that option might be coming to smaller iPads soon. And there are system-level APIs in iOS that support great palm rejection, accuracy, and low-level latency.

Additionally, the iPad Pro's beefy A9X should be more than enough to process the transcription necessary for handwriting recognition, and there are there are two companies out there to prove it: Both indie developer Viet Tran and handwriting recognition leader MyScript have apps on the App Store that perform handwriting recognition.

The apps worked quickly in my tests, but unfortunately neither supports the Pencil's palm rejection, lag reduction, or pressure sensitivity, leading to a sub-par writing experience. But if those apps incorporate proper support for the Pencil, the experience would be downright pleasant. Both apps' underlying transcription engines are impressive, and if my handwriting weren't so sloppy on account of lag, they might be even better.

Maybe the solution is just that: Let those the third-party apps take control of the handwriting recognition market, and Apple can continue to work on other, more important aspects of iOS (like drag-and-drop between Split View panes). I hope I'm wrong, though. I don't want handwriting recognition limited to a single app, or as an option that requires a third-party keyboard. I want system-level support.

And for all the reasons reasons not to add this feature to iOS, there are some pretty compelling reasons to do it, too.

If nothing else, Apple has some pretty good handwriting recognition software lying around: The company's aging Inkwell) technology is based off the original Newton Rosetta framework, and lets people with a connected tablet transcribe letters and draw pictures. It hasn't been officially updated in an age, but it's still supported as of OS X El Capitan, and the recognition engine is halfway decent.

There's also Apple's tablet competitors: Windows 10 has handwriting recognition built in to the Surface line, while Google released a handwriting keyboard for Android in mid-2015.

Knowing all that, I could see an updated version of Inkwell making its way into the Notes app in iOS 10, even if it were only a feature for those with Apple Pencils and compatible iPads. Apple put a renewed focus on Notes with iOS 9, and even if that was partially just to demonstrate the Apple Pencil's capability, what better way to expound on that utility than handwriting recognition?

In Notes, adding a button next to the Sketch tool that lets you transcribe your written words would be useful for buisness professions that prefer handwriting to typing. Anyone walking around with an iPad in their arms may elect to write over trying to finger-type in their notes — doctors were my first thought, but architects and teachers could certainly benefit, too. And the more users playing with Apple's software, the faster and quicker it could improve.

To handwrite or not to handwrite?

What side do you come down on, iMore? Is it worth Apple devoting resources to handwriting recognition at a system level, now that we have the Pencil? Should we leave it up to the app developers? Let me know what side you come down on; meanwhile, I'll be over here in the corner doodling Egg Freckles.

This is my beautiful iOS 10 media dream: Start binge watching The Expanse on my Apple TV at night, get tired, get up and walk to my room, swipe up on the Video icon on my iPad lock screen, and keep right on watching. Get in the zone with an amazing Apple Music playlist while I'm working on my Mac, go to grab some lunch, swipe up on the Music icon on my iPhone and keep right on listening.

Handoff is part of the Continuity features Apple introduced in 2014. It lets you move seamlessly from iPhone to iPad to Mac and back again. You can start an email on your iPhone and then switch to Mac to really pound it out. You can prep a Keynote on your Mac and then make last-minute adjustments on your iPad right before the pitch. You can even start a call on your Apple Watch and complete it on your iPhone. For messaging, browsing, document editing, and more, it's ludicrously great. As long as you're logged into the same Apple ID, and in proximity, everything you do can be started, continued, or finished on all of your devices.

Almost.

Handoff currently doesn't work with anything iTunes — music, movies, TV shows, etc. — or with the Apple TV.

Though Handoff shipped in 2014, Apple bought Beats in 2015 and my guess is that — and the new Apple Music service that followed — complicated matters. Figuring out how to bring the past into the future is no easy task.

The technology all seems to be in place, though. Continuity works by using Bluetooth LE to broadcast activities, then activates the internet, iCloud, or direct peer-to-peer Wi-Fi transfer to make that activity's content available on other devices to continue those activities. So, iMore for Safari on the Mac would trigger Safari for iPhone to load iMore as well. Keynote on iPad would cause Keynote on your Mac to check for the current file in iCloud Drive and, if so, grab it. A half-composed Mail message on the iPhone might push the content of that Mail message right to the iPad.

Doing peer-to-peer Wi-Fi transfer is okay with small files. Trying to push a 1.3 GB TV show file or 3-4 GB movie file, however, is an entirely different matter. That why I've kept this constrained to iTunes and not talked about audio and video files in general.

iTunes content is kept on iCloud's servers: That's' how we're able to re-download music, movies, and TV shows we've already purchased. It's also how Apple Music can just start playing almost any song any time you ask for it.

So, extending Handoff to iTunes could take advantage of the existing systems. Apple ID would make sure who is involved in the transaction and that they're authorized. Bluetooth LE would take care of proximity and broadcast that you're listening or watching, what you're listening or watching, and where you are in the timeline. Pick up another device, and that request goes to Apple's servers, finds the iTunes content, and starts streaming from exactly that point.

Because Netflix and other streaming services work in a similarly cloud-centric way, my guess is they could work in a similar way for Handoff as well. You can already open the Netflix app on any device, find the show you were watching, and resume it. Handoff would just make the process faster — you wouldn't have to open the app and find the show, you'd just swipe or tap and keep watching.

Continuity, like extensibility and on-demand, is transformative. It unbundles apps, letting their discreet functionality come to where ever you are. It decouples the interface and changes it from pull to push. It's going to change the way we use our devices.

We've already gotten the next generation Apple Music service and the all-new Apple TV. All we need now is Handoff to tie it all together. Here's hoping iOS 10 can deliver!

We've filed a feature request for Handoff for iTunes with Apple: rdar://25024354. Dupes appreciated. Also comments below if it's also a feature you'd like to see!

Messages launched with the original iPhone as "SMS", because that's all it did at the time. Apple had Safari, so they didn't build an old-school WAP browser and it turned out an old-school WAP browser is what MMS needed. So, Apple built one and, once carriers stopped freaking out about the potential bandwidth, added it to the app.

Then Apple did one better: The company announced iMessage, integrated it with MMS and SMS in the Messages app, and ran it on data completely outside carrier's then-lucrative texting rate. Apple proceeded to bring iMessage to iPad and Mac, enhanced group messaging, added instant sound-bites and selfies, and with SMS-relay brought carrier messaging to iPad and Mac as well.

So, the question becomes — what do you want to see Apple bring to Messages and iMessage in iOS 10?

• Allow Messages to be secured by Touch ID or Passcode.
• Extend VIP from Mail to Messages — make it system-wide.
• Allow a confirmation before sending soundbites, selfies, or location.
• Combine FaceTime and Messages together into a single super-app.
• Support for stickers.
• Synergy/Hub style unified person-centric inbox.
• Allow favoriting of a message.
• Per-person read receipts in group messages.
• iMessage for iCloud web app.
• iCloud Drive file attachments.
• Smarter search and filtering to find messages.

Messages is already the most popular app on iOS, and messaging apps are among the most popular period. Some are becoming full-on platforms in their own rights. Whether or not Apple needs to move gaming and other features from the device layer to the messaging layer is a question for another day. Right now, right here, if Apple asked you what you wanted in Messages for iOS 10, what would you tell them?

Originally published January 2015. Updated February 2016.

The Apple Watch has a built-in Activity app that tracks how often you stand up and move around, the calories you've burned, and the minutes of brisk exercise you've done. It's a great way to motivate people, and a type of gamification that feeds us the same sense of accomplishment we get when we solve a puzzle and make it to the next level. In classical terms, it's us-against-ourselves. Some people, however, aren't as self-motivated or self-disciplined. Some people are competitive and they don't just want to do well — they want to do the best. That's where a little us-against-them social networking and challenges would be great.

The Apple Watch already does a great job popping up alerts to get us going and to tell us we're almost there, but imagine if there were also challenges from friends to keep us going and a leaderboard to really get us there? Apple's Game Center already does a lot of this for App Store games, much like Xbox Live or PSN. You can issue challenges, get matched up, view leaderboards, and see how you stack up against your friends.

Some health and fitness apps have rolled their own social components as well. Fitbit, for example, lets you have friends, issue challenges, and see how everyone is ranking. People can get overly competitive at times, but in the best cases it motivates everyone to want to get to top of the family, the group of friends, the work group, or whatever.

Right now, with the Activity app on Apple Watch, I can see if I made my calorie goal, my standing goal, and my exercise goal, but I can see how I did relative to my mom or sister, my friends, or my colleagues like Serenity.

Again, self-motivation is terrific, Watch encouragement is as well, but people are social creatures and for some, group motivation is the best. It's why gyms offer personal training and group classes.

Given that an Apple Watch is much more powerful than the average fitness tracker, including the Workouts system, the Friends communication hub, and more, Apple has the potential to offer a truly great solution here as well — a digital version of the wellness challenge.

Apple runs wellness challenges already, imagine how cool that would be — for them and for everyone — if it could all be done right through the Apple Watch.

We've filed a feature request for Activity challenges and leaderboards with Apple's bug reporter: rdar://24480434.

See a great iOS or Mac App Store app and want to share it? Not a problem. Copy the link, and you can send it through mail, messages, social networks, or post it on the web. If the link is for a Mac app and you're on your iPhone, though, it starts to become a problem. If the link is for an Apple TV app, well... it can't be, because there's currently no way to share Apple TV app links. But what if there was? What if you could get any App Store app on any Apple device—or even from the Web?

The platform jail

Right now, if you're on a Mac and you click on an iPhone or iPad app, it'll open on iTunes and let you download it. Then, when you're back on your iOS device, it will either have downloaded automatically, or you can get it from your purchased list. It works fine.

If you're on an iPhone or iPad and attempt to do the reverse, however, you get a page telling you that app is only available on OS X with a link to learn more... which will sometimes take you to the iOS version of the app instead. It's confusing.

But it's still better than the poor Apple TV, where the only way to get an app is to go to your device's App Store, search for the program, and pray you can find it. (Luckily, there are few enough apps right now that the App Store's lack of search prowess doesn't get in the way, but this won't be the case forever.)

The great web escape

Instead, imagine if the web intermediated, providing all App Store links on all platforms. Click on an App Store link on your Mac or PC and, instead of iTunes, you go to iTunes Preview and there's a Get or Buy button right there. Click the button and you can choose to open in iTunes or log into your Apple ID account and initiate the Get/Buy right from the Web.

Instead of iTunes Preview, though, it's now App Store for iCloud, or whatever best fits the model Apple wants to use.

Same with iPhone or iPad: Since those are single-user devices, iOS apps can automatically redirect to the App Store app. Mac apps, though, could launch the iTunes Preview page in Safari and offer the same opportunity to log in and initiate a Get/Buy from the Web.

This would also work for getting Apple TV apps from iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Tap or click on the link, go to the Apple TV app page on App Store for iCloud, and tap or click to begin the Get/Buy process.

Here's a (really bad) mockup.

Since App Store for iCloud—like iTunes Preview—pages could show up in Google and other search results, it would also make it easy to find the links for Apple TV apps, making sharing possible to begin with. At least on every device but the Apple TV....

To share from Apple TV would still be a challenge, since it doesn't have any mail, message, social, or Web/WebKit integration. Perhaps handing off to an iOS device could work?

Since you can already buy iOS apps on the Mac, the process for buying apps for one device on another is likely simple and secure enough that additional safeguards aren't needed. There's an argument to be made that customers might get confused over which app is for which platform, but clear branding and presentation can handle that.

If Apple believes security and the potential for confusion warrants additional safeguards, though, any download could require confirmation on the destination device.

In other words, if you Get/Buy a Mac or Apple TV app on your iPhone, the next time you use your Mac or Apple TV, and App Store prompt could pop up asking for password or Touch ID authorization to complete the purchase/download. You could also opt for auto-download if the added security is too onerous for you.

iOS 10 and beyond

I have no idea how complex this system would be for Apple to implement, given the existing iTunes architecture. But it's something its competitors already provide. You can browse Google Play apps right from the web and send them to any Android device connected to your account. Same for Amazon Kindle content—and that content can even go to iOS devices. It's something that's conspicuously absent from not just the capabilities but the convenience of Apple's ecosystem.

The ability to get apps from any device—at any time, anywhere—wouldn't just make the experience better: It would make the platforms more valuable for customers, especially the iPhone and iPhone owners, since that's the device most of us have with us most of the time.

Hopefully the App Store team is on it and we'll all be able to enjoy universal App Store purchasing sooner rather than later.

