Having read others’ predictions and collections of predictions in various places on the web, it seemed good to me, my own excellent readers, to outline what I myself predict and wish for in this year’s World Wide Developer Conference.

My predictions

It goes without saying that I don’t have any “special contacts” within Apple, so I have no inside skinny on what might be announced. I also don’t really have any predictions myself, beyond the obvious:

  • New OS X 10.10 with updated UI (hopefully not too radically redesigned) and some new functionality; further improvements to apps like iBooks and Maps

  • Apple still sells the iPad mini (non-retina) which is hardware equivalent to the iPad 2, so I would expect that iOS 8 will still run on all iPads except for the first generation model (which only went as far as iOS 5). In regards to the iPhone, I would not be surprised if the iPhone 4 was left out this year, as it struggled a bit with iOS 7. Still, Apple might surprise us there.

  • I also think that Apple will continue to cross-pollinate between iOS and OS X, so we can expect to see more interoperability and shared functionality, while still maintaining the two OS’s distinctiveness.

Apple may release some updated hardware, too, but nothing earth-shattering. Although they have announced major new hardware in past WWDCs (e.g. Retina MacBook Pro, new Mac Pro), the focus for WWDC is definitely on developers, and not on consumers. I agree with John Gruber’s own musings in this regard.

My wishes

Now, the stuff I’m most interested in and I hope Apple addresses:

  • Further improvements in the Multipeer Connectivity framework
  • Port the Multipeer framework over to OS X to facilitate ad-hoc multipeer networking between desktop/laptop and iPhone/iPad
  • Full AirDrop support between iOS and OS X
  • Improvements in inter-app communication on iOS to facilitate multi-app workflows
  • Improvements to Interface Builder in Xcode to make it easier to work with iPad storyboards on smaller screens (my own solution to this: a 28” 4k screen from Dell running at a simulated HiDPI mode of 3008x1692, but I don’t have that when working on my MacBook Air away from my office).

I’m sure Apple has lots up its sleeve that will surprise everyone, besides all the more “mundane” improvements/reefinements across all the existing APIs, and I look forward to finding out and playing with whatever new technologies they introduce!