I began watching the annual Apple WWDC event in 2014 and haven’t missed one since. Along with watching the opening Keynote, live-tweeting has also been a fun phenomenon to participate in, especially when I can see what my friends are tweeting about the event as well. This year I’m wishing for some exciting announcements, particularly ones that address my current issues and problems with Apple’s software and products.
This has been my biggest pet peeve since Siri was conceived. I love how simple Amazon has made saying ”Alexa” and using one word just feels better. “Hey, Siri” is a phrase that sounds like it’s from the past while “Alexa” is from the future. I get it though. Apple has spent so much time and money investing in the phrase “Hey, Siri.” Perhaps this is a technological limit— or it’s a mistake made early on that feels too far gone to fix. Either way, I’d love to see this change.
I explored Adobe’s lightweight version of Premiere on a recent video project and ran into one issue. Custom fonts. While iPadOS has provided the capability to install custom fonts, I’ve found the third party apps to be lacking in terms of design and quality. Also, the current process of using one of these apps felt janky. After installing a font through the app, I needed to return to the Settings app to verify each installed font. I would have preferred to have a similar experience to that of Font Book on macOS. It’s simple, and it’s done at the system level. All you need to click is “install”.
This feature feels like it’s had the least amount of love for the past few years. Other companies are crushing Apple in this regard. I have found this feature to be borderline unusable as almost every other word is incorrect. Also, to be on the receiving end of another iPhone user’s dictated texts is not great.
I’m sure this is the feature that everyone is asking for. Zoom is terrible. The world discovered this back in March when every company was forced to find video conferencing software to handle the COVID-19 situation. Also, Zoom’s privacy flaws have been greatly exposed as well. To show where the company’s priorities lie, take a look at this statement from their CEO.
Since Apple is a company that prioritizes the protection of privacy, I’d love to see them release an Enterprise version of FaceTime. One that would have all of the necessary features like Zoom but better, including the capability of handling large numbers of meeting attendees without freezing, the ability to share your screen without that obnoxious bar above the presenter’s content, and to record the meeting with the option of removing the presenter’s face from the recording. I’m sure that I’m missing several other features that would make this version of FaceTime highly desirable.
Out of the items on my wishlist, I’m willing to bet that this will be the only one that comes true.