One of the most important events on the tech industry calendar, of course, is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC – aka “DubDub”) starting June 6 with a keynote address from Apple Park. Given that Apple will discuss improvements to all of its operating systems. What else to look for in an enterprise IT event?
The road to new Macs and M2
Apple has begun its transformation into Apple Silicon at WWDC 2020 Two years later, each Mac now runs some form of the M1 chip, the Mac Pro could soon break the cover, and the company is already looking at the M2 range.
We know Apple’s Macs are a growing presence in the enterprise, so enterprise buyers will be looking for information on what to expect from the range and whether they should buy now or delay plans until the M2 range appears. We’ve heard conflicting reports about the M2, but I expect a 5nm chip with about 10% to 20% performance improvement over existing models.
WWDC isn’t a hardware event, but there’s a chance we’ll see the first M2 or the latest M1-based Mac Pro upgrade.
Mobile device management
The API utilizes third-party MDM companies to manage Apple devices in Apple Enterprise and Education. The company bought Fleetsmith in 2020 and uses those technologies in Apple Business Essentials.
We know Apple is increasingly focusing on the enterprise market, which means we can see additional improvements in the MDM APIs it provides, with more support from Google and Microsoft to enable authentication. Single sign-on could be improved and in addition to enhanced windows on Apple tablets, some developers are hoping that Xcode will become an iPad app.
Integration between iCloud and third-party online document storage services should also be improved, as everyone is now moving away from KEXT.
A new frontier?
Services like music, TV, fitness and arcade represent how deep Apple already has in delivering the consumer experience through the new platform. The apparent interest of the company in sports entertainment will add an extra dimension to this offer.
While we’ll probably see nothing more than a glimpse of the Apple Glass AR product (if any) the company has clearly shown to managers this year, Apple is likely to share new AR-centric features that developers may be exploiting to create AR content, possibly dubbing. Has been ‘realityOS.’ I imagine part of it would be an additional way to apply machine vision intelligence in everyday life, as well as to make contextual awareness relevant to Siri. Predictive search engineAssists you, your customers, and your staff with the information needed for the job at hand.
I think Apple could work to underplay its bid a bit here. I’m also excited to see that it offers a preview developer’s kit that helps create apps for its future specs now, even if we don’t actually see them.
IPad thing
As mentioned above and recently here, Apple is expected to announce advanced multitasking features in the iPadOS 16. This will make the iPad a more reliable alternative to a Mac (or PC), which will probably give many businesses extra time to worry when they want to. To upgrade the legacy equipment. I also imagine that we’ll see improvements in the Apple Device Manager to make it easier to manage shared devices.
The future of the App Store
Apple’s decision to publish a report on anti-fraud work in the App Store and the company’s continued work to change the agreement means that it needs to take the lead in planning the App Store. WWDC will be the best forum for this leadership. While I don’t expect it to face some pressure (it won’t suddenly embrace sideloading), I do hope it will share its vision for the next App Store decade with developers at the event.
And more.
Additional highlights for developers? Additional measures to protect privacy and security across Swift 6.0 and the Apple ecosystem, improvements to Apple’s offerings to advertisers, and additions to iCloud +. For this piece, I haven’t considered other currently proposed changes – including claims that iOS 16 improvements, health features, Apple Watch improvements, or Mac system preferences will become settings.
Watching the main speech
The keynote address was delivered at 10am PDT. It can be found on Apple’s YouTube channel, its events website and its events and developer apps.
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