A School Tech Director’s Response to the WWDC 2022 Keynote

I’m moving in order, using this summary at ZDNet as my guide, if you want to follow along.

TL;DR: Freeform, Continuity Camera and iCloud Share Photo Libraries are exciting additions to Apple’s mature software platforms.

Apple Watch OS9

I don’t care about new watch faces. More is better, but who really cares what they announced?
That being said, I’m excited about the Lunar face which will display the Hebrew/Jewish calendar. That’s been part of iOS for a while (since v8) and it’s nice to see it come to the watch.

Lock Screen widgets are going to be nice, as are all of the new customization schemes. This has been a long time coming and people are going to love it.
On top of that, more control over how Notifications hit the Lock Screen is a big plus. I have a photo of my kids as my Lock Screen image and it’s often a hassle to dismiss all of the Notifications just to show someone how cute they are. (Pro Tip: this is a super-convenient way to feel safe handing your phone to someone so they can say nice things about your kids without having access to your phone.)
I’ve never used Shared with You, so I don’t care about it. I’ve never used SharePlay either… do people really want to watch videos on their phones while talking to their friends? I don’t get it.
The updates to Dictation will be helpful.

I hate this idea.
Making it easier for people to borrow money they don’t have is a bad idea. This is clearly Apple bowing to pressure from Goldman Sachs now that they are in the credit card business. I didn’t think Apple Card was a good idea and I think this one’s even worse. You can disagree with me… but you’re wrong.

Multi-stop routing is another Google Maps feature Apple has caught up to. Finally.
15 stops is ridiculous.
The idea that you can plan a complex route on your Mac and then share it to Maps on your phone is very cool.

This is a show-stopper, worth the entire update all on its own. Giving a family the ability to have one shared photo library is long overdue.

This sounds like the kind of thing that will be very, very important to a small number of people. Good on Apple for putting it together.
I, thank God, have no need for this feature.

Apple had me at “we’ve re-written the Home app from the ground up.”
I’ve been bitten before, so I’ll wait and see how it works (and if Apple really can get anyone else on board this time), but anything is better than the terrible Home app we have today.

Don’t care.
I can’t believe the stats that Apple quoted… who are all these people unwilling to buy a car without CarPlay?
The images they showed for their new “Car OS” were crazy cool… I’ll believe it when I see it.

Guess what: the M2 is faster than the M1. Surprise.
They made a MacBook Air with the M2, along with a new MacBook Pro. Good for them. When the time comes, I’m sure I’ll upgrade.
The new Air looks cool, certainly thinner than anyone would think is reasonable. But that’s Apple.
Can you believe the Pro still has a Touch Bar?
Can you believe Apple is bragging about a 1080p webcam in 2022?

Another new window manager? StageManager looks like a different take on Mission Control with no more functionality. I’ll probably use it… but really, it’s a snoozer. (Except for the iPad part, which I’ll cover later.)
Mail gains features (like Unsend and usable search) that Gmail has had in the browser for years. Maybe I’ll start using Mail again… but probably not.
New features in Safari… but I don’t care… except Passkey. It’s a cool idea; again, let’s see if anyone adopts it.

Collaboration is interesting… but does anyone use Pages and Numbers other than the people in those funny Apple at Work videos?
I think Freeform is the biggest news of the day, from an education standpoint. We don’t use iPads here at my school but, if I ran an iPad program, I’d be doing cartwheels about this.
Stage Manager on iPad is no more exciting than it is on the Mac…except that it means that you can now run an iPad with an extended desktop on an external display. I don’t understand why Craig didn’t make a bigger deal of this during the demo. This is HUGE.