iOS 10: Wishes and Concept Video

iOS 10 concept.

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I almost can’t believe there was a time when the iPad didn’t have Split View. Or that, for years, I thought Apple would never bring split-screen multitasking to iOS.

More than any other iOS update before, iOS 9 has fundamentally reinvented the role of the iPad in my computing life. As I’ve written in my iOS 9 review and look at the iPad one year after my decision to stop using my Mac, iOS 9 and its multitasking improvements have catapulted the iPad away from the old limitations of iOS into a different league.

With iOS 9 and the iPad Pro, the list of tasks I can’t perform on my iPad is down to a single item.

I’ve never been happier with an iOS device and operating system than I am with the iPad Pro and iOS 9. Getting my work done is faster; using apps in Split View is a treat compared to iOS 8; and the software keyboard (despite some problems) continues to impress me with the addition of trackpad mode and the Shortcut Bar. The iPhone 6s, too, has been a pleasant surprise thanks to its superior performance and 3D Touch.1

There’s never been a better time to be an iOS user. But that doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect. When it comes to iOS, happiness is often a fleeting moment – a temporary satisfaction with the current state of things before the inevitable longing for something deeper. Such is the constant pursuit of the future.

Every year, I put together a list of the changes I’d like to see in the next version of iOS. I’ve been doing this for several years now. This year, I wanted to prepare something bigger. The tenth version of iOS due to be released later this year will be a major milestone for Apple and iOS users. It only felt appropriate to celebrate the occasion with a different take on my annual iOS wish list.

For the past few months, I’ve been collaborating with Sam Beckett (author of a fantastic Control Center concept we linked to a while back) to visualize my iOS 10 wishes with a professional concept video and static mockups. Sam and I discussed my ideas for a couple of months, and he was able to visualize2 what I would like to have in iOS 10 – both for the iPhone and iPad – with a style and attention to detail I’m extremely happy with.

Below, you’ll find a collection of my iOS 10 wishes, organized in tentpole features (the ones also shown in the video) plus additional sub-sections. Some of these wishes have been on my list for years; others are a consequence of the features Apple shipped with iOS 9.

Let’s get started.

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Concept Video: iOS 10 Tentpole Features

(Note: for the best viewing experience, watch in 1080p/4K on the YouTube website or mobile app.)

Customizable Control Center

Swiping from the bottom edge of the display is the gesture I use the most on iOS. I love Control Center. I use it daily to control music playback, turn on Do Not Disturb, and launch the camera. But the core functionality of Control Center has been virtually unchanged since iOS 7, and it’s time for an upgrade.

A customizable Control Center with adjustable toggles.

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Control Center is the perfect candidate for a refresh focused on user customization and 3D Touch shortcuts. In iOS 10, Apple could expand Control Center to let users swap default toggles (the top row on the iPhone) with other settings they frequently access. The bottom row of app shortcuts (including the flashlight) could also be made customizable by letting users pin their favorite apps to Control Center.

Thanks to 3D Touch, the modernized Control Center could also offer deeper access to settings by pressing on toggles without actually going into the Settings app. A light press on the WiFi toggle, for example, could bring up a list of known WiFi networks to connect to; pressing on the Bluetooth toggle would show a menu to re-connect to an accessory that a device was previously paired with.

As for app shortcuts, developers would have to provide an icon glyph to use in Control Center; ideally, they could also define a default behavior for an app when launched from Control Center.3 The 3D Touch quick actions available for apps in Control Center, on the other hand, would be the same ones available on the Home screen.

As our devices and OSes get more powerful and complex, Control Center remains a harbor of convenience and speed. By opening Control Center up to user customization and 3D Touch, Apple could considerably reduce the time we spend fiddling with settings and launching apps on a daily basis.

System Dark Mode

Over the past year, Apple has been thinking about how to improve color reproduction and viewing comfort on iOS devices. Night Shift and the True Tone display are steps in the right direction – after iOS 7’s massive redesign, it’s clear that the predominance of white-based interfaces doesn’t play well in different lighting contexts or at night.

In iOS 10, it’s time for Apple to step up its game and build a system-wide dark mode.

