Apple is preparing to launch its next major update, iOS 16, internally codenamed Syndey, at WWDC 2022. The update is expected to continue with the same design language that was last revamped with iOS 7, however, there will be some important enhancements to various features like notifications and health tracking.
iOS 16 features revealed
As per the latest Power On newsletter by Mark Gurman, Apple is currently working on the following major software updates:
- iOS 16 (Sydney)
- watchOS 9 (Kincaid)
- macOS 13 (Rome)
- tvOS 16 (Paris)
Apple’s internal codenames for its software updates do nothing to reveal what the updates will be about. However, Gurman has shed some light on the expected enhancements.
On the iOS side, I’m looking for some fairly significant enhancements across the board, including an update to notifications and new health-tracking features.
With every iOS update, Apple continues to tweak and improve notifications, which have only gotten better with each release. It will be good to see Apple continue to improve in this rea. For health tracking, it will be interesting to see how it works with watchOS 9, as the company’s health features have mostly been focused on Apple Watch.
I’m not expecting an end-to-end redesign of iOS’s interface, even though it hasn’t changed much since iOS 7 nearly a decade ago. But there might be a new iPadOS multitasking interface. The Apple Watch, meanwhile, may get major upgrades to activity and health tracking.
iPadOS desperately needs further improvements to its multitasking, and a lot more. Despite the M1 chip making its way to iPad Pro and iPad Air, the operating system still lags behind when it comes to taking advantage of all the horsepower. Apple needs to implement some radical improvements that do more than just expose multitasking features, but instead make them better.
Apple Watch is also getting “major upgrades” for activity and health tracking, which we assume, will go hand-in-hand with the updates to the health and fitness apps in iOS 16.
This is not everything though. Gurman has also mentioned that iOS 16 betas feature a lot of references to Apple’s upcoming mixed-reality headset, which is expected to be announced later this year or next year. It is likely that Apple could announce new SDKs or APIs that might later be used by rOS, short for reality operating system, in the company’s headset, just to help developers prepare their apps for it.
There are still more details expected to leak before WWDC 2022 starts in June. We expect leaked screenshots and features to be made available between now and the event start date.
Stay tuned!