On The Talk Show, John Gruber and I spent some time discussing the new Siri Remote for Apple TV. The current design is useful but confusing. It's almost impossible to tell which side is up and the buttons aren't as intuitive as they could be.

So, I took I put together mock up of some of the possible changes we felt could improve it.

1. Rebrand the MENU button

MENU is the only text used on the controller, which makes it stick out. It also improperly describes the button's function. Unlike the iPod, from which its derived, clicking MENU doesn't bring up a menu. It moves the system back through the navigation hierarchy. On iOS devices, this button is labels with a back chevron. On TV controller, that might be confused with content controls for "skip back" or "rewind", so I went with an upward chevron. It feels consistent, visually matches the experience, and also hints which end of the Siri Remote is up.

("Menu" isn't what the button does, and Apple has spent years dissuading designers from using the "hamburger" glyph (☰), so it wouldn't fit in here. The "More" gylph (•••) would likewise be out of context.)

2. Rebrand and reposition the Home button

The current Home button sports a TV set glyph. It's a departure from the rounded rectangle used on generations of iPhones, iPads, and iPods touch, and not only does it fail to describe the function, it's confusingly similar to the existing AirPlay icon. So, in this version, the Home button returns to the rounded rectangle and, more importantly, moves to the bottom—and to the center. Not only is that position immediately familiar to hundreds of millions of iOS device owners, it adds some much-needed asymmetry to the controller, clearly distinguishing top from bottom.

3. Remove the Siri button

By moving the Home button to bottom center we remove the slot currently assigned to the Siri button. Luckily, generations of iOS device owners have been trained to hold down on the Home button to trigger Siri, and we still have a Home button on this controller. Not only would that keep things consistent, it wouldn't flaunt Siri in the faces of the vast majority of the world in which the service is still not provided. For them, holding down Home could launch the Search app instead.

An argument could be made for moving the volume rocker to the side, like on the iPhone, as well. The goal of this exercise was stick as closely as possible to the existing controller, and while that's consistent positioning with the phone, this isn't a phone — it's a remote control.

Your Siri Remote fixes?

I can't even imagine how hard it must have been to nail the feel and function of the touch-sensitive area on the Siri Remote, but Apple's interactivity team absolutely nailed it. I have no doubt they thought just as deeply and worked just as hard on the buttons.

Some design challenges have no clear or easy answers, though, and even the best balance is, by necessity, the best compromise. Great design is about finding what works and then iterating as time, technological advances, and wider feedback allows.

That's what this is—feedback. Let me know yours!

Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, has just been put in complete charge of the App Stores—iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS. That's led to some hope, especially among indie developers, that longstanding issues might get the attention and address the deserve. Yet the App Stores are complicated beasts.

Prior to the App Store, anyone who wanted to get software—and it really wasn't that many people—had to hunt around the web, open accounts on a variety of sites, figure out how to install and uninstall, and be willing to pay dozens of dollars for even the most basic of apps—$40 sticky notes for Treo, I'm looking at you.

The App Store made software awareness, discovery, purchase, installation, and deletion so easy that almost everyone now does it. But it's also led to an environment apps can be lost among the sea of software, and people don't want to pay much if anything even when they do find them, making sustainable businesses tough for anything other than a top casino-style game.

I've already written about the sum of all compromises that has led us to both the heights and depths we're at now, why the Mac App Store lags so far behind the iOS App Store, and how I think a dedicated VP of App Store might be needed to really give the App Store the attention it needs.

Now I'd like to turn it over to you, our community. For developers and customers both, if Phil Schiller asked you what changes you'd like to see in the App Stores for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch, and TV, what would you tell him?

• Appoint a dedicated VP for App Store.
• Appoint a dedicated Director for Mac App Store.
• Bring Mac App Store up to parity with iOS App Store.
• Enable trial/demo periods.
• Allow for upgrade pricing.
• Obliterate Top Charts.
• Create a premium store/put freemium in a separate category.
• Build a social or Apple Music-style recommendation engine and enable shareable app "playlists".
• Improve App Store search with automatic widening, nearest neighbor, etc.
• Enable purchases via iTunes Preview on the web.
• Enable cross-platform purchases (i.e. link to, search for, and buy tvOS apps on iPhone or Mac).
• Allow developers to respond to reviews.
• Commit to 24-48 hour turn-around for app review.
• Provide a secondary, more communicative track for any app that causes concern.

Some of these might sound obvious and even easy. Each one, however, will need to be carefully considered.

To break out just one by way of example—how do you handle trials? How long should the period be? Should it be consistent so customers don't even have to think about how long they have, or should it be set by developers to suit apps that might be critical but only used once? Should the period be absolute or relative, so once you open the app you're immediately on a timer, or you're only timed while actually using the app? What happens if the period expires, you don't buy, but then you re-download the app a month or a year later? Do you get no repeat trial, a shorter repeat trial, or a new trial altogether?

What happens to customer data when the period expires and no purchase is made? Should the customer lose the data because they didn't pay, or should developers have to provide an export mechanism? Should Apple pay developers a fee during the trial period so they're compensated for their work, or should developers contribute some time with their app the way Apple contributes the infrastructure to enable it? If you download a trial through an affiliate link, then go through another affiliate link before buying, who gets the credit? The considerations, while not endless, are involved.

Other platforms have been doing some of these things, in some cases learning and evolving through them, for years. There may not be a need to start from scratch. Yet the implementation details will always need to be well planned, and execution is always more challenging than idea.

But there are incredibly smart, incredibly good people in App Store. Despite some long standing gripes, there's also an incredible history of excellence and success. The App Store has done a lot right. And now, with one senior vice president on top and a unified team throughout, there's every opportunity to nail even more of it.

So, once again, if Phil Schiller came to you and asked you what you would change about the App Store, what would you tell him, and how would you like to see it done?

Special thanks to David Barnard. Originally published in June. Updated following App Store reorganization.

The idea of Apple unbundling the built-in apps so they can be split out and updated at any time via the App Store is an old one. There are some merits to the idea but also some drawbacks. In theory, it would allow for bugs to be fixed and features to be rolled out faster than operating system updates would otherwise allow. In practice, it's much more complicated. That's why it's one of those things everyone suggests, but few go further than the suggestion. So let's go further.

Google vs. Apple

One of the reasons people suggest Apple should unbundle the built-in apps is because Google has already done that on Android. iOS and Android, however, are very different systems.

For Google, as a modular operating system provider, it makes a lot of sense. By putting apps into the Play Store, Google can push them whenever it wants or needs to. Not so with operating system updates. Google can make those whenever they want but they often as not grow old and die waiting for manufacturers and carriers to implement and release them.

Apple doesn't have that problem. Apple is integrated device provider. There are no manufacturers to deal with, and Apple removed even the carriers as roadblocks long ago. As a result, Apple can update iOS any time they like, as often as they like. Theoretically, they could do it as often as Google could push a Play Store app update.

App vs. system

It goes deeper than that, though. A lot of what Apple does with apps occurs at the system level. That's what makes iOS so efficient. It also means that what can look like an app bug or app feature is really something at the system level.

Take the recent Messages bug that, when encountering a set of Arabic characters, crashed the system. It was a result of Unicode parsing, which meant it also affected notifications and a few App Store apps, and to properly fix it required an update at the system level.

That holds true for anything use core or foundational frameworks or system-level application programming interfaces (API).

Theoretically, Apple could modularize and package up code unique to each app, so each one could stand alone with few if any system dependencies. But that would significantly increase complexity and introduce severe redundancy and bloat. Bugs would have to be fixed and features introduced one at a time, even if wide applicable. In other words, it would make iOS worse.

App vs. cloud

Increasingly, many of the features found in apps aren't local to the device but live in the cloud. Siri, iTunes Match, Apple Music, Maps, App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks... the list goes on and on. All of these apps already receive server-side updates whenever the need arises.

There's no need to download and install an operating system or even an app binary because it's all handled behind the scenes. Siri and Maps especially have received near-constant updates over the last few years. No unbundling needed.

This is also why those currently experiencing bugs with Apple Music wouldn't benefit from the Music app being in the App Store. It's the service that needs to be fixed, not just the binary.

The unbundled person-hour myth

It might seem that unbundling apps would lead to better and more frequent updates, but the two have nothing to do with each other. In fact, when apps are unbundled, and no longer tied to high-priority projects like system software updates, they can languish on the App Store without significant updates for months or years. Apple Remote was a famous example of this.

There are only so many engineers to go around, and whether an app is bundled or not doesn't change the number of engineers who how fast they can work.

The new Music app didn't wait on iOS 8.4. iOS 8.4 was for the new Music app and the Apple Music services that came with it. Transit in Apple Maps isn't waiting on iOS 9. iOS 9 is when Transit will be beta tested and ready for limited release.

They're co-dependant. By pushing app updates as part of operating system updates, Apple knows everyone who has the new app also has the new operating system that supports it, and vice versa. And if an app required an OS update for it to be installed, there's little advantage to it being unbundled anyway.

Podcasts, while it was still on the App Store, was updated 16 times. During the same period, iOS was updated 20 times. iBooks, while still on the App Store, was updated 24 times. iOS, 40 times. So, even if Calculator and Stocks were moved to the App Store, it's tough to believe they'd get updated any more frequently than they do now.

The truth is, apps being bundled or unbundled doesn't make updates any slower or faster. Apple is in sole control of the company's update pace. They've pushed out urgent updates in days when they've needed to, and gone months without an update when they didn't need to.

The user experience myth

There's some belief that if built-in apps moved the App Store they'd be easier and more convenient to update. On the Mac, for example, system updates are handled by the Mac App Store, as are Safari updates.

For consistency reasons alone it could be valuable to have software update handled by both System Preferences and Setting, or Mac App Store and iOS App Store. That aside, there's little advantage either. Updates that involve core system features would still require restarts, and updates that languish in Settings could still language in App Store or vice versa.

The unbundled advantage

There are a few advantages to unbundling. If designers decide to move a button around on screen, and they're using UIKit instead of WebKit to render it, an App Store update could get it done without having to wait for an iOS update.

Likewise, if a crash bug is caused entirely by an error in local code, with no server side solution possible, and somehow wasn't detected and fixed in any of the beta releases, it could also be fixed faster via an App Store update.

But those kinds of things don't happen. Apple designers don't move buttons around at random and the last few times there have been major bugs in an iOS release they've been related to wireless connectivity or other system-level features that would—wait for it—require an iOS update anyway. (Which Apple has delivered, quickly.)

The bottom line

I like the idea of moving built-in apps to the App Store, which is why I've been one of the people talking about it for years. But the more I learn about why the system is the way it is, the more I realize ideas are much, much easier than implementations.

iOS isn't Android, so the iPhone and iPad wouldn't get the same advantages Google gets by moving core apps to the Play Store. And what advantages there are need to be weighed against the complexities and inefficiencies the transition would introduce.

Apple might one day make that move—though they haven't done it on OS X either—or they may continue to evolve apps to the point where features are completely unbound from binaries.

The truth is, Apple doesn't need to do anything other than provide important updates in as timely a manner as possible, and that's completely unbound from built-in or App Store details.

I went out to dinner with my family a couple of nights ago and, when we got to discussing plans for the summer, I needed to check a couple dates. Since I've come to rely on my Apple Watch for any brief but important interaction, I immediately lifted my wrist, tapped into the Calendar app, went Month View, and then—out of iPhone-honed instinct—scrolled down to go to the next month and... nothing but a rubber band bounce-back of nope.

The Apple Watch shipped with a Month Views in Calendar but only for the current month. I knew this, I know this, and yet every so often I go there without even thinking about it, expecting it to be there, only to be denied. Then I have to pull out my iPhone—yes, like an animal.

I've seen it happen with friends and acquaintances as well, and each time it does the conversation momentarily diverts to how great it would be if we could see more months than just the current one.

watchOS, the Apple Watch's operating system, seems to support the kind of behavior I'm expecting—plenty of apps let you swipe through sequential screens. The feature also seems in keeping with the Apple Watch's focus on quick, easily digestible information.

"Can we do Disney the second weekend in August?" "I'll check!" Lift. Tap. Swipe. "The first is a Saturday, so... the 8th or the 15th?" "Let's do the 15th!"

You can ask Siri questions that will get you information about upcoming months, but it's not the same as a high-level visualization of the entire month. It's not the same as seeing a traditional calendar.

One of the big new features for watchOS 2 is Time Travel for Complications. It'd be great if Apple also gave us "time travel" for Month View in Calendar, and let us see, recall, and schedule going backwards and forwards.