Apple apps in Dark Mode.

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An iOS Dark Mode would be modeled after what Apple has already done with the Apple Watch app for iPhone and dark themes in iBooks, not to mention excellent third-party examples such as Ulysses, Tweetbot, Drafts, and OmniFocus.

Dark Mode would live under Settings > Display & Brightness, and it would be activated like Night Shift – either manually or on a schedule. Developers would be able to see if dark mode has been enabled on a device and program their apps to automatically switch to a built-in dark interface. Additionally, developers would also be able to opt out of dark mode if an app doesn’t require it (say, an app that already has a dark UI or a game).

The benefits of a system-level dark mode – increased contrast and higher legibility – would fit with Apple’s recent additions to iOS’ display settings, and they would be a boon for accessibility as well.

Revamped Messages

Apple’s Messages may be the most used app on iOS, but it saw the last major changes two years ago, and the messaging landscape has changed profoundly since 2014.

Rich previews, faster emoji input, and granular read receipts in Messages.

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There are plenty of options Apple could explore to refresh iMessage and the Messages app:

Message extensions. Provide developers with new extension points (similar to Facebook’s Messenger) to share a variety of media or data types in the Messages app. Imagine sharing a tweet with a native preview in a conversation, or attaching a GIF from a dedicated GIF app without using the clipboard or saving to the photo library first. A new extension framework for the Messages app could take iMessage sharing to the next level.

Richer previews. Every modern messaging app offers richer previews for links shared in conversations. Even Apple does this in their own Notes app. Web links shared in Messages should offer more context; while they’re at it, all sorts of documents and data shared in Messages should come with unique previews (see above). For instance, imagine the ability to share an Apple Music playlist that shows artwork and a play button in iMessage, or an individual note from the Notes app that retains styling and interactivity.

Faster emoji input. Emoji have become the modern language used by billions of people every day. Inserting emoji on iOS is slow and cumbersome, and Apple should come up with ways to speed up emoji insertion. In our concept, we imagined a panel activated from the QuickType bar with the ability to view recent emoji, pin favorites, and search for an emoji by name (search should also be available in the full emoji keyboard).

Granular read receipts. One of the most antiquated aspects of iMessage needs a revamp in iOS 10. Users should be able to assign read receipts on a per-contact basis: you may want your significant other to know you’ve read their message, but you may not want the same for friends or colleagues.

Share anything in conversations. This follows messaging extensions and rich previews: users should be able to share anything in a conversation, whether it’s a document, an image, a video, or a map. Why is there no document picker in the Messages app? Why is the camera roll the only source for embedded media?

Web access and reliability. As services like Messenger and Slack have shown, giving users the ability to log in and view their messages from any web browser helps make a service sticky and ubiquitous. In addition to a full-featured Messages app on iCloud.com, Apple should fix whatever still makes messages disappear when viewed on the Mac, or display them out of order, or not be delivered at all. iMessage – especially in group conversations – still isn’t as fast or as reliable as Telegram and Messenger. This needs to change.

Rich previews in Messages for the App Store, Apple Music, Notes, and Safari content.

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When Apple introduced iMessage five years ago, its unification of SMS and free messaging heralded a new era of mobile messaging. Five years later, iMessage’s legacy SMS support is largely a liability, holding the service back in terms of innovations Apple could bring to the platform.

Competing services such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, or LINE have created communities of hundreds of millions of users and they’re pushing the boundaries of mobile messaging, turning it into a platform in its own right. It’s time for Apple to re-establish iMessage as the leading messaging service – not just through numbers and security, but with innovation and reliability as well.

Improved iCloud Drive and Document Picker

When they were introduced in iOS 8, iCloud Drive and the document picker promised to bring desktop-like qualities to file management on iOS. Two years later and with a barebones iCloud Drive app (a poor man’s Finder) the only meaningful addition in iOS 9, the document picker still shows a lot of potential, but it’s hindered by slowness and a lackluster execution.

A revamped iCloud Drive app for iPad.

