By Dan Moren

May 31, 2024 8:38 AM PT

The Back Page: What Apple absolutely won’t announce at WWDC

It’s here again: yes, the time of the year when Apple aficionados start circling the company’s ring-shaped headquarters like vultures waiting for someone stranded in the desert to die of thir—you know what, this metaphor got away from me.

Yes, WWDC is just around the corner! And you know what that means. So. Many. New. Software. Features. Now everybody and their mother is out with their predictions what Apple will announce¹, but come on—that’s too easy: just copy whatever Mark Gurman says and add AI to it.

So, let’s try something a little different: I’m going to lay out the features that I think Apple will not touch at all in its announcements this year—much as users might want them to. And why? Because the company famously says a thousand no’s for every yes, so the odds are, frankly, against them. Besides, it doesn’t need to! These are problems that the company has already solved and their solutions are so much better than what you think you want, so stop harping on, would you?

Switching home hubs: Apple’s smart home system is like magic: lots of smoke and every once in a while something disappears. For example, it might occasionally forget which of your various HomePods and Apple TVs should be acting the hub for your smart home, like three outfielders letting a ball drop between them, and everything from your lighting to your thermostat just stops responding. But that’s no reason to let you just pick the hub manually—what, you think you can do a better job than a computer? Anyway, it’s more of a feature than a bug because how are you ever going to close those stand rings on your Apple Watch without getting up to turn on the lights?

Mail improvements: Electronic…mail? Delivered by, what, electronic ponies? Look, Apple has to prioritize what it’s doing these days, and it’s not about to spend its valuable time on something as boring and outdated as “email.” Why aren’t you just using Messages? Unless…can they stick some AI in there? Maybe just have it write emails for you? Read emails for you? Maybe take you entirely out of the email process? Could be something there, I guess.

Multiple users for Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s Guest Mode is the perfect way to let somebody else try out your Vision Pro, after several minutes of set up and with very limited functionality. How else are you going to convince people to buy their own $3500 goggles if not by making them want the very features that you won’t let them try? That’s just math.

Emoji reactions: You already have hundreds of stickers at your disposal—soon to be an infinite number of AI-generated emoji—that you can slap haphazardly across someone’s message bubble. No, just because you can do it in Slack and Discord and WhatsApp and Google Messages and probably Microsoft Teams, but who really knows because people only use it when their company forces them, that doesn’t mean Apple’s going to just blindly follow them. In fact, only Apple has the courage to do something different, which is why people totally forget this feature exists.

Virtualized macOS on iPad: Who let you in here? Security!

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]