We've filed this as a feature enhancement request with Apple's bug reporter: rdar://21642763

The Apple Watch comes with several clock faces built in. There's Chronograph for the classic timepiece look; Color for minimal but bright analog look; Utility, which is somewhere in-between; Simple, which is just what the name implies; and Mickey Mouse, which features an animated version of the classic Disney character. There's also Modular for digital display and maximum information; X-Large, which showcases the time in large, colorful numbers; Motion, which shows an animated butterfly, jellyfish, or flower; Solar, which tracks the sun across the sky; and Astronomy, which presents an array of planets, moons, and the Sun.

So, what would you change about them?

• More licensed clock faces like Donald Duck an Superman.
• More digital clock face options.
• Curated Clock Face store (like Apple TV).
• Open Clock Face store (like iPhone).
• Quick app access complications (i.e. Messages, Phone).
• Complications for third-party apps.
• Ability to re-order clock faces.
• Monogram on more clock faces.
• Return of Photo (custom wallpaper) clock face.

Watch OS, despite it's similarities to iOS 8.2, is still at version 1.0. Apple is already hard at work on iOS 9 and Watch OS 2.0. Right now clock faces are in their infancy. There's no doubt Apple will keep working on the TimeKit framework and what it can do. If Apple asked what you wanted to see, what would you tell them?

Currently limited to actionable notifications (short and long looks), widgets (glances), and remote views (WatchKit apps), even though Apple Watch apps are bound to the iPhone, there's still boundless potential. I've tried several smartwatches and bands, seen most of what's on the market, and I've even been lucky enough to use the Apple Watch both back in September and recently again in March, where third-party apps were showcased. Those apps, the ones listed on the Apple Watch App Store apps page, benefited from time in the labs and testing on actual hardware. For those who didn't get that opportunity, after a lot of conversations with a lot of smart and experienced people, here's a list of things that are vital to keep in mind.

1. Keep it black

The Apple Watch's display is widely believed to be OLED. Unlike LCD, OLED is appreciably more energy efficient when displaying darker colors, especially black. Moreover, deep OLED blacks will better blend in with the watch's black bezels, making everything seem more open and expansive.

Apple's human interface guidelines (HIG) for the Apple Watch is emphasizing black, and you're going to want to follow it.

• Apple Watch HIG{.nofollow}

2. Keep it high contrast

There's a reason Apple is using terminology like "looks" and "glances". When an interface is on your wrist, the amount of attention you give it changes. Since you're not pulling it from your pocket or purse, or hefting it up from off the table, since it's not taking as much time to engage, the time spent engaging drops. That means everything has to be incredibly readable, and that means it has to be high contrast. On black backgrounds, bright text will show up clearly and bright colors will pop.

When you're only looking or glancing over for a second or two, having to stop and squint to try and visually and mentally parse information won't work. Everything needs to be presented clearly so it can be processed and understood quickly.

3. Keep it discreet

When a device is more intimate, its interactions have to be more important: Otherwise, it risks turning notification into interruption. Likewise, when a device is more visible, its interactions have to be more discreet: Otherwise it risks turning information into embarrassment.

In other words, your short look should never betray what your spouse thinks about your boss keeping you late, which controversial hashtag you're tracking, or anything that could be contentious or inappropriate at a meeting or at a dinner party.

4. Keep it brief

The Apple Watch has a small screen, making it ideal for quick bits of information and interaction. That same size makes it less than ideal, however, for long-form information or prolonged interactions. Likewise the weight of holding it up for anything more than a few minutes will likely cause discomfort.

So, show the critical stuff first, let people tap in for more, and then people use Handoff for anything truly in-depth or long in duration, so they can immediately pick up and continue whatever they need to on a bigger, more powerful device.

5. Keep it consistent

Looks and glances are each appropriate for different types of information. Looks are for temporary notifications; glances are for persistent data presentations. If you need something temporary, go with a look. If you need something persistent, go with a glance.

If they go to a glance, they want to see something. Just like a notification shouldn't stay stuck on the screen, a widget shouldn't ever empty out or vanish.

6. Keep it simple

Interactions with WatchKit will be more reactive than active. We'll spend far more time engaging with looks than hunting around for third-party glances or apps. That means notifications will be the primary gateway for most software, and they'll need to be polished and perfected. Glances, by contrast, will only need to be considered when data truly needs to be available all the time, and WatchKit apps only when interactivity is needed beyond what a glance can provide.

You don't need to have all of them, you'll need to have the most appropriate one(s), and have them perform incredibly well.

Bonus: No force-hamburgers

Force touch is a way to bring up extra, contextually-sensitive options. It's not an analog for the "hamburger button" — a way to bury a basement-full of unrelated functions.

If you feel yourself force touching, and start smelling burgers, step away from the Apple Watch and head for the joint of your choice. Then come back and pare down the options to the essentials.

Bonus II: Rules are made to be broken

Best practices are just that — best, not only. Great designers, the ones who truly understand their mediums and their messages, can and will break rules all the time. This list is meant to help, not to constrict — to make think, not to stifle. Take what makes your app better, reject the rest.

Bottom line

Come this April, we'll be surprised and delighted by what we get to see and use on our wrists. WatchKit apps work in tandem with the iPhone, and the developers and designers who make iPhone apps have had years to hone their chops and their craft. Developers who aren't sure of what to do or how exactly it'll all work simply have to wait for the Apple Watch to hit the market, get one, and and then test and tweak their apps on it until they shine. Because when it comes to the Apple Watch, shipping great experiences is going to be far, far more important than shipping on launch day.

• WatchKit on the Apple Developer portal
• Designing for the Apple Watch
• iPhone 6 and Apple Watch roundtable
• As I learn WatchKit
• Convenience — Apple Watch's killer feature

Originally published February 15, 2015.

These moves make the Apple TV both more interesting and more affordable — and I have no doubt that the imminent return of Game of Thrones will help sell a lot of the little black boxes. But in the battle for the living room, with competition ranging from the ultra-cheap Chromecast to pricer if more potent consoles like Playstation 4, where does the future of Apple TV fit?

The next Apple TV

The battle for input 1 — the first HDMI port on your TV — is tough. You have lots to choose from: cable and satellite boxes, game consoles, streaming boxes, and more.

Apple entered the living room in 2007, the same year it launched the original iPhone. Based on a lobotomized version of OS X Tiger, the first Apple TV was a big, expensive silver box that ran on Intel, had a hard drive, and focused on syncing with iTunes on the desktop.

It was replaced in September 2010 by the second-generation Apple TV, a small black box that ran iOS on an A4 chipset, supported 720p video, and streamed from the cloud. In March of 2012, Apple bumped that little black box to Apple TV 3, the box we know and use today: It runs on the A5 chipset, supports up to 1080p video, and has been continually adding streaming services since its debut.

Some three years later, we've gone from iPhone 4s to iPhone 6, third-generation iPad to iPad Air 2, and we even almost have our hands on an Apple Watch — but that 2012 Apple TV 3 is still the latest and greatest set-top box model from Apple. And it's showing its age.

If we compile all the rumors and dreams that have been circulating since the last Apple TV update, expectations for an Apple TV 4 certainly run high: Apple has a laptop-class processor now with Cyclone, and console-quality graphics potential with the Metal framework. That combination could stream video and play games like nobody's business.

But it's also expensive. The iPad mini 2, which has last year's Cyclone processor in the Apple A7 chipset, currently starts at $299. (Coincidentally, the same price as the original Apple TV). Go to 32GB of storage, and it's $349. (Coincidentally, the starting price of the Apple Watch).

Sure, the Apple TV won't need a built-in screen the way the iPad does, but it will need a remote control cable of exploiting its functionality, which the iPad doesn't. If it has sensors on board, including Siri, it will need a way to handle that input on-device or on-remote. All this to say, a modern Apple TV will cost more than $69. Maybe quite a bit more.

To justify the higher cost, Apple would have to provide equal or greater value. Again, based on long-running rumors, that could include forward-looking support for UHD or 4K video, content deals, and/or the introduction of an Apple TV SDK that does for set-top boxes what the iPad did for tablets — turns them into a gateway to the App (Game) Store.

How we'd control it remains an open question: New, innovative remote? iPhone or iPad remote? Apple Watch remote? There are a bunch of hypothetical options to consider. (And, while we're talking fantasy, I still love Guy English's idea of MFi Nintendo controllers tied exclusively to Mario, Zelda, and Metroid for iOS...)

There's a lot that could make a new, high-end Apple TV a no-brainer — especially if it served as a Siri-powered HomeKit hub, AirPort router, or did any other number of additional, rumored things.

A hypothetical $299 Apple TV could position the "old" $69 Apple TV 3 as the entry-level option: Much like the "old" iPhone 5s or iPad Air hanging around at lower price tiers, it offers basic functionality for those who don't want or need the latest or the greatest (or the most expensive). That could be very compelling, as stand-alone boxes go. But what about streaming sticks?

Apple TV Direct

While I've not found any rumors about this, I'm sure many people looked at the Google Chromecast and wondered what a version made by Apple could do. Not a small, independent box that could browse and play content all on its own — but a tiny HDMI device that could stream content from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Apple has already shown decoupled interface and remote-view projection with both CarPlay and Apple Watch. They've certainly been using AirPlay to Apple TV for years.

I could easily see the future Apple TV as an interface built into iPhone and iPad as part of a future version of iOS, where the processing occurs on-device, but the interface and content projects onto your television through an HDMI dongle. It would be great for travelers who want to be able to watch what's on their phone or tablet on the TV but don't want to carry anything as big as an Apple TV through airports or on long car drives. Likewise, there are folks who simply don't want another box on or under their TV that might instead prefer an HDMI dongle.

And, like CarPlay, it would make hardware updates less of a concern — every time iOS is updated, Apple TV Direct would update as well. It could also be inexpensive — inexpensive like iPod shuffle cheap. Inexpensive like under $50 cheap.

Just the beginning...

Apple TV Direct, like netbooks and budget phones, may simply be too low-end for Apple to consider. But even without it, that still leaves the current — and currently $69 — Apple TV as a more affordable point of entry than ever before, and room on top of it for that high-end Apple TV 4 of our dreams.

Apple said at the Spring forward event that these Apple TV announcements were just the beginning. So all we know for certain is that there will be more.

Either way, given the HBO Now announcement, the rumors of more channels to come, and the potential of the platform, I find myself really enthusiastic about the future of Apple TV.

The Apple Watch runs WatchOS. It's a stripped down version of iOS, optimized for a much smaller screen and much smaller battery. It also has its own, distinctive look and feel, including its own take on the Home screen, its own interaction methods like the digital crown and force touch, and its own, distinctive capabilities like the Taptic engine, optimized for a wearable.

In contrast, when Apple decided to launch the iPad, they used iPhone OS. It was originally suggested they use the exact same single-column interface, but because it wouldn't make efficient use of the much larger screen, they decided to implement a dual-column interface instead. Yet the Home screen and design language remained the same as the iPhone, as did the interaction methods and capabilities.

Imagine instead, like the Apple Watch, the iPad ran its own distinct version of iOS: iPad OS. Rather than a stripped down version for smaller screens and batteries, imagine it ran an amped-up version that really took advantage of bigger screens and batteries, with a Home screen, interaction methods, and capabilities optimized for a tablet.

The original iPad was famously dismissed as being "just a big iPhone," yet that was its genius. It gave everyone for whom traditional computing was unapproachable, inaccessible, or intimidating something that comforted and empowered them. Those who tried to compete against the iPad by offering more desktop-style interfaces have, to put it mildly, failed.

To keep the iPad as a mainstream point of entry into the world of computing, its primary interface layer has to remain approachable, accessible, and friendly. Apple has been very careful to make sure that, as more "advanced" features have been added to iPad and iOS — like the app switcher, notification center, control center, and extensibility — no one ever has to see or use them unless they seek them out and want to.

Similar to how an iPhone can just be your phone, camera, and music player, if that's all you need, an iPad can just be your web browser, ebook reader, and video watcher. The latter is exactly how the iPad was originally pitched: As being better than an iPhone and MacBook at those kinds of tasks. Yet the iPad now exists in a world of big screen iPhones and lightweight, long lasting MacBooks.

The iPad has been given some distinct features beyond the split view, of course. Apple added multitouch navigation gestures and USB adapters uniquely for the iPad. Yet Apple recently duplicated the split view controller in landscape mode on the iPhone 6 Plus as well.