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The file management features of iCloud Drive still pale in comparison to the Finder on OS X. At this point, it’s not too absurd to think that iCloud Drive on iOS should borrow a few features from its much more capable Mac counterpart:

A column view on the iPad;

The ability to view and restore versions of a file (available for all document providers);

Tagging and browsing by tag;

Restoring deleted files (currently only available on iCloud.com);

A new ‘Open In’ menu with support for multiple files, so that it’d be possible to move multiple files between apps with a single command.

Version history and assigning tags to a file.

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I don’t believe Apple should move away from the app-based model of file management on iOS. However, both document providers and iCloud Drive ought to be faster to operate, more transparent, and as versatile as they would be a on desktop computer. Apple can do this.

Improved iPad Multitasking

A couple of months into iOS 9, it was clear that Apple rolled out split-screen iPad multitasking with two glaring oversights: a terrible app picker and lack of drag & drop between apps in Split View.

The Slide Over app picker is the iOS 9 feature that has aged the worst since September. Finding apps to put in Slide Over and Split View is a tedious process, and a layout with low information density and lacking a search box doesn’t help in picking apps. Any kind of redesign would be welcome: a tighter presentation of app icons, the ability to search, and even a way to pin some apps as persistent favorites would do wonders.

A redesigned app picker with recent apps, favorites, and search.

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In our concept, you can see how a search bar would be displayed above a scrollable list of recent apps (similar to the system multitasking tray), with a 3x3 grid of user favorites below. I think these additions would mitigate some of the frustrations with switching between multiple apps in Split View.

Drag & drop is a trickier one. To provide a way to select content – any content, be it text or images or documents – and transport it from one app to another, Apple would have to come up with a model that can coexist with the copy & paste menu (if they chose to rely on traditional selection) or 3D Touch, or both. To provide a visual cue for draggable content, perhaps there could be a “drag handle” users could hold to drop selected content elsewhere.4

Selecting content shows a drag handle below the copy & paste menu.

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Dragging content to a secondary app in Split View.

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The fact that the system clipboard is still the fastest bridge between two apps is inelegant and archaic in 2016. Drag & drop would play to iOS’ strengths thanks to multitouch, and it’s the logical next step for iPad multitasking.

Siri API and Textual Siri

Google Now/Voice Search and Amazon’s Alexa are outclassing Siri in three key aspects of digital assistance: intelligent speech recognition, third-party app integrations, and the ability to type requests without speaking. I think Apple should tackle all these areas to move Siri forward.

Leaving voice recognition aside (a problem that should be fixed at scale with new tech/better or more microphones/superior understanding of a user’s context), a Siri API and textual conversations are two features I’ve wanted to have in Apple’s assistant for a few years now.

In 2016, the digital assistant landscape is more competitive than ever: Amazon has set its eyes on pervasive assistants for the home, third-parties are entering the stage with impressive tech, and the trend of smart and flexible chat bots is continuing at fast pace. If Apple has been paying attention, they should know app integrations and the ability to text with Siri are obvious moves.

A Siri API wouldn’t only make the assistant more powerful on iOS – it’d also dramatically improve the capabilities of the Apple Watch with a way to quickly retrieve information from any app. And with a way to converse with Siri silently, it would become more convenient for situations where voice activation isn’t an option, such as public transit or other places.

Siri API and textual conversations.

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Just think about the possibilities: you could ask Siri to create tasks in 2Do or OmniFocus; if you’re on the bus and can’t talk, you could text Siri5 and ask her to bring up the best Italian restaurants within a price range; or, Siri would know how to load your favorite workout from the fitness app you’re using. And so on.

Siri has long been envisioned as the fourth interface of iOS. By opening it up to millions of apps and the convenience of texting, Siri in iOS 10 could become a new pillar of interaction on the iPhone and iPad.

Smarter Proactive Page

One of the tentpole features of iOS 9, the returning Search page with Proactive suggestions, has turned out to be an underwhelming effort at intelligent shortcuts intermixed with general news and events.

