WWDC 2021
What a great start. The keynote itself was ok, but the overall feeling of a iterative improvements gave us fantastic features and updates. Rapid fire thoughts:
- Shortcuts for Mac: mentally insert a yes! GIF here. Still waiting for details, but having automatization and easy scriptability across the platforms is great news.
- Better iPadOS Multitasking: better as in button based window management — rather than hard to discover and remember gestures — is a huge improvement.
- Safari redesign: in fairness, of course the desktop features Opera did it all first™, and the new design is a close cousin of Firefox’s 89. But the Mobile Safari UX looks sweet.
- Extensions for iOS/iPadOS: gets a double sweet from me. Hopefully now my favorite extensions will finally come to Safari.
- Live Text: OCR across all your images is a powerful and useful feature.
- Universal Control: is typical Apple, a feature that has existed for years on other platforms/3rd party apps, but done in such an elegant and integrated way it sets a new high bar.
- Focus: very simple profiles for notifications, but happy it’s available across all platforms also.
- iCloud+: confused, all I understood is now I get a free VPN with my iCloud plan.
- Quick Notes: already have this with Drafts on Mac, but useful on the iPad when using the Pen.
- On Device Siri: hopefully means faster Siri for simple tasks. Not holding my breath.
- macOS Monterey:
- On device Dictation: without 60 timeout will be useful.
- New Split View Options: minor but great for me, you can now swap full screen split windows or make them both go full screen without having to return to regular size first.