At the same time we now have an iPad Air 2 with and Apple A8X processor — tri-core CPU, octa-core GPU, 2GB of RAM — and technologies like Swift and Metal that make it as fast and powerful as some laptops. We have an iPad so fast and powerful it might well exceed the capabilities currently afforded it by its software.

There are remarkable apps — like Keynote and GarageBand that launched with the original iPad, and Pixelmator that launched with the iPad Air 2 — but those apps remain just that: remarkable. They've not become the norm. That might be a constraint of the market and not the system, but a distinct system could help unlock the potential of that market.

Rumors suggest Apple is already working on new capabilities — providing mechanisms for multiwindow apps, possibly with the ability to drag data between them. That would greatly increase the utility of the platform for people for whom productivity is important. There are also rumors of an iPad Pro with an Apple Pen, which some have come to hope would provide a digitizer to enable not only additional functionality for everyone from real estate agents to warehouse workers to enterprise sales teams, but creativity as well.

Those feel like first steps, though, not final ones.

Microsoft has been working on their Surface line of — tabtops? laplets? — for three generations (not counting the company's previous decade-long dalliance with Tablet PC). They include not only pen and digitizer technology, but a highly integrated, detachable keyboard. Like Google with Material Design, however, Microsoft is pursuing a one-design-to-rule-them-all strategy where the Metro/Modern language gets painted across all screens, no matter the size or capabilities.

With OS X Yosemite, Apple has maintained a separate, though related, operating system and a separate, though consistent, design language for the Mac. With Watch OS, Apple is now doing a variant operating system and design language for the Apple Watch. The company is letting each device remain distinct and true unto itself, but letting the computer and the watch work with mobile — iPhone and iPad — through technologies like iCloud and continuity.

An iMessage is an iMessage on the watch, phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop, and the Messages app is broadly consistent across those devices. You might simply receive it on one, begin a response on another, finish a response or refer back to it later on yet another. The activity will be the same, the state will be the same, only the method of interaction and experience will vary.

By decoupling activity from device, we can move seamlessly through the range of screen and power sizes, from convenience to capability and back, depending on our needs. And that liberates the system behind those devices to better suit those needs as well. It lets there be cars and trucks, but it also introduces the possibility of an SUV.

The iPad running iPhone OS made sense in a world before iCloud and Continuity, before Yosemite and Apple Watch. It kept everything compatible and consistent across mobile. Now, however, we have all those things. Compatibility and consistency have, in large part, been abstracted. Mobile can now be more than one thing.

What could iPad do if, like the Apple Watch, it had its own variant of iOS with interfaces, interaction methods, design language, and capabilities even more optimized for its size and power? What could the iPad do if it had its own iPadOS?

iMessage and FaceTime today do pretty much what they did years ago at launch. While it's hard to say they've been neglected, Apple hasn't prioritized them to the same degree their competition has been prioritizing Google Hangouts, FaceBook Messenger, or BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) of late. What features Apple has been adding have been centered more around notifications and the management thereof, which are important but secondary to core communications features. You can't be notified about something you can't do.

Not only that, iMessage will soon be the only remaining first-party single-platform messaging service in mobile. BBM comes to iOS and Android this summer, Google's new Hangouts app has already launched for iOS and Android, and Microsoft's Skype runs on pretty much anything (I can almost hear my toaster ringing now..). Third party messengers, like FaceBook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. likewise run the gamut of platforms, and connect users no matter where they are, or what type of device they're using. Many if not most of them also include integrated video and audio messaging, something Apple supports -- in video-only form -- in the separate, and similarly single-plaftorm, Facetime app.

Moreover, while FaceTime is fairly reliable, the same can't be said for iMessage, which is missing, miss-ordering, miss-grouping, or otherwise messing up often enough to shatter faith in the service. All of this adds up to something I'd sorely like to see integrated, fixed, and perhaps even expanded in iOS 7:

1. Merge iMessage and FaceTime into a single app, or at the very least a transparent experience. Like BBM, Hangouts, and Skype, I'd love to be able to switch between text, audio, and video chat without having to switch back and forth between apps.
2. Add features to iMessage/FaceTime like persistent groups, the ability to block people, video conference calling, and maybe even screen sharing and VoIP. I don't think Apple needs all the features of BBM, especially the social ones, but parity with Skype and Hangouts would be nice.
3. Make iMessage "just work" better. Fix whatever causes messages to fail to appear, appear out of order, or switch to SMS/MMS without notification. Communications requires trust. iMessage needs that trust.
4. Consider taking iMessage cross-platform. It's not nearly as far-fetched as Apple licensing iOS or OS X, and it's broadly inline with the original stated intent for FaceTime.

These are all non-trivial requests.

Merging the proprietary iMessage with the standards-based FaceTime would certainly be a huge challenge, but likely necessary to handle all the varied types of communication. Where sometimes separate apps for separate purposes makes more sense, other times a bigger-picture app enabled higher-level functionality. Both iMessage and FaceTime currently employ phone numbers as the connection mechanism on iPhone, and Apple IDs as the connection mechanism across iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. So, to end users like us, the way we establish contact wouldn't change. It would just become unified.

Base feature parity with the competition would, of course, make iMessage/FaceTime competitive. From conference calling to blocking, there are obvious holes in Apple's current offering that seem like they'd have already been filled but for prioritization of (limited) resources. Now that messaging is becoming important again, perhaps it'll become more of a priority? Of the additional features, Voice over IP (VoIP) would be trickiest, as it threatens to expand carrier disintermediation even further. Google and BlackBerry have already done a lot to provide carrier-free communications, as has Microsoft with their Skype acquisition, but everything has always been more difficult for Apple given the uniformity and mainstream popularity of the iPhone.

Fixing iMessages' reliability will also no doubt be a challenge. If it were simple or easy at any level, Apple would have done it already. (Tim Cook probably isn't any more amused by missing or messed up iMessages than we are.) Other vendors have shown that it's possible to have dependable messaging, however, so it's something Apple has to figure out.

Taking iMessage/FaceTime cross-platform is harder to see. Apple probably doesn't want to port iMessage to Android, much less Windows Phone or BlackBerry 10. While the FaceTime, which could be released as a standard and implemented by other people on those other platforms, iMessage is all Apple. They'd have to do the heavy lifting themselves, add a parallel, standards-based component for others to tie into, or open their currently closed technology. None of those seem likely, though allowing fall back to XMPP the way iMessage can already fall back to SMS/MMS for compatibility could interesting.

And that's a pity, because as much as I love proprietary hardware and interfaces, and think strong opinions make for great experiences, I want my communications protocols to be open. What's on my phone can be all Apple, what connects me to my friends and the world I'd prefer to be standards-based and interchangeable. Like email, messaging should go wherever our friends are, or its usefulness is compromised.

(iMessage/FaceTime integration into future Apple TV products is an interesting idea as well, especially for connecting families via the living room and companies via the conference room, but we don't have future Apple TVs yet, and current ones can already put FaceTime on the big screen via AirPlay.)

iMessage and FaceTime vs. the competition today

iMessage was introduced in iOS 5 as a way to provide a BBM-like service for iPhone users, and neatly roshambo the carriers' right in their exorbitant SMS/MMS fees at the same time. Where Apple's iChat, the messaging service available at the time on the Mac, piggy-backed on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), iMessage uses Apple's own Push Notification Services (PNS).

On the iPhone, iMessage intermingles seemlessly with SMS/MMS. Apple including both in the same app made for immediate, immense adoption. If you're sending a message to another Apple user, it simply goes over iMessage. If you're sending to someone on a non-Apple device, it reverts to SMS/MMS to maintain compatibility. However, it's not always elegant. Sometimes iMessage will fail and you'll have to resend, or optionally resend as SMS/MMS. Other times, iMessage will fail and your message will automatically be sent as SMS/MMS. Which, if you're in the midst of convering with someone, could mean instant, potentially rage-inducing texting charges. And you can't block people from iMessaging you when you want or need to.

In addition to text messages, iMessage provides delivered and optional read receipts, like BBM. It can also handle images, video, contacts, location, audio, and a few other types of files. While text, images, and videos can be added from within the iOS Messages app, the other forms of messages can only be attached from within apps specific to those file types, like Contacts, Maps, Voice Memo, etc. That's fine if you're in an app and want to share as a one-off, but irksome if you're engaged in a conversation and simply want to drop in an attachment as part of it.

Much to their credit, Apple did move iMessage to the Mac. Once you get used to messaging that works on mobile and desktop, it's tough to even consider using anything else. It's one of Skype's biggest advantages, even though their Mac and Windows client can be as horrible an experience as it is useful. Lack of a native Mac and Windows client is also one of the biggest drawbacks to BBM, and to Hangouts whose web experience has gotten more powerful but far less elegant as of late. Facebook is likewise locked to the browser (and bereft of a video calling option on mobile), and many other alternatives are still mobile-only.

The Messages app on the Mac is more of an iChat/Messages hybrid -- or Frankenstein -- still supporting AIM, XMPP, and Yahoo! accounts as well. Those accounts retain some of the old iChat features as well, including integrated audio and video chat and screen sharing. Gone, however, are features like video conference calling, iChat theater file sharing, and the cute if gimmicky backdrops.

And, of course, none of those legacy iChat features work with iMessage -- for video chat with an Apple account, you have to launch FaceTime on OS X just like on iOS.

FaceTime arrived with iOS 4 and, like iMessage, enjoys a huge advantage on the iPhone by being tied right into the default calling app, in this case Phone. That makes switching from a traditional cellular voice call to FaceTime incredibly easy (though switching back is not currently possible, easily or at all). FaceTime isn't based on a proprietary protocol like iMessage, but on standards-based ones like H.264, AAC, SIP, STUN, TURN, ICE, and RTP.

When it was announced, Steve Jobs said Apple would be, in return, offering the FaceTime implementation as a standard. That has not yet come to pass, though Apple has been sued for patent-infringement over elements of FaceTime, which may have necessitated a change in plans. Open or closed, FaceTime remains video-only, though you can escape to audio if you really want to. It has also remained relatively stagnant, unlocking 3G/LTE transmission, but not adding (back) any features like video conference calling, screen sharing, or file sharing either.

Contrast this to the admittedly much more mature, much more central-to-the-platform, BBM, which offers not only text, image, video, and the other standard attachment types, along with integrated video and audio chat, and screen-sharing, but also social components like shared galleries, calendars, and task lists, and even Twitter-like, one-to-many channels now. You can also easily block people from messaging you, which can be really important if your contact information gets in the wrong hands. And while BBM has suffered more than its fair share of outages, like any internet service, when it works, it works reliably enough to have put the "crack" in the "crackberry" experience.

Likewise, Skype and Hangouts are both currently offering more feature-rich, more integrated, and more reliable messaging services. (Though Google has entangled Hangouts in their larger social identity network.)

The bottom line

On the iPhone, the phone, like the messaging, has always been just another app. However, communications is still one of the most important jobs the iPhone has, and one that makes the iPad and Mac far more useful as well. Apple doesn't need to be best-in-class when it comes to messaging -- though that might well be on their, likely very long, to-do list -- but it would greatly behoove them, and us, if they were to prioritize being more competitive.

Otherwise, alternatives go from niche to mainstream, and you end up de-facto outsourcing something that should be a core technology on any platform. (Which is likely why BlackBerry is porting BBM.)

I'd love to see Apple take a step in that direction with iOS 7. Then I can start asking for a unified messaging system, like webOS Synergy or the BlackBerry 10 Hub, for iOS 8...

• Actionable notifications and push interface
• Unified file repository and document picker
• Consistent aluminium theme
• Improved email attachment handling
• Better, more social App Store search
• Alert muting
• Siri access via Spotlight

Notification Center debuted in iOS 5 and began transforming Apple's old, unscalable, modal alert system into something less obtrusive and more robust. Unfortunately, iOS 6 spent so much time setting up the future -- kicking Google to the curb, outsourcing social, and improving support for Asia -- that notifications were left pretty much at a standstill. Hopefully iOS 7's flatter and more consistent redesign won't occupy the lion's share of attention this time around, and Notification Center will not only catchup, but leap ahead. And hopefully it'll start with the transition from informational alerts to actionable ones.

This isn't a new request by any means. Many people have made it many times, including me last year. Palm had the beginnings of it in webOS, jailbreak apps like BiteSMS have been doing for ages, and Google started adding it to Android in 2012.

And here's why -- whether we're tired, busy, or just plain lazy, having to go hunting for apps -- even widgets -- just to reply to a message, reset a timer, change a song, or do any other trivial activity is outdated and inefficient. It's pull in the age of push.

