Parker Ortolani

Several different YouTubers have posted FaceTime calls with Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi in which they talk about different announcements from WWDC. The conversations include everything from iOS 15 to macOS Monterey. You can check out the videos embedded below.

A few weeks before WWDC, Apple previewed a few new accessibility features that will be coming later this year. One of those features was background sounds, which Apple plans to ship in iOS 15. Background sounds are effectively built-in white noise features with additional accessibility options. These new features are hidden in the Settings app and aren’t easily discoverable. We think they are so important that they warrant their own app in the future, and it should be called “Sounds.”

Following the WWDC keynote, Apple has released the first beta of SF Symbols 3. This latest version of SF Symbols includes over 600 new designs developers and designers can use in their apps. The update also includes a new inspector for seeing details about individual symbols.

A major new feature quietly introduced today in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey is a built-in two factor verification code generator. Like with passwords, you’ll be able connect internet accounts to Apple’s Settings apps. The best part though? Settings will actually autofill two factor codes if it detects you are signing into a registered account.

We know very little about what we’re going to see at WWDC on Monday, but there have been plenty of hints dropped along the way about some of the potential announcements. The first and most obvious thing we expect and hope to see is a major update to iPadOS that takes advantage of the M1 chip in the new iPad Pro. The second, a new brand name for the software on Apple’s home products called “homeOS,” leaked through a job listing posted the other day. Apple now has 5 core platforms plus the HomePod. They’ll have 6 if homeOS becomes a reality. That leaves iOS, just for the iPhone. If that’s the case it should probably be renamed ‘”iPhoneOS” again.

Two rumors have been floating around for a bit now: The first is that this year’s Apple Watch will adopt a glucose monitor, and the second is that the Health app will be gaining food tracking. If both of these are true, they could be transformative together for people with diabetes and those just trying to eat healthier.

We here at 9to5Mac have talked about how Apple should kill the Apple Watch Series 3 for a while now. It’s Apple’s “white elephant,” as my colleague José has said, while Filipe noted, “If the company really cares about the user experience, it should discontinue the Apple Watch Series 3 while it can.” The primary issue with the Apple Watch Series 3 is really just that it’s getting slower and can’t handle updates. As it turns out, there’s precedent for Apple killing a product immediately before WWDC because it was going to drop compatibility for it. That product was an iPod touch.

In the summer of 2007, developers were anxious to hear how they fit into the iPhone story. Steve Jobs told developers at WWDC 2007 that Apple had come up with a “sweet solution” for developers to make their own software for iPhone. That solution was web apps in Safari. This didn’t go over very well with developers and users, but it led to some interesting new features getting added to the iPhone before the App Store was ultimately launched the following summer.

Because of the Epic v. Apple trial, we’ve been able to see tons of old emails from Apple showing their plans for the future around the time of the App Store. One email in particular, an executive team meeting agenda, details several seemingly unreleased products that the company had been discussing at one point or another. Two of those are iPods originally planned for the first half of 2008.

With WWDC right around the corner, it’s always fun to get hyped up beforehand with all sorts of different ways to celebrate. We’ve put together a guide to the best music, great podcast episodes, concepts to dream about, wallpapers to set, and more so that you can get ready. Hunker down, because there’s a lot to go through.

With every new major version of macOS comes a new codename. Since 2013, versions of macOS have been named after beautiful places in California. So far, we’ve had: Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, and Big Sur. It’s fun to speculate what upcoming versions might be called, but Apple has quietly and consistently left a trail of breadcrumbs that make it easier to decipher what a release could be named. Over the past year, Apple has renewed and abandoned a few trademarks that might hint at what macOS 12 will be called.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is our Super Bowl. It’s the most important time of the year for Apple fans, journalists, and of course developers. Each year for more than 20 years, Apple has brought its community together and spent a week detailing their next major software innovations.

In October 2020, Ken Kocienda, longtime Apple human interface designer and the inventor of the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, launched his first standalone app. The game “Up Spell” is highly addictive yet incredibly simple. John Gruber described it best at the time as a “fast-paced solo version of Scrabble.” Recently, YouTuber DankPods shared a look at a variety of old iPod Touch prototypes from the late 2000s and early 2010s. In the video, DankPods looks at a bunch of internal Apple apps, and one of them happens to play like Kocienda’s game, almost to a T.

After Apple introduced the AirTag last month, the Apple Store used an image that displayed an unreleased California poppy leather key ring. Unsurprisingly, Apple had explored other colors for AirTag accessories. Today, we’ve got a first look at a few other unreleased AirTag accessory colors through an eBay listing.

When Apple introduced iOS 14 last year, it unleashed a whole new rush of amazing widgets, both from third-party developers and Apple itself. Apple’s own apps and now its own widgets are supposed to serve as examples for other developers to be inspired by. But many of Apple’s stock apps don’t actually have widgets yet. Meanwhile, widgets are still static and can’t be made interactive. We’re hoping both of those things change in just under two weeks when Apple unveils iOS 15 at WWDC.

Apple’s new Pride bands for Apple Watch are available starting today, both online and in Apple Stores. We’ve got our hands on the new Pride version of the braided solo loop, and it’s absolutely spectacular. The new band is a fresh take on the braided solo loop introduced last September alongside Apple Watch Series 6. It’s the first one that has multiple colors woven through it. All of the colors are designed to represent different parts of the LGBTQ+ community.

Today Apple has updated the Apple Store app to version 5.12, bringing along a completely redesigned user interface on iPad. The new design takes advantage of the sidebars introduced in iPadOS 14 last summer. Apple has made a number of other changes to the app as well including updates to Today at Apple sessions and the iPad shopping experience.

Back in January of 2008, Steve Jobs got up on stage at Macworld and announced that you could add websites to your iPhone’s home screen. He called them ‘web clips,’ and they made it dead simple to jump into a website with a single tap. Web clips are still in use to this day, and ‘Add to Home Screen’ is still a popular feature for Safari on iOS. Apple brought this functionality to Shortcuts, allowing you to pin them to your Home Screen. But what if you could add other kinds of things to your Home Screen, too?

iOS 14 saw the introduction of Home Screen widgets on the iPhone, and that alone was expected to cause a tsunami of creative customization on the platform. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Even though it’s been possible for a few years now, regular consumers discovered that they could create custom icons using the Shortcuts app. We saw an explosion of custom icon packs, widget designer apps, and tutorials on how to make your iPhone look a very specific way. If Apple wants to lean into customization, it could do it in a few ways that still allow it to keep control of the platform’s core design.

AirTag is, first and foremost, marketed as a consumer product. It’s an affordable little tracker you can attach to keys, bags, clothing, cars, pets, you name it. But technically, AirTag has a ton of other potential applications. A single AirTag includes a standard NFC chip currently used with lost mode. If you find a tag, just tap it to your phone to find out who owns it. But this little chip inside AirTag could be used in tons of other ways. In fact, we’ve already seen hackers reconfigure an AirTag with custom actions. Aside from opening up NFC, Apple could also enable more features for the Find My network.