There’s plenty of ways Apple could improve this page without giving up on their respect for user privacy and data collection. Based on current location and time of the day, iOS should provide suggestions for the next calendar event such as directions, traffic conditions, or transit times (as opposed to widgets, which simply list all upcoming events and tasks). New music releases from artists you follow could be summarized with buttons to start playing on Apple Music right away.

New Proactive suggestions for new music releases, YouTube channels (via Proactive API), transit directions, and Apple Music playlists.

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Based on user patterns and current location/context (e.g. at home, at the office, in the car, running, on public transit, etc.), iOS could surface relevant emails (newsletters you read at night, or a meeting-related message when a meeting is coming up), documents, workout playlists, or messages you haven’t replied to. And by opening up Proactive to third-party developers, apps would be able to suggest relevant content that iOS could consider for inclusion in the page at appropriate times.

If taken to the extreme, Apple’s hard stance on privacy will ultimately prevent them from building a useful Proactive page. It would be like building a Ferrari and only driving it to 20mph. With a combination of local processing and anonymized user profiles, Apple should come up with ways to let iOS devices be smarter without being creepy.

Everything Else

On the next page, you’ll find a collection of every other feature I’d like iOS 10 to bring. Think of it as those slides with dozens of additional features Apple puts up on stage at the end of each WWDC keynote – some of these are big changes, while others are minor improvements to the iOS experience.

More on iPad Multitasking

Multiple screens from the same app in Split View. iPad users should be able to view multiple pages or documents from the same app at once. Whether it’s a Pages document or Safari tabs, the convenience of multiple windows on OS X would translate well to multiple app panels in Split View on iOS.

Activate multitasking from an external keyboard. The Smart Keyboard and keyboard shortcuts are essential aspects of iOS 9 on the iPad, but Slide Over and Split View are completely shut off from keyboard integration. It’d be nice to enable multitasking and switch apps (as well as navigate favorites and search in the app picker) without touching the screen.

Split View for every Apple app. Why don’t Music, App Store, and other apps support Split View? If time constraints last year were the reason6, it’s time to fix that in iOS 10.

Extensions

System-wide Markup, Print to PDF, and Save to iCloud extensions. Mail in iOS 9 has two extensions that aren’t available elsewhere on the system – Markup (to annotate images and PDF documents) and Save Attachment (to save files to iCloud Drive). These two action extensions should be available at a system level for every app to use.

These are only available in Apple Mail.

Similarly, while not officially documented by Apple, the 3D Touch trick to print anything to PDF should become an action extension to convert any printable document into a PDF file.

A new Messages share extension. Apple’s share extension for Messages is quite obsolete at this point – it launches to a blank ‘To:’ field that requires you to type a person’s name or address before sharing. The new extension could be pre-populated with recent chats and favorite contacts – apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Group Text+ have done a much better job in this regard.

Long-pressing links as an extension point. Sharing links is one of the most common actions on iOS, and yet the tap & hold menu for links is vastly underserving iOS users with options to Copy or Open.

Airmail (left) and Safari (right).

I’d like to see Apple revamp this menu with an option to share a link with extensions – Airmail has a custom menu for links that Apple should take a look at.

System Enhancements

Remote App View Controllers. With iOS 9, Apple continued their work on remote view controllers and introduced Safari View Controller, a way for apps to embed Safari web views without creating their own mini browsers from scratch. In iOS 10, I’d like to see a way for any app to present its view controller and show native content in other apps.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few months. Here’s how I imagined it would work when I wrote about the iPhone 6s:

I can’t help but wonder what happens when app content becomes previewable with 3D Touch even if that app isn’t in the foreground. When you’re in Messages and you preview a link, an instance of Safari is called by 3D Touch to preview a webpage inside Messages. With iOS 9, Apple has introduced a new deep-linking framework to match web links with native app content, which is already supported by apps like Twitter and Dropbox. What if an app’s native view could be summoned with 3D Touch by peeking at a Universal Link? What if you could, say, peek at a tweet with the native Twitter app when in Safari, or peek and pop a Dropbox file from Slack? If you consider all the pieces that Apple has laid out over the years (the secure app sandbox, Universal Links, extensions, the back button), iOS’ deep-linking puzzle could come together quite nicely under 3D Touch.