It's well past time for actions, like information, comes to us.

From creation to conversation

In the current version of iOS, if we're using an app or playing a game or just fiddling around on the Home Screen, and an SMS, iMessage, IM, Hangout, or any other short bit of text is sent our way, we get a roll-down banner notification. If we tap the banner, it rips us from our current activity and sends us carousel-ing into whatever app owns that bit of text. At that point, we have to wait for the host app to wake up, connect, and download the actual message. (Even if all of it was shown in the push notification, the information isn't passed along and the app has to make its own, post-launch request to get its own, post-launch copy.) Then, after replying, we have to either use the fast app switcher to go back to our previous app, or the old Home button click/icon tap combo. There's no insta-back button or gesture for that.

Imagine instead that, once the banner notification rolls down, we could not only tap on it to go to the app, but drag it down to get an actionable dialog. Then we could quickly enter and send a response, at which point the dialog would disappear and we could immediately resume what we were doing. No carousel app switching, no need to click and tap our way back.

Apple already does a lot of the out-of-app heavy messaging lifting today, in Share Sheets. Launch the Photos app and pick a photo. Tap the Action button, tap Mail, Messages, or Twitter, and an embedded Mail, Message, or Tweet sheet slides up from the bottom. Type and send a message. The message gets sent and the sheet slides down again, allowing you to continue right where you left off. In fact, Notification Center already has buttons for calling up Twitter and Facebook sheets.

The current system only works to create new messages, and only for Apple's built-in and integrated partner apps (Mail, Messages, Twitter, and Facebook). It's not impossible, however, to imagine it working for replies as well.

And with third-party messaging apps. At worst, Notification Center could simply keep pulling the icon to identify the app. In a perfect world, those third-party apps could include parameters for/register with with Notification Center to use in presenting their own embedded sheets (similar in spirit to how Passbook provides for some level of design in third-party passes).

With Notification Center maintaining control of the transactions, communications could be handled more securely and power efficiently as well.

From snooze to choose

The same basic system could also work for changing alarms. Right now, just like with messages, if an alarm goes off, we can either okay it or put it to sleep, but we can't change it. If we want to do that, we have to mishandle the alert in someway, then go track down the app (typically Clock) to do something about it.

In a push-interface world, the alarm would go off and the banner could be pulled down into, or the popup would already be, a widget that could not only be dismissed or slept, but altered right there and then.

Even if it was kept modal, a timer could be scrubbed back from 00:00 to 00:30, for example, right on the alert.

Likewise, an alarm could be deferred, but could also be quickly changed to another time.

From switcher to center

Controls are trickier, because they're persistent rather than event-driven. No one wants a constant banner with audio controls in it, for example, which is probably why Apple annexed them into the fast app switcher in iOS 4.

They might make more sense in Notification Center, however, where instead of being a double-click and horizontal swipe away, they're just a downward swipe. The brightness and AirPlay controls could easily live there as well, as could all the other settings most people never use, but the nerds among us want faster access to -- everything from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth to hotspot to Airplane mode, to the kitchen sync in there as well. They could be set to off by default, so mainstream users aren't bothered by them, but there and ready to be enabled by those who want them.

From static to dynamic

As much as we like to compare platforms and talk about who and who isn't innovating, who's blazing ahead, who's copying, and who's playing catchup, the truth is every major player is mostly just giving us variations on a theme.

Siri, Google Now, and Kinect are starting to break down the old concepts, not just with natural language and gesture-based control schemes, but with dynamically generated, contextually aware interfaces. They're still new, still experimental, still layers on top of far more static Home screens, apps, and activities, but they're getting there.

If Apple wants to get really avant guarde, Notification Center could become contextual, presenting information, actions, and options depending on the time of day, our location, and what we're doing when we invoke it. And, of course, helpfully nudge us with actionable banners when we haven't invoked it -- the classic example being "Traffic has changed, you will now have to leave 10 min. earlier for your meeting, would you like me to message attendees?"

From the Apple II to the Mac, Apple's been at the forefront of making ever more accessible types of interface mainstream. Actionable notifications could be a piece of the whatever's-next puzzle, and I hope we see it from Apple sooner rather than later.

If you've used webOS notifications, or Jelly Bean notifications, or BiteSMS, or if you're just tired of switching apps every time you get an alert, let me know what you think -- should the future be actionable, and how?

• Unified file repository and document picker
• Consistent aluminium theme
• Improved email attachment handling
• Better, more social App Store search
• Alert muting
• Siri access via Spotlight

Update: The number one beef I'm hearing back about Notification Center is, not surprisingly, multiple device support. So, yes, let's hope Apple fixes that too. If you've dismissed a notification on one device, it should dismiss it on all devices. Better still, if you're using one device, and the others are asleep, maybe that should be the only device that gets an active notification?

Every year, for the last three years, I've asked Apple to consider what amounts to a Files.app and FilePicker control in iOS. It would be analogous to the Photos.app and ImagePicker control, but allow us to easily find, and easily open, all the documents we use on all our iPhones and iPads, every day. Now, on the eve of iOS 7, the need for better file handling -- not filesystem! -- remains, and if anything has become even more urgent. In a post-iCloud, post Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall world, how can Apple address it?

No filesystem but no real alternative

At the risk of making it obnoxiously clear, I don't think iOS needs a filesystem. Dropbox is a filesystem and while it's fantastic at what it does, it's the past, not the future. Apple doesn't seem to think iOS needs a filesystem either, but they haven't yet provided what's needed to make filesystems obsolete. Hence, Dropbox. From Stuck between the Dropbox that was and the iCloud that isn't yet:

In a world with a Files.app, you'd just tap its icon on the Home screen, tap the type of document you want (the way you tap an album in Photos.app), and go to your document. Then you tap the document and choose where you want to open it. Conversely, you could open any document app -- text editor, presenter, spreadsheet, etc. -- tap the open button, and FilePicker would present you with every file (including iCloud files) that can be opened by that app. Again, with the ability to quickly filter to help with longer lists.

Faster still, you'd just type something in a search box and Spotlight would filter right to whatever you want.

Mapping Files to Photos

Back before iOS 6 launched, I did a series of mockups on how Files.app could map to Photos.app, FilePicker could map to ImagePicker, and File Stream could map to Photo Stream. From How Apple could provide direct document access in iOS 6:

We didn't get better file handling in iOS 6, however. We got Passbook, a repository for tickets, cards, coupons, boarding passes, and more. And not without reason. From iOS 6 and why we got Passbook instead of Files.app:

It's already in use everywhere from Starbucks to Delta airlines, and it's built in such a way that when/if Apple embraces radio transactions (be it via NFC or something else), Passbook should handle it as gracefully as CoreLocation handles GPS vs. Wi-Fi mapping. It's good now and could be terrific in the future.

But file handling on iOS isn't even good now, and needs to be terrific. It's far more personal, and will drive far less revenue, but great file handling is the difference between an operating system being truly useful and truly frustrating. Android has intents and sharing, Windows Phone has contracts. There's whole levels of app interoperability that iOS lacks at the moment.

Finding the future

I've evolved my thinking on Files.app and FilePicker somewhat since the pre-iOS 6 days. A flat repository with search, for example, is more future-proof than any single layer of folders or albums. A much better, more robust, and more useful version of Spotlight that has "just type" functionality similar to what webOS had, and BlackBerry 10 is rolling out, with the ability to see into iCloud and Files.app, would go a long way to making things easier and faster.

The same way Apple knew "I want multitasking" was really "I want Pandora, Skype, and TomTom to work while I'm on the phone or browsing the web", and did just enough to provide that functionality without compromising battery life, Apple could no doubt figure out "I want inter-app communication" is really "I want to open and send my files where and when I want to open and send them", and do just enough to provide that functionality without compromising security.

Multitasking had a small group of different API, and inter-app communication would certainly require similar to truly address current pain points. Files.app and FilePicker would just be part of that, but an important, highly user-facing part. BackBoard, XPC, there are a lot of ways Apple could choose to handle these problems. I just hope screaming fast, ubiquitous file access is front and center come keynote time.

Bottom line

Six years into the mobile revolution iOS started and we're still stuck at the gates when it comes to file handling on iPhone and iPad. With iCloud, the need only grew greater. With fresh blood in control of the product, perhaps this year we'll see some movement. Perhaps rolled into more robust inter-app communications, perhaps on its own. Either way, I've been asking for it for a long time, other technologists have been asking for it for a long time, and other apps have tried to fill the gap that only system software can really fill.

What say you? Will iOS 7 finally be the time and version when great file handling comes to iOS? And if it does, will it be in the form of Files.app and FilePicker, something more, or something else?

Skeuomorphism -- the use of real world design in a digital context -- has been a target lately. It's also been lumped together with heavy design, elaborate themes, or highly textured skins, to the point of being completely misunderstood. At the extreme, this "skeuomorphic" melange has been held up as an example of iOS being boring, outdated, and bereft of innovation. In more reasonably terms, it's looked at as something that can be useful, but has perhaps been overused.

Personally I think there are far more important things Apple needs to do in iOS 7 than wiping the world clean of textures, gradients, and curves, both, but the argument persists so it's worthwhile giving it some form. but let's imagine for a moment it is on the agenda. That Apple's new head of all design, hardware and software, Jony Ive, was set to impose a new, unified, Aluminium theme. That, just like the Scarlet Witch in House of M, he whispered "No more themes."

Instead of arguing in the abstract about how much better or worse it would be, let's mock it up and see what could that look like...

A unified, aluminium iOS

Back before iOS 6 there were rumors of a complete, consistent re-skinning of the core interface into something more subdued and "silver". That didn't come to pass, though Apple's newest built-in app, Maps, did get a more subdued, more silver make-over, complete with new, floating buttons. Inspired by a discussion with Grant Paul for an upcoming episode of the Debug podcast,

I'm going to use something akin to that as a foundation, with a hint of the WWDC 2012 for the more heavily designed apps. I'm calling it "aluminium" in honor of how Jony Ive (properly) pronounces the word. Here's an example of Find my Friends, iBooks, and Game Center, stripped down and anodized.

Under the theory that consistency is usability, the more lightly-designed built-in apps could also adopt the same look and feel. Here's an example of Settings, Mail, and Safari.

Additional background

A lot has been written about skeuomorphism lately, by a lot of people far more experienced than me. Dave Wiskus, in an article for Macworld, explored the future of Apple design, saying:

• Listen to Wiskus discuss the future of Apple design on the Iterate podcast

John Gruber of Daring Fireball attributes much of this to the evolution from standard to HiDPI displays like Retina:

Marc Edwards of Bjango also cites the print world, but mentions the technical limitations of rival platforms as a contributing factor to their simpler design languages:

Sebastiaan de With brought up a counterpoint on Twitter:

• Listen to de With discuss Find my Friends and stitched leather on the Iterate podcast

I'm still of the opinion that it's less about skeuomorphism or it's opposite, digital authenticity, than it is about usability. In some cases, skeuomorphism helps make things discoverable, approachable, and engaging. In others, it just gets in the way.

Update 1: Developer Craig Hockenberry of the Iconfactory concisely points out the major drawback to uniformity on Twitter:

Update 2: Designer Louie Mantia of Pacific Helm brings up a couple of excellent points, and throws in a gorgeous mockup, on Twitter:

Check out the examples above and let me know what you think. Would a unified skin across all of Apple's apps be more elegant or just more monotonous? Would a face lift make iOS less "boring" or just less interesting?

A while back I joked on Twitter that if Apple put filters and tilt shift into the built-in Photos app, I'd never use Instagram again. A lot of people maintain Instagram isn't about the filters or effects, but the community, but frankly there are already way too many communities for me to keep track of, and I'd just as soon make as many as possible as redundant as possible.

You can say adding filters to Photos.app is skating to where the puck was back when the NHL was still skating, but any time basic functionality is baked into the OS, at a basic level, it reduces complexity. In iOS especially, where you can't alter the default apps, and the built-in iOS camera is available at the swipe of a lock screen icon, and the Camera Roll can post to Twitter directly, and Facebook, and more, that's where I want basic filters and effects to live.

It's Camera Zero. Everything else is an alternative, an extra step, and the more they're a value add and not a must-have, the better.

Look at only some of the current slate of filter (or filter-and-share) apps. From top left: iPhoto, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Camera, and Flickr. iPhoto's interface is overly involved and complex for people who just want to futz with and share photos, and none of the third party filter-and-share apps do simple interface as well as Apple. And all of them require more steps then if the functionality was included in the core OS.

