With WWDC 2023 coming next week, I thought it would be a good time to bring back this blog. As with all my blogs, I focus on keeping my ideas and progress straight. It’s never about followers or subscribers. As always, I hope, however, that you may find something interesting here.

What I Want (In my personal priority order)

• A journaling app that puts my own and Day One to shame. Apple has the data to make a pretty great life-stream app. It all comes down to how much they think it’s worth having, which will determine how great the UI is. I would like to stop working on my own journaling app and focus on my writing app and other projects. Apple could make me happy. I’ll see.
• A better Books app and an API/framework for developers. I love the Books app, but the UI and the inability to better organize books is a pain.
• More SwiftUI “widgets”.
• A simpler-to-use Combine, both conceptually and syntactically. I avoid Combine because I don’t enjoy jumping through the hoops it places.
• A faster-to-install and slimmer XCode. Installing XCode takes too long, even with the more powerful CPUs. I’d also love an XCode “suite”, instead of having a single monolithic app. This would also make the Playgrounds app more powerful if bits of the suite could be used by Playgrounds on iPad.
• Speaking of which, I want app development in the Playgrounds app to be a bit more powerful. It’s pretty cool the way it is. I’d like to have it split from the training and learning aspect of the app, into its own app.
• A simpler CoreData would be nice that would allow me to use whatever database I want to. Nowadays, I’m using CouchDB and tinyDB (along with SQLite). I remember the pain CoreData instilled on me in its early days—great idea, poorly executed.
• I’d like to have XCode opened up to support other languages. Nowadays, I’m doing a ton of Python and DB stuff. This would be possible if Apple split out XCode into a suite, as I mentioned above, and you could write language plugins for the code editor portion. I won’t hold my breath. Apple would like us all to use Swift/SwiftUI—which is great, but limiting in so many ways.
• Hardware? It seems everyone and her dog are expecting Apple’s AVR headset with drooling breath. Given the rumored price tag, I’ll pass. Also, it’s not something I need. I’m more interested in a new iPadMini. I think I’ll pass on this year’s iPhone upgrade. First, I got one last year, and second, the increased size rumors are putting me off. I’d like to see Apple buy out Oura, the makers of Oura ring. The Apple Watch and Oura ring are very complimentary when it comes to health tracking. I also find I prefer sleeping wearing the ring instead of the watch. The ring’s battery also outlasts the watch’s by several days.

• As far as the watch goes, I doubt we’ll see a new one announced at WWDC. But if they do, I’d love to see some new sensors integrated with API/frameworks. I’d like to see a lot more developer love given to the Apple Watch.

That’s all I’m looking for. I’m sure Apple will have lots of new developer tools/goodies I’ll have to dive into and play catch-up. Oh, I’d love to see Apple introduce a release cycle of once every six months instead of every week or two. But that’s me.

‘til next time.