Imagine this: a Spotify link you share over iMessage would open a Spotify View Controller for that song; a tweet would be previewed with the native Twitter app; a Google Docs link would…who am I kidding, it’d take ages for Google to support it anyway.

The point is – extending view controllers besides Mail and Safari would accomplish three things:

Leverage Universal Links to a deeper extent;

Increase communication between apps with native previews;

Save time thanks to 3D Touch and peek & pop activation for third-party view controllers.

Safari View Controller is one of my favorite iOS 9 features. I want the same model (fast, secure, private) to work for as many apps as possible.

Faster animations. iOS’ slow animation time has been criticized since iOS 7 in 2013; three years later, users are still coming up with clever workarounds to reduce the time iOS spends animating apps in and out. I’d like to see iOS 10 speed up animations throughout the entire system.

Install iOS without iTunes. If you need to restore (not update) iOS, you still need iTunes. While that made sense in 2010, it prevents iPad users from having the peace of mind that they’ll absolutely never need an additional computer. Imagine if you bought a Mac and they told you that to reinstall OS X from scratch you’d need a Windows PC. Apple could consider something akin to Internet Recovery on OS X – a built-in solution to reinstall iOS over the Internet instead of plugging a device into iTunes.

Screen recording. One of my favorite additions to OS X in recent years is the built-in screen recording mode for iOS devices in QuickTime. I’d like to see Apple bring the same feature to iOS. Screen recording would be beneficial to different types of users – educators, students, screencasters, bloggers, developers, and video creators. For privacy reasons, I wouldn’t expect screen recording to be an API open to third-party apps.7

Home app. After Apple introduced HomeKit in iOS 8, many were expecting to see a new default app dedicated to managing accessories and connected home automation devices.

The third-party ‘Home’ app for iOS 9.

This hasn’t happened yet, and it’s confusing to force users to download third-party apps to manage information an iOS device already knows. Imagine if Apple built HealthKit without a Health app to view recorded data. For HomeKit to take off, a Home app is an obvious first step.

A Safari download manager. Downloading files on iOS is still a lottery: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and the “interface” for downloading files with Safari is…not good.

“Downloading” files on iOS 9.

Apple should bring a download manager to Safari, and integrate it with Safari View Controller so developers could also take advantage of it.

Actionable results in Spotlight search. One of the most interesting details in the revamped Search feature of iOS 9 is the presence of buttons to play music, start directions, and place phone calls directly from results.

Actionable results in iOS 9.

However, Apple has limited these actionable results to only a few data types for now. It’d be nice if developers could embed more actionable buttons in search results for activities like sharing a document from search, jumping straight to editing a file, or start AirPlay without opening the app that contains a media result.

Xcode for iOS. Apple calls the iPad the future of computing, but that future still needs a Mac to be written. Developers can’t create iPad software without a Mac, and that’s because there’s no iOS version of the company’s IDE. Last year, I heard rumors of a version of Xcode being demoed on an iPad Pro inside Apple, and John Gruber heard the same. I don’t know if that version was a replica of the desktop IDE or a playground-only version, but the time is right for Xcode to come to iOS. A new generation of programmers is waiting.

Notes

OCR for images and documents. The new Notes is my favorite Apple app update from last year. With its increased versatility, it’s fair to assume users are now storing all kinds of images and documents in Notes, including PDFs. After building an Evernote importer, Apple should implement one of the competing service’s most popular features – optical character recognition for text contained in images and documents. While they’re at it, they should make text searchable from both the Notes app and Spotlight, too.

Automatic shape recognition. One of the best aspects of OmniGraffle and OneNote is the fact that those apps can automatically recognize shapes drawn with a finger/Pencil and convert them to geometric versions. This would be a terrific addition to Notes’ sketching mode – it could be a toggle to enable/disable hand-drawn shape recognition at any time.

Native document attachments and multiple images. Currently, you can only attach one image at a time to a note. PDFs and other files can only be added with the share extension. In addition to redesigning the image picker to allow for multiple images and videos at once, Apple should add a file picker to import any kind of attachment into a note.