Apple had video effects, for good or for ill, in the 2009 iPod nano, and Apple included filters in Photo Booth for the iPad, so the core concept isn't without precedent. Android includes filters in the stock Camera app as well.

Basic editing was added to the Photos app with iOS 5, shifting filters and effects there in iOS 7 there makes the kind of sense that does. In fact, Apple could build in live filters and effects, since they have full access to every atom and bit of the machine, something not afforded third party apps.

Once a filter and/or effect is applied, Share sheets would make it a snap to send to not only Twitter and Facebook, but iMessage and Photo Stream, or to set as a wallpaper. It becomes OS-centric rather than app-centric, and anything that gets added to the Share Sheet would get to source photos with filters and effects "for free", in one step.

Online photo ownership is a huge battleground, with entrenched players like Facebook/Instagram, Google+/Picasa, Yahoo/Flickr, and Twitter all trying to make their platforms stickier, and hedge against social migration, by making the things we care about, especially photos, fun and enjoyable on their networks. But they're often dicks about it.

With basic filers and effects built into Photos.app, if Instagram blocks Twitter, if Twitter blocks 3rd-party clients, or if Facebook or Google tries to assert copyright on my photos, I don't have to worry that I'll lose my ability to make some of the best mobile photos on the planet look like polaroids from the 1960s. I'll have iOS 7. I'll be fine.

With iOS 6, Apple has totally changed the way search results appear in the on-device App Store app. With the old App Store search, five results were immediately visible in a list view, and you could vertically scroll or flick quickly through large amounts more. With the new iOS 6 App Store search, only one result is visible at a time, and you whether you scroll or flick, you only ever get one result more at a time. And that's not good.

If you're searching for something specific, like "Tweetbot", it won't mean much because the first result will likely be the right one, so you only need that first result. If you're searching for something more general, like a game made by Electronic Arts, but you can't remember the name, the degradation is severe. You're presented with 1 possibility instead of 5. That's an 80% loss in information density. Ironically, the new 16:9 aspect ration of the iPhone 5 would have allowed for even more search results in the list view, 6 in total. Instead, with the new iOS 6 App Store search, we still get 1. Only longer. That's an 83.33% loss in information density.

Worse, both cards and the way they're implemented deliberately make the search interface slower. With the old App Store list view interface, you could touch and slowly scroll through results, or flick and rapidly scroll through them. So, if you didn't remember an app's name but did vaguely remember its icon, you could quickly skim for it. Or you could quickly skim until the icon, title, or anything caught your eye. With the iOS 6 App Store's card-based search, Apple has made the physics such that no matter how slowly or quickly you scroll or flick, you can only ever get to the next result. No more fast skimming. So now, even if you know the icon or some element of the title or data you're looking for, you're forced to go through one app at a time, every time, to get there. The interface has essentially gone from walk/run to forced walk.

The new card view interface does show an app screenshot in the results, but it's arguable whether or not that additional information increases identification and discoverability or just creates extra noise to visually parse. (That likely depends on the content and context of the screenshots, but until Apple allows them to be video, they'll always be of limited value.)

To get an idea of how badly the metaphor works for search in the App Store, all we have to do is extrapolate it to Google search. Imagine typing a search term into Google and instead of a page full of web results, you got a card showing one page. Currently, if the result you needed was #17, it's on the second page. With the card interface, it would be on the 17th page.

Apple could explore metaphors like this for the fast app switcher, where webOS has shown that the visualization of content makes sense. In App Store search, it just borders on the absurd.

So how could Apple fix it? An option to toggle between new-style card view and old-style list view could be a good compromise. To avoid an extra setting or button, Apple could also simply present the list view in portrait mode and the card view in landscape mode, where at least more than one app could be seen at a time. That would also match the behavior seen in the Music app with CoverFlow.

Taking it one step further, Apple could implement the portrait interface they use for app categories and present a few horizontal list views. The first could present search results filtered by keyword relevance, the second by rating, the third by how many "friends" have the app, the fourth by recency of release, etc. So, for example, a search for "Twitter" could result in the official Twitter for iPhone app showing up first for relevancy, Tweetbot first for friends who have the app, and Flurry for most recent.

While that could add complexity, it would at least be balanced by the options presented -- "I just want a Twitter app" vs. "What Twitter app are my friends using?" vs. "I want to try a different Twitter app, which are the newest?"

If Apple's going to use the mixed vertical and horizontally scrolling pages anyway, they might as well use it to enhance sorting.

The iOS 6 App Store did not come gently into this world. The betas were fraught with strange behavior, some of which did not get fixed prior to release. The combination of vertical and horizontal scrolling elements in the app can be quirky and off-putting to navigate. Purchased lists sometimes don't display and when they do, the scrolling and touch events are janky. Search algorithms, reportedly now using technology from Apple's Chomp acquisition, have changed repeatedly.

For an app so important to Apple, developers, and users, it's a pain, and it's something that needs some considered, usability-focused attention from Apple. And soon.

Since the early days of the iPhone, we've received a steady stream of complaints about how alerts are handled when you're on a call. Namely, you can have the phone to your ear, chatting away, when suddenly a text message comes in and the tone and/or vibrate goes off full blast into your ear and rattles through your skull. Since push notifications launched for 3rd party apps, especially the trumpeting horror that is Game Center, it's only gotten worse. If you're not used it to and expecting it, it can make you want to drop your phone and start stomping. That's only mild hyperbole, mind you, as that's exactly what several significant others have told us, with rage-filled eyes, after it happened to them for the first time.

While some people may want to make absolutely sure they don't miss an important alert while on a phone call, and are willing to pay the price in low-yield skull trauma, others would pay a significant amount of money for the option to turn it off.

So how could Apple cater to both types of users? The new Do Not Disturb Settings panel is tempting. But Do Not Disturb is model or timer based. A persistent settings wouldn't make sense there.

But there are already several similar, persistent switches in Settings > Sounds. You can already choose to turn off "Vibrate on Ring" and "Vibrate on Silence", but you may want those on at all times when you don't literally have your iPhone pressed to your ear. Adding an extra toggle, for "Mute All Alerts When on a Call" would be grand. "Notification sounds and vibrations will be temporarily muted when you’re on a call". (See the mock up at the top of this post.)

Apple could implement it using the same proximity sensor that currently tells iOS to turn off and disable multitouch when you've got your iPhone to your face.

It seems small, but it's the small things -- the buzzing flies and water droplets -- that drive us crazy in the end, and this seems like a rather simple one to fix.

Sure, adding "just another setting" is never the best answer. Except when it is.

Album art has never been perfectly centered on the iPhone or iPod touch Lock screens. It's been placed immediately on top of the slide-to-unlock bar. Because of the 3:2 aspect ratio of previous iPhone and iPod touch devices, however, and because the top of the album art and the reflection beneath it peak through the translucent time and slide-to-unlock bars, the visual weighting was close enough to appear centered and thus, balanced. Not so with the iPhone 5 and its 16:9 aspect ratio. Now the bottom alignment of album art lookes decidedly bottom heavy. Worse, there's a big black gap between the top of the album art and the bottom of the time bar.

The advantage of bottom aligning album artwork on the 16:9 display is that none of it is obscured by the name of the song, and even when you double-click the Home button to bring up the music controls, very little is obscured.

I'm sure Apple went through every permutation of this and came up with the best compromise they could, but as a mental exercise it's interesting to explore what the other options might be. Placing the album art dead center wouldn't work, for example. There'd still be an empty black space between the top of the art and the bottom of the time bar.

Butting the album art up immediately beneath the time bar, however, and filling the resulting empty space on the bottom with the traditional translucent reflection. The weighting would then be close enough to once again appear visually centered. When the Home button double-click brings up the controls, more of the top of the album art would be obscured again, but with a small tweak it wouldn't be terrible, and still better than it currently is on 3:2 devices.

Here are samples of how album art currently looks on the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5 (left and center), along with a mockup of how it would look if fixed as described above (right).

For context, here's the hero pic for this article beside what it would look like with the proposed fix in place.

I hope Apple considers implementing this in iOS 6.something (and yes, I'll file a radar.)

Because, damn.

Update 1: As a number of people have pointed out, the current 16:9 bottom alignment on the Lock screen allows for a seamless transition if you slide-to-unlock straight into the Music app. For me, however, that just means the Music app needs fixing too. Because the the disadvantage is, "Oh god, my eyes, my eyes..."

So here's a quick mock of for that. It's by no means ideal, as it would create immense usability problems -- namely, accidental taps. That to me just show many simultaneous on-screen controls are jammed into the Music app screen. Maybe allow for some of the less commonly used to start off hidden, and be revealed with a tap, and have list view as a double tap?

Update 2: Apple's own Podcasts app centers album art perfectly.

At Macworld 2007 Steve Jobs showed off mobile Safari's Page switching interface, but despite the operating system as a whole crying out for similar treatment, to this day Pages haven't expanded beyond Safari. At the iOS 4 event in the spring of 2010, the iPhone added limited 3rd party multitasking and a fast app switcher interface, but rather than Pages or even an Exposé-esque grid interface, it locked to the Dock.

And as far as showing currently open apps, making those apps as visually distinguishable as possible, and making them as fast as possible to switch between, that's where iOS has remained. Even on the iPad's far larger screen.

Is it time for something more?

Options for and iOS 6 fast app switching

The most obvious options for iOS 6 fast app switching are:

1. Keep the current fast app switching interface
2. Change to the now-common Pages/Cards-style interface
3. Change to am Exposé/grid-style interface
4. Change to something else that's better

Keeping the fast app switcher does nothing to move the platform or mobile interface forward. For good or for ill, it keeps Apple and iOS exactly where they are today, even as the rest of the industry is providing more informationally and experientially rich app-switching interfaces.

Apple might well prefer this option. It's familiar to existing users, which is a feature, and it's more or less hidden away unless you go looking for it. That keeps things simple for casual users, but accessible for power users.

Changing to a Pages/Cards interface loses some of the immediate recognizability of icons, but gains the additional information density of thumbnails. It brings Apple and iOS up to par with most of the rest of the mobile platforms, but does nothing to leapfrog them.

Apple could claim they're merely extending Safari Pages, and use that claim to try and sidestep charges they're copying webOS and others (especially if they don't do Stacks, though Apple really didn't seem to care about charges they copied Android for Notification Center).

Since it would work like Safari Pages, it would be consistent on the iPhone (though not iPad). However, Apple eschewed that before in favor of keeping consistent with the Dock. wWuld they go back to it now? Where would the current media control widgets go if they did?

Changing to an Exposé/grid interface is similar to changing to a Pages/Cards interface, though it would initially fit more thumbnails onto a single screen than a horizontally scrolling list does. (However, it would still require scrolling to see subsequent screens of additional thumbnails.) The more thumbnails per screen, the easier it is to switch between them but the harder it is to get any useful, glance-able information from them. Red X icons for closing apps could be persistent, like in Pages, or could require the thumbnails to be putty in "jiggly" mode first, which could also enable re-arrangement.

Apple would get pretty much the same benefits, and face the same drawbacks, of Cards/Pages. They chose not to go this way for app switching before iOS 4 even hit beta, however, and in iPad Safari, they abandoned the grid view for tabs. So, again, would they revisit it now?

Aping Exposé's successor on OS X, Mission Control, is more problematic. Relatively few iOS apps have multiple windows, like Safari, making the stacks less necessary. Keeping the regular, app launcher Dock around also doesn't seem to be an optimal for a switcher interface (and going to the fast app switcher would be redundant).

Changing to something better than Pages or Exposé is a huge interface challenge. Those metaphors have become standards because they work, and they make sense. Concept videos and prototype devices like the First Else, and interfaces for movies like Iron Man are one thing. Nailing real world usage for hundreds of millions of users is quite another.

Apple does, however, have some of the best mobile interface designers on the planet, and a track record of coming up with great design solutions. It would have to really be better than the current fast app switcher, provide more information, recognizability, and accessibility, and work great with one hand (especially if they go to a larger, 4-inch, 16:9 screen as current rumors suggest). Could Apple do it? Should they?

Desktop precedents

Over the years, desktop operating systems have evolved various ways of handling multitasking, app switching interfaces. OS X on the Mac alone has gone through various incarnations of the NeXT-derived Dock (including lights beneath open apps, and Stacks for folders), Exposé and Mission Control, and the Windows-derived CMD + Tab.

