I wanted to publish this year's Miss List early, Because of Reasons (TM - but not really).
The WWDC Miss List is the list of things that should be announced, but won't be. Every year people publish their "Wish List". The things on this list have every bit as much chance of being right, but with a willingness to dream big. There are holes in Apple's developer tools, in the *OS ecosystem, and just some things about the built in apps that bother me that should be fixed. In some cases bugs and feature improvements have been filed. In other cases, it's just wishful thinking.
Talking with some people at a technical meetup I realized that a small form factor Mac needs to be added to the list. Not a Mini. Something smaller. Something to compete with the Raspberry Pi. Drop an A12 into a stick, it doesn't need a battery so it can be smaller than even an iPhone (which is mostly housing for a battery and screen), load macOS on it. Boom! The Mac Zero.
"Why would Apple do that?!"
Right now Apple has 5% of the computer market. They're expensive. Sell the Zero at cost rouned up to $*9. You're not selling this machine to make the margins Apple usually makes. This machine exists to create a customer. That first Mac. Someone who will buy the $4.99 Voice Music subscription and $2.99 iCloud subscription.
You're not making a profit, you're making a customer.
I've been using gradle for several years now. It's magical. I love every bit of it. The gang in Cupertino needs to bless
something similar. I know bazel has been growing in popularity among Xcode developers. I don't like it because of the BUILD
file rather than something that could eventually provide language support.
I enjoy my Apple TV subscription. The user experience leaves something to be desired.
There are two specific problems I want to break it down into: Bundling and Editorial
Right now the AppleTV+ experience is bundled in with an app that works as a portal with all your other media apps. Also your library, and search. It's trying to do too much. Remove the AppleTV+ app and have it be it's own thing along side all the other media apps a user might have.
The portal, library, and search remain, but are rebranded as "Apple One". It serves two purposes, first as an aggregator. All of your media apps, iTunes Library, Store, etc - they still live there. The "Up Next" feature still exists. Into that add "Watch Live". Which of my media apps have a live event broadcasting: television, sports, music.
Finally, there's a "Now On" section. This serves to purposes depending on the user. As a paid subscriber I expect editorial content describing new Apple TV+ shows, new Music, new Apple Arcade, new Workouts. As a non-subscriber I get occasional free content from Apple here. For example any childrens program more than a year old should just be for free. If the third season of one of Apple's prestige programs is coming on, then season one is out. Drive sales is the point.
Having separated out AppleTV+, it needs some work. Too many rows duplicate the limited content available. It looks like Netflix with 20 shows. Simplify the layout. Have a big banner presening the prestige content that you're trying to push. Then couple of menus for popular items. By the time you begin scrolling of the first screen the user should be able to select into genres. If there are more than eight rows on the home screen something has gone wrong with this UI.
This is one of my perrenial hopes. I'd love the ability to add my own WYSIWYG editor to Xcode. To do that Apple would need to expand support for the plug in system they added to Xcode several years ago and then promptly dropped on the floor like poorly set flan. Being able to go in and hook up state machines via visual tools, having them connect or render in Xcode is a dream. I'm sure there are some other people out there that could find use for it but this is mine.
Another perrenial hope that is often dashed against the rocks like so many breaking waves. Swift is scriptable. We should be able to write scripts for it that execute in Safari. I'm not enough of a web dev to understand the difficulty of implementation, but providing unity of platform often seems like Apple's goal. Owning Safari this way just seems to make sense to me.
If I keep asking for this, on a long enough time line I'm bound to be right.