Audio and Video

Picture in Picture for iPhone Plus. Picture in Picture on the iPad is amazing, and I think it would also make sense on bigger iPhones. Adding Picture in Picture as a Plus-only feature would differentiate the iPhone line further – something that Apple has already started doing with landscape interfaces and the software keyboard.

Concurrent audio streams. After nine iterations, iOS still can’t handle simultaneous audio streams – if you’re listening to a song and want to watch a muted video (which is normal on a desktop computer), you can’t. This has also become a problem for podcasters who want to have conversations and record audio on iOS: if they want to record a conversation with other people, they’ll need multiple iOS devices as they won’t be able to do it all on an iPad. I’d like to see iOS 10 enhance the system audio framework with the ability to have multiple audio streams and control them individually.8

Group FaceTime audio and video. Speaking of conversations on iOS, FaceTime – one of the defining features of Apple’s devices – is due an upgrade. Skype has proven that group audio and video calling with multiple participants on mobile is possible; Apple should lead by example with FaceTime, too. The company could also consider the ability to record FaceTime audio conversations and save them to a file.

iPad

Take better advantage of the iPad Pro’s Home screen. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s Home screen is a disappointing blown-up version of the classic iPad Home screen. Apple isn’t taking advantage of the extra space in any meaningful way.

This is quite sad.

I would like to see them explore a denser app icon grid (6x6 in landscape, perhaps) as well as a Dock that snaps to the side in landscape (like on the iPhone Plus).

Proper layouts for European software keyboards on iPad Pro. As I noted in my original iPad Pro review, Apple designed “European” layouts for the software keyboard that aren’t really European – they’re rushed adaptations of the American keyboard layout.

Italian keyboard layout vs. “Italian” software keyboard layout.

I’d like to see the Italian software keyboard be more closely modeled after our hardware keyboards – with an elongated Enter key underneath Backspace – not some version based off American hardware keyboards.

Low Power Mode. Since its addition in iOS 9, Low Power Mode has helped me get precious extra minutes of battery life from my iPhone without being too aggressive in reducing system performance and resources. Low Power Mode could be just as handy on the iPad to squeeze more battery life out of it every day.

Add missing apps. I have no idea why Calculator and Weather still aren’t available on the iPad.9 It’s been six years.

Apple Music

Lyrics for every song. No streaming music service has figured out how to support lyrics for millions of songs. Musixmatch is (as far as I know) the only service with the rights to almost every song you can think of, and Spotify has been clever enough to directly integrate with them on OS X and Android. But Apple can do better than Spotify. If anyone has the money to invest in licensing lyrics from as many right holders as possible, that’s Apple. Lyrics in Apple Music would be a fantastic differentiator.

New artist release notifications. Spotify gets this right: if an artist you follow releases new music, you get an alert. Users shouldn’t have to browse the front page or listen to Zane Lowe to find out about new music they might like. Apple should add an option to be alerted of interesting new releases when they occur – preferably with an option to start listening from the notification itself.

Less generic For You recommendations. Unlike Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Browse section, Apple’s For You recommendations tend to recommend albums from well-known bands and playlists with popular songs dubbed ‘Intro To’.

Discovery in Apple Music vs. Spotify.

Since I moved back to Spotify a couple of months ago, I discovered more new bands I like in a couple of weeks than I did in 9 months of Apple Music. The fact that Spotify gives me new music I didn’t know before is not up for debate, and if the same isn’t happening with Apple Music, I’d wonder why that’s the case.

Smart playlists. One of the best features of iTunes, still not available on mobile devices nine years after the launch of iOS. Just think about the possibilities of smart filters for all the artist and songs available on Apple Music.

Add audio files to Music. If you have a bunch of MP3s and want to add them to the Music app on iOS, you can’t. You’ll need a Mac for that. In 2016, that’s anachronistic and in direct contrast with the company’s vision. Just like Apple added an API in iOS 9.3 for apps to add Apple Music songs to your library, there should be a way to import arbitrary audio files without iTunes.