Mobile operating systems are both more recent and far more resource constrained than the desktop -- less power, less processor, less screen real-estate. So, mobile has evolved different methods of showing, identifying, and switching apps.

While these things all existed well before the iPhone, highly visual, design-centric interfaces were far less common. I'm sure someone will tell me Symbian had the best multi-object mobile interface imaginable back in 1812. Or Maemo/Meego. Or some Windows Mobile launcher. For the purposes of this post, however, we're going to start in 2007 and work our way forward through current, popular operating systems.

iOS Safari Pages

The original iPhone had excellent multitasking -- it could fade music out to take a call, keep the call going while loading web sites or email, and fade music back in without missing a beat. However, only certain specific apps could run in the background, and due to their nature, and since there were no App Store apps back then, no fast app switching interface was needed.

Even in 2007 however, Safari did have to deal with multiple objects -- websites.

Desktop Safari has tabs, but Apple chose not to use them on the much, much smaller 320x480 iPhone screen. The Music (previously iPod) app has CoverFlow in landscape mode, like Desktop iTunes. Apple also chose not to use that interface for mobile Safari.

Instead they went with Pages.

A horizontal list of visually identifiable thumbnails with text labels on top, Pages are easy to switch between through scrolling and tapping. (It's possible this type of interface was used on a mobile device prior to the iPhone, but I'm not familiar with one if so.)

Tapping the Pages button in Safari invokes the Pages interface. While the order of Pages can't be re-arranged, tapping the red X icon at the top left of a Page closes the Page.

When Apple introduced the App Store with iOS 2 (then iPhone OS 2) in 2008, they didn't allow any 3rd party background tasks, and so still didn't need any lists, visualization, or fast switching. (And wouldn't until iOS 4 in 2010.)

webOS Cards (and Stacks)

Just because Apple hadn't yet pulled the trigger on multitasking doesn't mean mobile multi-object interfaces stood still, or that the Pages metaphor remained limited to the web rather than the OS.

The original Palm Pre and its webOS operating system debuted at CES 2009 and was shown off by former Apple executive, Jon Rubenstein. It was the most impressive mobile product introduction since the iPhone in 2007, in part because Palm seemed to specifically target things the iPhone wouldn't, or couldn't yet do. One of those was 3rd party multitasking, and the way they handled it was by making Apple's Safari Pages metaphor system-wide.

Called Cards, the early implementations showed one app or window (e.g. a website or email) in very similar fashion to Safari Pages. Instead of tapping a button, however, a less discoverable but more elegant swipe gesture "shrank" the current window into a Card and switched to the horizontally scrollable thumbnail view. You could also, very naturally, touch and flick a Card away to close an app or window.

In the original version, you could even shrink the cards down smaller to see more open apps and windows at one time. (Greater immediate information density.)

It worked wonderfully.

Palm later expanded the Cards visualization beyond what Apple did with Safari Pages by introducing Stacks in webOS 2.0.

Stacks allow you to group Cards together into sets of similar apps by type, task, or any other way you like. Stacks slightly reduces visibility (because apps or windows can be harder to see if they're tucked underneath other apps or windows), but increase speed because the distance between apps you commonly use together can be made much smaller.

In short, it works even more wonderfully. (Especially scaled up on the TouchPad running webOS 3.x)

iOS fast app switcher

Apple enabled limited background tasks for App Store apps in 2010. They added APIs for streaming audio, location, and voice-over-IP (VoIP) so Pandora, TomTom, and Skype, among others, could stay active even when you switched out of them and into other apps. They didn't add a persistent internet connectivity API, sadly, but did give a few minutes grace period for internet apps to finish activities, like uploading pictures, before they suspended. Mostly, instead of apps relaunching from scratch every time they opened, Apple let them set state on exist, and return to state on resume, so perceptively they never seemed to close.

To manage all this, Apple didn't go with the Pages or Cards interface. They went for something decidedly different.

The iPad version of Safari, which debuted in the spring of 2010, didn't use a horizontally scrolling set of thumbnails at all. Instead, thanks to the larger screen, iPad Safari showed website thumbnails all at once in a grid view. The grid didn't last long, however, and when iOS 5 was released in the fall of 2011, it was replaced by a tab interface, similar to desktop Safari.

Pages stayed in Safari on the iPhone, however, but still wouldn't expand OS-wide. Apple did, apparently, experiment with something like the original iPad grid, or the OS X Exposé interface, in iOS 4 but ultimately decided against it.

Instead, to show open apps, to make them more visually identifiable, and to enable faster switching between them, Apple went back to the Dock. Or rather, went behind it.

With a double click of the Home button, the active screen fades and lifts up, revealing a background Dock, and showing open apps as a horizontally scrollable set of app icons in reverse chronological order. Tap an app and, with a carousel-like flourish, the current app swings around to the back and the selected one swing to the front.

This configuration shows more apps and makes each app more immediately identifiable than Safari Pages. Four apps is more than the one central Page, and the two Page edges on either side. Also, icons are typically faster to differentiate than thumbnails. Their information density is lower, however, so while you can tell which app it is, there's nothing to show what state the app is in. (In iOS, with the exception of Calendar, all the icons are static as well, further lowering information density.)

If the tasks you are doing are chronologically proximate, the switching is fast (e.g going back and forth between the same two apps). Otherwise you need to swipe horizontally through a potentially long list of apps to get to the one you want, which in some cases can be slower than using the regular Home screen app launcher.

When in fast app switcher mode, roughly 80% of the iPhone screen (and more of the iPad screen) is not used. Similar to the Alt/CMD + Tab desktop interface, this puts the focus on the task of app switching, but comes at the expense of waste screen space that could be put to better use (for example, like it is in Mission Control on OS X).

Apps in the fast app switcher can't be re-arranged, but by tapping and holding, they will go into "jiggly" mode and can be closed by tapping the X icon at the top left.

With iOS 4.3, Apple also experimented with gesture-based fast app switching on the iPad, and made it official in iOS 5.

With gesture-only interfaces, while switching can be fast (though also constrained to reverse chronological order), it offers no visualization what-so-ever. You can only tell which apps are open by swiping through them all. (Which is likely why Apple also added gestures to bring up the existing fast app switcher and Home screen app launcher interfaces as well.)

And so app switching remains today, more CMD + Tab than Exposé or Mission Control, more identifiable than informational, more a utility than an experience.

Android incarnations

Google's Android mobile operating system embraced 3rd party background processes and task switching early on in its development. Between Android versions, and original device manufacturer (ODM) interface layers like HTC's Sense, Motorola's Blur, and Samsung's TouchWiz, there have been quite a few different implementations.

The current version, the one used in Android 4.x Ice Cream Sandwich, was spearheaded by Matias Duarte, formerly lead designer of webOS at Palm. So, it's no coincidence Android has taken a webOS-like approach to app switching -- albeit at a 90 degree angle. (You scroll vertically instead of horizontally.)

Because Android has ODM interfaces, and 3rd party launchers, and a custom ROM community, if you don't like Google or anyone else's version of task switching, you can choose another device, or sometimes another implementation for your existing device.

BlackBerry PlayBook OS cards

BlackBerry's PlayBook OS borrowed heavily from Palm's OS-wide Card implementation of Apple's Safari-bound Pages interface as well. It was first seen in late 2010 and released in Spring 2011.

The 7-inch screen, larger than a phone but smaller than a 9.7-inch tablet, combined with the real-time nature of the QNX underpinnings, makes for similarly wonderful visualization. Because of that, it has all the advantages of webOS' card metaphor.

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango cards

Microsoft's original smartphone operating system, Windows Mobile, had robust multitasking but an antiquated user interface. Windows Phone launched in late 2010 with the elegant, "digitally authentic" Metro interface, but initially lacked 3rd-party multitasking. That changed with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in the summer of 2011, which re-introducted a much more limited multitasking to Microsoft's mobile phone platform.

However, while many elements of Metro were fresh and different from other mobile operating systems, Microsoft chose to go with a highly constrained version of the now very familiar, almost commonplace Pages/Cards, horizontally scrolling thumbnail metaphor for fast app switching.

BlackBerry 10 grid

BlackBerry 10, expected to ship in the fall of 2012, doesn't keep the card metaphor of the PlayBook but switches to a grid view for app thumbnails. You get to see 4 at first, and can swipe down to 4 more. You can also swipe immediately into the app launcher, or notifications and messages, thanks to the gesture-centric user experience.

It's a very slick implementation, with the goal of optimizing one-handed ease of use on larger touchscreen phones.

• The 16:9 iPhone
• The 4 inch iPhone
• How Apple could provide direct document access in iOS 6
• iOS 6 and the opposite of widgets
• Is it time for Apple to revamp the Home screen?
• The challenge of bringing Siri to the iPad
• iOS 6 and privacy: How Apple should draw inspiration from Android for better app

If Apple changes to a 4-inch screen in the next iPhone (iPhone 5,1), how could they do it while minimizing impact on users and developers? Assuming everyone wants a bigger screen, how does Apple implement it without breaking existing applications, causing backwards compatibility problems, and otherwise fragmenting the platform and frustrating stakeholders? Let's try to figure that out.

For a while now we've been hearing that Apple hadn't yet decided on the next iPhone design, and that while they were then working off the same 3.5-inch size are previous generations, they were still considering increasing the screen size up to 4-inches (but no more than that).

Earlier today both The Wall Street Journal and Reuters published stories saying Apple was going ahead with a 4-inch iPhone screen, but didn't provide any details as to how a 4 inch screen would be implemented. And those details are arguably even more important than the screen size itself.

That's because change has ramifications. Every choice has a cost. When you're dealing with millimeters and milliamps and megabits-per-second, everything is a compromise.

If Apple has indeed chosen to go with a 4 inch screen, there are only so many choices they can make, compromises they can reach, and ramifications that can be handled, developers, and Apple itself.

Scaling the current iPhone screen up to 4-inches

Apple can simply take the current 960x640, 326ppi, 2:3, 3.5-inch display and physically scale it up to 4 inches. The pixel density would drop to 288ppi, which would be substantially less, but would still be more than the new iPad's 264ppi display. (And would still be higher than the new iPad display -- so hold that as close as you hold your iPhone and see how it holds up.)

The result of this type of screen would be bigger text, bigger controls and buttons, bigger touch targets -- in other words, bigger apps. There would be no extra pixels gained, so the amount of information that could be displayed wouldn't change, but the same amount of information would be displayed at a larger, presumably easier to consumer, easier to interact with size. Only at a lower density.

Does that matter?

Apple has invested heavily in the "Retina display" marketing concept. Retina, however, is a function of density over distance -- the further away you hold the screen, the lower the density needed for pixels to effectively disappear. Apple could, even tenuously, argue a bigger screen would be held slightly further away, resulting in little net loss of "Retina-ness". (They did that at the new iPad event, after all).

Put it all together and users get the advantages of a bigger screen, developers get the advantage of keeping a consistent screen resolution target, and Apple gets the advantage of not substantially disturbing or disrupting either of those groups. For these reasons, if Apple does go with the a 4-inch screen, this seems to me to be the most likely path they'll take to get there.

Scaling the current iPhone screen to 4-inches, pixel doubling it (again)

Apple could take the current 960x640, 326ppi, 2:3, 3.5-inch display and scale it up to 4 inches, and once again double the pixel count to 1920x1280. That pixel density would explode to 579ppi, which... is frankly insane.

Never mind how expensive that kind of panel would be, or how hard it would be to achieve usable yield rates, it's overkill. It would enjoy the same benefits as a physically larger display, but maintain Retina display -- even for a falcon.

But as Georgia pointed out on the podcast earlier, that panel would also cost battery power to light it up and graphics power to push that many pixels around.

Unless Apple wants to increase screen size substantially beyond 4-inches, and screen, battery, and mobile GPU technology advances while prices fall and yield rates shoot through the roof, this seems extremely unlikely.

Scaling the current iPhone screen to 4-inches, changing the aspect ratio

Apple could take the current 960x640, 326ppi, 2:3, 3.5-inch display but change the aspect ratio to something closer to 9:5 and increase the height to 4 inches by adding pixels. The resolution would increase to 1152x640, and the pixel density would remain the same. (It's just adding extra pixels to the top and bottom.)

Timothy Collins brought this up on The Verge and John Gruber of Daring Fireball pointed a giant spotlight on it. iLounge later added to this particular rumor pile.

Since pixel size remains the same, text size would remain the same, control/button size would remain the same, and touch target size would remain the same. Apps that use the built-in interface elements would simply add an extra row of information -- an extra row of icons, an extra row to the table or item to the list. The display would be vertically larger, and more information could be displayed on it. But what about apps that don't use built-in UI elements?

