Last week, I had jotted down a quick list of things I hoped to see at WWDC on the consumer side. Let’s see how I did.

Check!

• Siri audiobook integration. My kids have Alexa devices in their rooms and I’d love to upgrade them to HomePod Minis but they are big audiobook listeners.
• Interactive widgets
• Collaborative playlists on Apple Music. Shocking this still isn’t a thing.
• Shortcuts on the Lock Screen

Maybe Next Year…

• iPadOS battery management (charge to 80% and hold)
• 4-box for everything on Apple TV, not just blessed MLS or other sports content
• Selective sync on iCloud Drive. I don’t want to sync everything in iCloud to my work computer, but I also don’t want to turn it off completely.
• Extensions for 3rd party browsers. I’d love to be able to use ad blockers and 1Password in other iOS browsers.
• Spotlight “extensions” that allow developers to build functionality into it.

Jury Is Still Out

For these, I either don’t have enough info or it’s too soon to really tell.

• Show link previews for SMS messages without having to tap on the link first.
• A general theme on speed and reliability at the OS and app level. Especially Mail and Music.

Overall Impressions

• Standby mode looks awesome, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where this is possible on an iPad with some sort of custom dock. Or possibly a HomePod Video?
• I think the way Apple positioned the Vision Pro was smart. Based on the early impressions I’ve read, it seems very impressive. At that price point, I think we’re a few generations away from any sort of mass adoption, but that’s okay – Apple had to start somewhere.
• In general, I am loving the theme of pushing widgets everywhere. Consistent, glanceable, bite-sized content represents a big chunk of what I need from most of the apps I use daily. Creating a world where those can be on my desktop, watch, phone and tablet means less time spent mindlessly poking around.
• The AirPods Pro updates seem interesting, if they work as well as advertised. Adaptive Audio claims to blend noise cancellation and transparency mode, and if it works, it’ll save me dozens of earbud “press and hold” moments every day.
• Most of the updates Apple announced as a separate “Services” post sound pretty nice. Offline maps!
• Lots of great updates to Messages, which is easily my most-used app.