WWDC24 Bingo
Dub-dub and daubers! It’s time to play some WWDC Bingo!
This is my fourth annual dub-dub Bingo Board and one of the hardest to devise. Despite Mark Gurman stating that iOS 18 has the potential to be "relatively groundbreaking," the rumours of what exactly will make it so feel like they've remained sparse. Furthermore, what about macOS, tvOS, iPadOS, and watchOS? I've seen very little reported about what to expect in those releases outside of an AI focus heading into WWDC.
Unlike last year, when the monumental announcement was the unveiling of Apple Vision Pro, this year's WWDC has all eyes on what Apple will do in the AI space. Google and Microsoft have bet heavily on AI technologies and appear to have a significant head start. How will Apple create a narrative around AI? And will it be enough to help them be seen as a respectable competitor in this trending new frontier?
So, alas, here is my 2024 WWDC Bingo Board featuring a mix of rumoured things we could see, my prognostications, and a couple of stagecraft elements I hope to see during the keynote. Play along, have fun, and happy dub-dub!
The predictions for this board were collected between May 22 and June 07, and finalized on Friday, June 07.
Bingo Board
The Bingo Board is available to download as a PNG or PDF, and I've added a more printer-friendly PDF so you don't end up using all your toner printing this card (but if you're at work during WWDC, you have my permission to print the full-colour PDF).
Disclaimer: CleanMyMac X reached out & offered to sponsor this year's WWDC Bingo Board—my thanks to them for their support!
My Picks (Explained)
Siri Gets Smarter (with AI)
Siri is not known to be the most gifted voice assistant, so I'm intrigued to see if Siri gets a bit smarter with the help of AI. AppleInsider is reporting that one of the updates expected at WWDC is that Siri will become more contextually aware of people, places, and calendar events, which should boost the sophistication of their responses and overall utility. Queries like: "When did I get together with Tim?" could look at photo and calendar data and give you a date and location of when you last spent time with a friend, or a question like "Can I make it to the Apple Store before it closes?" could peek at traffic conditions and store hours to give you a more nuanced response.
Widgets in visionOS
I have no clue about the magnitude of features coming to visionOS 2.0, which I also expect to be announced at WWDC. Still, one feature I would like to see incorporated into the platform is widgets that can be scattered across the working environment and provide glanceable snippets of information. This could include dynamic widgets for weather, smart home accessories, sports scores, and clocks or timers that bridge the gap between not having access to that information and loading an entire app to check the temperature.
Event Runtime: Under 105 minutes
This will be the 5th WWDC since Apple switched from doing live to pre-recorded video events, and in this new era the events have ranged from 107 minutes to just over 2 hours last year. I'm picking a slightly below-average WWDC runtime this year of under 105 minutes.
WWDC23: 126 minutes
WWDC22: 109 minutes
WWDC21: 107 minutes
WWDC20: 109 minutes
Apple Announces Partnership with OpenAI
There are rumblings about Apple having finalized a potential partnership with OpenAI to include their GPT technologies in the upcoming versions of their operating systems. This partnership would not replace Siri but complement more advanced requests and search queries, with Apple likely aiming to keep the majority of queries on-device or use whatever cloud LLM Apple has developed. I think the partnership is a bit of a stopgap, as Apple wants to hit the ground running with a compelling AI story while at the same time working to develop the AI technologies they control.
Improvements to Spotlight
Spotlight has been around since Mac OS X 10.4. At the time, it was a groundbreaking feature and felt lightning-fast. Fast forward two decades and Spotlight has become a utility I actively avoid using because, most of the time, it's more frustrating than helpful. Searches on the Mac take forever and rarely help me effectively narrow down to the file I'm looking for. Here's hoping some speed and better intelligence come to Spotlight this year, including some natural language search (e.g., "new documents I worked on this week") and more contextual search ("PDFs I viewed on my iPad in the past week" or "Pixelmator file with a Jolly Roger and Apple logo").