Safari would show more of a page's length, Mail would show an extra message, but games and anything with a highly customized, non-table based interface would have to be pillar-boxed. If developers made new versions that fill the extra space, those versions would be cut off on older iPhones. And if developers made 2 versions of the apps, it would mean more work for them and "fatter" binaries for users to download. (A universal app would go from having iPhone and iPad interface elements, to having old iPhone and new iPhone and iPad interfaces.)

While many things are possible, this doesn't seem like a very Apple-esque solution. It would fragment the iPhone platform for developers in a way Apple has resisted so far, and offer incomplete user benefits (increasing pixel count in only one direction).

More importantly, it would mean either significantly redesigning (or eliminating) the Home button, or lengthening the iPhone casing, or a bit of both. iMore has heard the Home button isn't going anywhere, and parts leaks have suggested it looks pretty much the same, so that leaves a longer iPhone and that... would be awkward. (Even if you remove part of the bezel to make room for it.)

Scaling the current iPhone to 4-inches, increasing the number of pixels

Apple could take the current 960x640, 326ppi, 2:3, 3.5-inch display and increase both the width and height to 4 inches by adding pixels. The resolution would increase to 1092x728 (or thereabouts), and the pixel density would remain the same. (It's just adding extra pixels all sides.)

As above, text, control/button, and touch target size would all remain the same, because the pixel density would remain the same. Apps that use the built-in interfaces could also add an extra vertical row of icons or list or row information, and could add extra "white" space in many cases, or vertical columns in some cases, to fill in those extra pixels.

While the user gets more information, unlike the vertical-only extension, splitting the extra pixels both ways means neither have enough room for an extra row or column of icons at the same pixel size. Safari would show a more of a page in both length and width, but Mail might not squeeze in an entire extra message, or that much more message contents. And now games and anything with a highly customized, non-table based interface would have to be completely boxed, the way iPhone apps are on the higher pixel count iPad display, or stretched to fit, which would look horrible.

If developers make new versions that fill the extra space, those versions would be cut off on older iPhones, or scaled down to fit that would likewise look horrible. (As I've discussed previously.)

So even more work for developers, maybe an @1.14x physical size, and still "fatter" binaries for users to download.

Automagic scaling, like some platforms promise with sliding components, is as mythical in design as "write-once-deploy-everywhere" is in programming. Lazy developers or incredibly programmatic app implementations might default to it, but pixel perfect designers are going to want pixel level control over every screen size and density.

That makes this solution just as unlikely as the last. Even if Apple takes the (now) unusual step of canceling previous generation iPhones when the new one launches, and abandoning their current lower price point strategy, there would still be hundreds of millions of 480x320/960x640 iPhones and iPod touches on the market, and developers would want their apps to run on that massive install base.

increase both the width and height to 4 inches by adding pixels. The resolution would increase to 1092x728 (or thereabouts), and the pixel density would remain the same. (It's just adding extra pixels all sides.)

Switching to 720p resolution

Apple could take the current 960x640, 326ppi, 2:3, 3.5-inch display and simply swap it out for a standard resolution screen like 1280x720, at 16:9.

There are Android Devices that use this screen, but so far they can't be made any smaller/denser than 4.3 inches (see the HTC Rezound). Does Apple might have the tech muscle to drive that resolution down to 4 inches any time soon?

The pixel count would be able to show more information horizontally and vertically, and it would be a Retina display and then some at 367 ppi. If icons and text stay the same pixel count, then the presentation would be smaller. If the physical size stays the same, pixel count has to increase.

That's what happens when you changing so many parameters at once -- physical size, pixel count, aspect ratio -- it has both the benefits and the problems of everything else already listed above.

Apple would need a third new interface size, existing apps would be boxed, and new apps would need to be cropped or scaled on older devices, resulting in a horrible experience and appearance. That makes this option seem the least likely of the bunch.

Switching to original iPad screen

Apple could take the current 960x640, 326ppi, 2:3, 3.5-inch display and simply swap it out for a much smaller version of the 1024x768, 4:3 iPad display. This would peg the density at 320 ppi.

Other than it being the same resolution as the original iPad and iPad 2, there's not much different about this option than the 2:3 1092x728 or the 16:9 1280x720. It has the same benefits and drawbacks as both the previous options.

The argument that it would let iPad apps run on the iPhone is problematic, however, as iPad apps have controls/buttons and touch targets designed for a much larger physical size and if you think shaving fingers down for a 7-inch version of the iPad is a challenge, reducing them to the needlepoints necessary for what would essentially be a 4-inch version of the iPad is even more so.

Under the "let iPhones be iPhones" motto, this doesn't seem likely either.

Something else

Apple could have some other way to handle a 4-inch screen, or combination of ways. Point of fact, Apple already knows what they're planning to do (if they're planning to do it), or at least which methods they're testing. That doesn't diminish the mental exercise of trying to divine it before Apple announces it, but it does put it in context.

If Apple goes with a 4-inch screen -- and until Tim Cook or Phil Schiller holds it up on stage, or it somehow leaks conclusively, a 4-inch screen remains an if -- these are just some possibilities.

And all of them have ramifications, opportunity costs, and compromises. Some simply more than others.

• iOS 6 wants: Files app and documents picker with iCloud
• iOS 6 wants: The opposite of widgets
• iOS 6: Is it time for Apple to revamp the Home screen?
• The challenge of bringing Siri to the iPad
• iOS 6 and privacy: How Apple should draw inspiration from Android for better app

The video below shows an interesting concept, excellently rendered, for improving the speed and usability of text editing on iOS. Currently, to edit text in iOS, you have to poke at the screen until the right word is highlighted or the correct popup menu appears, and the drag handles to properly refine your selection. Like democracy, it sucks, but it sucks less than every other mobile implementation.

The maker of this concept video, Daniel Hooper, shows how a combination of on-keyboard gestures and shift-tapping could be used to greatly improve the speed and accuracy of text selection on iOS.

Unfortunately, text selection on iOS doesn't always enjoy the presence of a keyboard. And that's where this concept sadly breaks down for me. You can't have two different methods for selecting text, depending on whether or not the keyboard is available. Consistency is king. If you're selecting text in Safari with no keyboard, or selecting text in Notes with a keyboard, the method has to be as identical as possible or the user experience suffers.

Don't get me wrong -- improving gesture shortcuts to improve text selection would be great. It just can't be dependent on the state of the keyboard. Adding an additional layer of "expert" gesture shortcuts for when the keyboard is available is another possibility (much as the multitasking fast app switching gestures serve as "expert" shortcuts around the iPad Home screen). However, text selection already uses gestures so the current gestures would have to remain active, and it's very easy for gestures to start to collide.

All that said, I LOVE this stuff. Seeing and discussing fantastic UI and UX concepts is absolute candy. It doesn't matter if any one concept or another is perfect right out of the box, it matters that it brings attention to issues of usability, and creates discussion.

So discuss away. Would you be interested in Apple introducing text selection like this? If so, hit the via link for instructions on how you can ask Apple to do just that. Then jump into our Mobile Design Forum and let us know how you'd improve iOS text editing.

Source: @danielchooper via iDownloadBlog

I would love to have Siri, Apple's voice-controlled virtual assistant, on the iPad 3. I wrote in my iPad 3 event preview preview that I anticipate it, and not a day goes by that I don't instinctively reach for the Dictation button on the iPad 2 keyboard and then grumble when I realize for the umpteenth time that it's just not there.

But as much as I love the idea of Siri on the iPad, there are some challenges Apple would need to overcome.

Preface: Apple a) knows if they're bringing Siri to the iPad 3 or not, and b) if they are, will have no doubt worked all of this out already. So this is entirely a mental exercise on my part. If the iPad 3 is announced with Siri, however, these might be at least some of the reasons why.

Connectivity

iPhone 4S has a 3G data radio, so it remains online pretty much everywhere. iPads have Wi-Fi-only models, so they could be offline for extended periods. Is that an experience Apple would be happy with?

There was no iPod touch update in 2011, so Apple didn't have to deal with that use-case yet. However, there is considerable precedent for how Apple handles other internet-dependant applications when they're offline -- they pop up a network error. Siri already does this as well on an iPhone 4S in Airplane mode. "Siri not available. Connect to the internet."

They could throw in a few funny variations, make a HAL or Skynet joke or two, and almost any user would quickly be conditioned to connect first, ask Siri questions later.

Server load

Another connectivity issue exists on Apple's end. Siri on iPhone 4S, while much better now, had a lot of growing pains on the server side. Apple will want to make sure they have the capacity to handle tens of millions of additional Siri users, and all their queries, before they increase Siri's deployment.

User interface scale

The full screen Siri interface currently used on the iPhone 4S wouldn't look good if scaled up to fit the bigger iPad screen. That's a problem Apple has faced and overcome several times before with the iPad UI. Mail's composition sheet, for example, doesn't fill the whole screen on the iPad the way it does on the iPhone. Likewise, while Notification Center is full screen on the iPhone and iPod touch, on the iPad it's decidedly not.

The same approach could theoretically work for Siri on the iPad, but not without some reconceptualization. Mechanically, Notification Center pulls down on both the iPhone and iPad. The iPad version just isn't as wide and doesn't pull down as far. Siri on the iPhone starts off more like the fast app switcher, revealed when screen pulls up. The fast app switcher works fine at full width on the iPad, and in full width regardless of whether the iPad is in portrait or landscape orientation.

That's something to consider as well -- Siri is portrait only on the iPhone, and that works fine because the iPhone's Home screen system is portrait only. The iPad's Home screen system is deliberately designed to work in both portrait and landscape modes. Siri's UI on the iPad would likewise have to work in both portrait and landscape mode.

Having the Siri microphone revealed at the bottom isn't an issue -- it would work and look fine. But having the whole screen pull up to display the results would look odd. It would look as odd as a full screen Notification Center. Which is why Apple didn't do Notification Center full screen on the iPad, it's why they didn't do Mail composition sheets full screen on the iPad, it's even -- according to legend -- why there aren't clock or weather or stocks apps on the iPad. It's something Apple seems incredible conscientious of, and not without good reason.

The Notification Center solution

Going back to Notification Center, which works fine in both portrait and landscape mode on the iPad, it might be worthwhile sacrificing the iPhone mechanic for the pull down's flexibility. Would Apple really be happy with something that works differently on the iPad than it does on the iPhone? Would users find it disconcerting?

It's workable, but not ideal.

The Mountain Lion solution

With OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple is bringing Notification Center to the Mac. Mac's are landscape-only devices, but instead of a drop-down overlay, Apple placed it off to side and, like the iPhone, put it "under" the Home screen.

That could potentially work as a more consistent implementation on iPad for Notification Center and Siri both. While in landscape mode. But as discussed above, the iPad is Apple's only real orientation agnostic device. And in portrait mode, the Mountain Lion solution may not look as good.

And there's a bigger problem.

Clock, Weather, and Stocks

If we look closely at the Siri mockup above, there something missing. Or rather there's something there that's missing on the iPad: the Clock, Weather, and Stocks apps (along with Calculator and Voice Memo). As mentioned above, rumor has it that Apple and Steve Jobs didn't think they looked any good scaled up to 9.7-inches. Whatever the reason, the iPhone has them and the iPad does not.

And the problem is, Siri uses them.

• "Set an alarm for 7:30"
• "Do I need a raincoat in Cupertino?"
• "What's Apple's stock price?"

Sure, the iPad doesn't need these apps for Apple to bake the functionality into Siri. Notification Center on the iPad does okay without these apps, but missing the weather and stocks widgets is still irksome. Siri would do okay with these apps as well, but it would likewise be irksome. On the iPhone I can go in an manually kill Alarms if and when I need to. I can change the local weather if and when I want to. Not necessary by any means, but nice.

Apple could add the Clock, Weather, and Stocks apps to the iPad. There are clock and weather and stocks for the iPad with well thought out user interfaces, so Apple could certainly figure it out, if it's something they decide to do.

Siri on iPad

I'd really like Siri on the iPad but there are some challenges Apple will need to overcome to make it a reality. Some of the best user experience designers on the planet work at Apple, though, and they've no doubt thought all of this through long ago. If they do decide to bring Siri to iPad, it'll be interesting to see how they figured it out.

• iOS 6 wants: Files app and documents picker with iCloud
• The 4 inch iPhone
• iOS 6 wants: The opposite of widgets
• iOS 6: Is it time for Apple to revamp the Home screen?