Photos

Proper GIF support. What happens when you save an animated GIF in the Photos app? No one really knows. With every modern web service now offering built-in support for GIFs, Apple’s “implementation” is downright baffling. Animated GIFs should carry a ‘GIF’ label similar to Live Photos, and users should be able to save them natively from the web and other apps.

Faces support in Photos. This one’s fairly self-explanatory – iCloud Photo Library understands faces in photos, and there’s a Faces view in the Photos app for OS X, but the same view is absent on iOS. Users should be able to browse Faces on their iPhones, where they would make the most sense.

View and edit metadata. Our photos contain a lot of additional information that isn’t always available to see clearly in Apple’s Photos app. Photos for iOS should be extended to present metadata (for location, camera type, and more) like it can on OS X; users should also have the ability to view and edit metadata without having to buy third-party apps from the App Store.

3D Touch

Horizontal peek actions for developers. In iOS 9, developers only have access to peek actions available by swiping a peek preview upwards.

Horizontal peek actions in Mail for iOS 9.

However, Apple is using an additional set of actions in their Mail app – buttons revealed by swiping a peek sideways. It’d be great if developers could also support these in their apps.

Wake Lock screen. Since the iPhone 6s brought a faster Touch ID sensor, it’s become nearly impossible to click the Home button to view notifications without being taken to the Home screen. Given the new iPhone’s display with 3D Touch, I’d love a way to press the screen to wake it without unlocking it.

Family Sharing

Shared iCloud storage. Family Sharing owners on iOS should be able to allocate storage space to members and buy additional storage for them. I don’t want my parents to worry about storage for their iCloud accounts – improved Family Sharing should take the pain out of this.

Shared iPad for everyone. One of the Education features in iOS 9.3, Shared iPad, looks like a promising foundation for one of the functionalities I’ve wanted to see on the iPad for years – support for multiple user accounts. Currently in preview for schools, Shared iPad allows multiple students to log into their profiles and have separate app environments on the same iPad thanks to iCloud and caching. A similar system would be fantastic for families who don’t want to buy multiple iPads for one household.

Note sharing. Every popular note-taking service offers a sharing component to collaborate with others. Family Sharing seems like a perfect match for Notes, which would join Reminders and Calendars with support for items shared with members of a family.

The Future Is Bright

I have big hopes for iOS 10 and its subsequent releases throughout the year.10

With iOS 9, it felt like Apple was finally ready to let the iPad be the iPad. After several years spent refining iOS for iPad in lockstep with its iPhone counterpart, iOS 9 put the iPhone and iPad on two separate lanes. Both are moving towards the same goal – the future of computing – but each is evolving at its own pace.

I genuinely believe that Apple sees the iPad and iOS as the future of how we’ll get work done. iOS 9 paved the way for a road that will take us farther than classic desktop computers have ever taken us.

I want to see iOS 10 build on Apple’s vision for new ways to work and communicate. I want to see iOS 10 empower people, developers, and everyone in between to be creative, productive, entertained, in better shape, and free of the constraints of traditional computing. I want to see iOS 10 take another bold step towards the future we’ve been promised.

We’ll find out in a couple of months.

I use 3D Touch heavily every day. Peek previews for tweets and links in Tweetbot, Home screen actions, keyboard cursor control, and channel shortcuts in Slack are gestures I intuitively perform daily. ↩

He was also very patient. As you can imagine, I sent him a lot of ideas and comments before signing off on the final version. I can't recommend working with Sam enough. ↩

A Twitter client could always open in compose mode, for example. ↩

The drag handle, of course, would only appear when two apps are in Split View. ↩

In our concept, text mode in Siri would be activated by tapping the 'Aa' button in the lower right corner of the Siri interface. ↩

And I've heard they were. ↩

Obviously, a screen recording mode would also clean the status bar the way QuickTime does on OS X. ↩

Perhaps with a popover menu in Control Center? ↩

Although there's a story floating around about why that might be the case. ↩

I heard from multiple sources a few weeks ago that some iPad-only features will be shipped in 10.x updates following the release of iOS 10 in the Fall. I wouldn't be surprised if some iPad changes and feature additions won't make the cut for WWDC. ↩