A Memeable Federighi Moment
From WWDC22 (Source: Apple)
Do I really need to explain this one?
macOS Sequoia
I was right in guessing Monterey in 2021 but wrong with Mammoth in 2022 and Sequoia in 2023. However, I have a good feeling that this is the year that macOS 15 will be named macOS Sequoia. Apple has previously trademarked several for future macOS versions, including Diablo, Condor, Rincon, Redwood, Mammoth, Skyline, and Sequoia; further, it has renewed its trademarks for Farallon, Redwood, Shasta, Skyline, Sequoia, and Rincon back in 2023.
RCS iOS Integration Announced
Green Bubbles rejoice! Last year, Apple confirmed that RCS would finally be adopted in 2024, and I predict some mention of the standard and how it operates inside the messages app, but with a quick segue to how Blue Bubbles are still superior.
"AI" Mentioned at Least 15 Times
When Apple announced 5G was coming to the iPhone 12 lineup, they mentioned 5G sixty (60!) times across their 71-minute. With Apple feeling the pressure to tell its AI story at this event, we will see a very explicit emphasis on pointing out AI over, and over, and over again.
An International Vision Pro Rollout is Announced
With rumblings that Apple is beginning to train employees from outside the United States about Vision Pro, I expect we'll see Apple announce the expansion of Vision Pro to international markets. Mark Gurman has reported that this first wave of countries will include Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the UK. WWDC could be an excellent venue for Apple to drum up interest in the Vision Pro again by highlighting all the advancements coming to the platform and giving international developers time to get their hands on Vision Pro and port their apps overto the platform in time for visionOS 2.0 later this year.
Update: Macrumors reported on May 31 that late July appears to be the potential date for this international rollout.
Calculator on iPad (Finally!)
It's been 1.5 decades, but this could be the year that iPadOS gets a native calculator application. In an interview with MKBHD in 2020, Craig Federighi teased that Apple wanted to wait until the app could be "great in that space" and that "that day may come." With details about adding Math input notation and recognition to iOS, now would be the perfect time to release the long-anticipated native Calculator app for iPadOS. Finally!
An Apple On-Device LLM Announced
Back in April, it was reported that Apple was working on an on-device LLM in addition to doing some work in the cloud and partnering with companies like OpenAI to access their AI stack. There are speed and privacy advantages to keeping some workflows on the device, and I anticipate we'll see Apple discuss that on-device Large Language Model at WWDC this year. Features like a 'catch up' command for providing an overview of recent notifications, auto-generated smart replies, and more contextually aware Siri commands could all be done locally.
Update: The LLM could be branded as Apple Intelligence (source)
A Copilot-Like Feature for Xcode Announced
Will Apple expand AI into Xcode, similar to Copilot inside of GitHub? AI seems to have an excellent knack for crafting code, so integrating into Swift seems like a natural fit.
More Native Apps on Vision Pro
Apple Vision Pro launched in February with several visionOS native apps (Mail, Messages, Photos, Tips(??), Music, Safari, etc.), but many quintessential apps, like Reminders, Calendar, Maps, and Books were unmodified iPad apps ported to the platform. It was especially egregious that Microsoft had ported their Office Suite to Vision Pro while Apple has yet to port their complete iWork apps onto the platform.
This year, I expect we'll see Apple highlight more native apps coming to visionOS 2.0, including Pages & Numbers, Maps, Calendar, and... hopefully *fingers crossed* an immersive Weather app experience.
On-Device Transcription and Summarization
Another rumoured use case for AI inside the updates coming at WWDC is the ability to transcribe audio and summarize text. Apple has already been providing transcription inside podcasts and for voicemails, and I see this feature further expanding to on-device apps like voice memos. Summarization could be a feature that takes conversations, email threads, or Pages documents and uses machine learning to generate a synopsis of the key points rather than sifting through swaths of replies to figure out what is going on.
A Secret Location is Accessed via Whimsical Transition
In addition to the expected drone footage around Apple Park, at some point, we'll transition from one place to the next via some fancy corridor, escape hatch, portal, or secret underground tunnel accessed via the fountain inside the courtyard of Apple Park.
More Vision Pro Environments
Six beautifully immersive environments, 5 filler ambient colour filters, and 2 coming soon placeholder images.
