We'll likely see iOS 16 unveiled at WWDC 2022 in June, but we don’t know much about it so far. However, it’s increasingly sounding like it could be a big deal, with the latest leak pointing to major changes, new ways of interacting with widgets, and even some new Apple apps.
That’s all according to Mark Gurman, a journalist with a solid track record for Apple information, who made the claim in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg.
Gurman didn’t go into any detail, but we can take an educated guess at some of what he’s referring to. On the new apps front, there’s already evidence that Apple is working on an Apple Classical music streaming service, so that could be one. But Gurman said apps, plural, so there could still be some surprises.
As for the new ways of interacting, that might refer to interactive widgets, which have previously leaked. iOS currently has widgets, but while they can show you information, you can’t interact with them, for example to type a note or skip a track. Tapping on them will generally just launch the relevant app.
So adding widgets that can be interacted with would certainly fall under new ways of interacting with the phone.
Then there’s Gurman’s claim that there will be “major changes across the system”. Interactive widgets could also fall under that, but additionally we’ve previously heard from Gurman that iOS 16 will include "fairly significant enhancements across the board, including an update to notifications and new health-tracking features". So he could be referring to those things here, though that’s fairly vague in itself.
Gurman also mentioned watchOS 9, saying that the news about this at WWDC will be “significant”. We've heard basically nothing about watchOS 9 so far, but from this it sounds like big changes could be planned for that too.
Analysis: what else will we hear about at WWDC 2022?
Gurman’s comments here were a response to the question of “which operating system do you think will get the most attention at WWDC?”. So iOS 16, and perhaps watchOS 9, are likely to be the stars of Apple’s developer conference then, but they won’t be all that we hear about.
Based on past form, we’re also sure to hear about macOS 13 during the event, while iPadOS 16 will probably get a nod too.
And it might not only be software that we hear about. While that’s typically the focus of WWDC, it’s thought that Apple’s next high-end chipset, the M2, might make an appearance at WWDC 2022, possibly inside the MacBook Air 2022 or other computing hardware.
There’s an outside chance that we could see other things too, including the long-rumored Apple MR headset. We’ll find out for sure soon, as WWDC 2022 runs from June 6-10.
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Via MacRumors