Parker Ortolani

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.

I can’t believe we’re almost there, but WWDC 2021 will start in less than one month. On June 7, we’ll finally get a first look at the next generations of Apple’s five core platforms: iOS, macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Over the past several months, we’ve worked on a series of concepts for each of these operating systems. We’ve tried to carefully balance what we want to see in these updates with what’s reasonable realistic by Apple standards. While very few rumors have been floating around about these new releases, it’s even more fun to speculate what might be in store for us.

tvOS is missing a lot of tent pole features of the Apple ecosystem. It’s an excellent foundation, but it could use a lot of work. It often feels like tvOS gets left behind when Apple is working on its annual platform updates. It’s time for it to get a chance to shine.

Now that we’ve all spent time with AirTag, it’s time to start thinking about ways to make the product even better. There are several obvious ways to do this that many have noted over the past couple of days. AirTag is an incredibly powerful tool for tracking items, but lots of us would like to allow our friends and family to track important items or ask for their help in finding lost ones. Family sharing is just the tip of the iceberg.

Apple Podcasts is the AM to Apple Music’s FM. The two apps should be almost on par at all times, particularly now that the company is turning podcasts into an app that includes paid subscriptions. The app hasn’t always gotten the love it deserves, but that’s starting to change. There are lots of ways Apple could take the podcasts app to the next level as it enters into a new era. Here are some of my ideas…

Powerful flight tracking app “Flighty” has seen a major update today with new social sharing features for people to use as they start traveling again post-COVID. The app was already the best flight tracker available, and this update just builds upon that lead. Flighty can now integrate with Instagram and offer some beautifully designed stickers for you to share details about your trips with friends and family.

Earlier this week Apple announced that they were extending their partnership with Hermès to include AirTag and AirTag accessories. During the keynote we saw three distinct styles of AirTag Hermès, but there happens to be a fourth one exclusively on Hermès’s website. Hermès is offering a $699 leather travel tag that includes a single AirTag Hermès. The company is also now offering their own leather MagSafe case for iPhone 12.