We currently have six Vision Pro environments: Haleakalā, Mount Hood, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, The Moon, and White Sands. Then we have five other 'Environments' (Sky, Spring Light, Summer Light, Fall Light, Winter Light) that are more like ambient filters—changing the lighting of your area rather than truly immersive spaces. And then we have two peculiar placeholders saying "Coming Soon." These two placeholders are Lake Vrangla and a Beach environment, and they are still MIA even in the latest version of visionOS. I have never seen Apple show a feature on the OS that's visible but blocked off in this fashion.
Hopefully, Vision Pro 2.0 will add not only these but a few more environments to the Vision Pro catalogue. I’m personally requesting the courtyard of Apple Park (at least sneak it into the Developer app for watching Apple Events).
No New Mac Hardware Announced
Last year, Apple announced the M2 Mac Studio, Mac Pro and the 15-inch MacBook Pro at WWDC. But for WWDC24, I'm not anticipating Apple announcing new Mac hardware at dub-dub. Mark Gurman has reported to "expect Mac minis, iMacs and MacBook Pros later this year," so there is a possibility, but for Apple to announce a new Mac mini means they'll likely need also to announce the M4 Pro, and if they announce the M4 Pro then will they announce just the M4 Max later? It all feels too complicated, so I imagine a more Mac-centric video later this year covering new Macs and press releases to announce the rest.
Update: Seems to be confirmed by Gurman on June 02.
Sports & Journal App in More Places
Last year at WWDC, Apple announced an iPhone exclusive Journal app and followed that up earlier this year with the surprise announcement of a dedicated Sports app (which I predicted last year for the WWDC 23 Bingo). But both are pretty bare bones and locked to the iPhone. I'd like to see Apple mature these two apps and expand them to other platforms this year. Sports must come to the Apple Watch, and Journal must come to the iPad and Mac.
Settings App Updated (Again)
With macOS Ventura, Apple courageously redesigned the System Preferences panel on macOS and called it System Settings. Verdict: People hated it! I loved it, but a very vocal online contingent didn't take to the update and found navigating it much more challenging.
Apple seems to be planning a minor refresh across the platforms, and I hope we see Settings on iOS, in particular, reorganized to include better search, more straightforward navigation, and a slightly updated layout.
Standalone Apple Passwords App
According to Mark Gurman, Apple will announce a standalone password manager application at WWDC. I'm of two minds. First, I would love to see a standalone application that expands the management, sharing, creation, and organization of passwords and other confidential documentation. However, Apple has also taken every step to make passwords as invisible and unobtrusive as possible, which contradicts the necessity of creating a standalone app. But I'll go with the rumours and what my heart desires: Apple makes a standalone password application.
Control Center Redesigned
Control Center is overdue for a redesign. It's a pain to customize, looks cluttered and dated, and I hate how features inside Control Center cannot be accessed from anywhere unless you have them added through the settings app (i.e., screen recording, hearing aid, background sounds, etc.). Let's clean up the cluttered grid of icons and create something a bit more intelligent, dynamic, and accessible.
Siri+? Some AI Features are Part of Apple One
I wonder if we'll see some of Apple's AI integration placed behind a paywall—perhaps as part of iCloud+ or the Apple One bundles. Running AI request is quite resource-intensive, so suddenly, having hundreds of millions of devices making AI queries is a significant monetary expense. Perhaps the free tier will get the on-device LLM, while Apple One users will also get access to the larger, cloud-based models.
Notes App Gets Good at Math
There have been reports that the next version of Notes will support math notation, allowing people to scribble and type out calculations using proper math notation alongside their other notes.
BONUS: APPLE INCREASES BASE ICLOUD STORAGE FROM 5GB.
If Apple announces an increase to its base 5GB iCloud storage (even if that change comes in the form of 5GB per device), then an instant BINGO is declared.
In Sum
I'm looking forward to an exciting WWDC. As much as I understand Apple needs to dedicate time explicitly to AI features, I hope they're integrated in a way that feels like it's not just AI for AI's sake. Thanks for reading; enjoy WWDC, and I look forward to connecting with you online during the keynote and the week ahead!
