Apple is notoriously secretive well-nigh its work.
Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi plane feigned total ignorance when asked well-nigh rumors of a mixed reality headset in a 2021 interview. This is what makes it all the increasingly satisfying when Apple rumors turn out to be true. By the time Apple CEO Tim Cook came when on stage at WWDC 2023 for "one increasingly thing," you could bet that the XR headset, Vision Pro, was well-nigh to be announced.
Still, Apple has a history of throwing curveballs, which it has washed-up in the past like introducing the Dynamic Island instead of removing the camera notch for the iPhone 14 Pro last year. Sniffing out suppositious Apple leaks is a full-time job, and not an easy one. Plane the most reliable sources sometimes get it wrong with the timing or interpretation of details.
Here are the biggest predictions for WWDC 2023 that panned out and the ones that didn't.
1. Vision Pro
After several years of expecting an XR headset utterance at WWDC, 2023 was finally the year Apple did it. For well-nigh a year, we'd been hearing a steady spritz of detailed leaks from Apple experts Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo and a report by The Information, which all but confirmed the very real existence of Vision Pro and tentative timeline. The one major surprise was the name of the headset, which was rumored to be Reality Pro, not Vision Pro.
Experts moreover thought the price would be between $2,000 and $3,000, but Apple surprised everyone by pricing it at a whopping $3,500. Other than that, leaked details well-nigh Vision Pro's diamond and capabilities were pretty spot on. The lucky few who've tested it out are pretty impressed.
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2. StandBy
In late May, Gurman reported an iOS 17 full-length to make the iPhone function like a smart home exhibit when oriented horizontally. This turned out be StandBy. The new full-length builds on the Always-On lock screen that was unveiled with iOS 16 last year, showing the time, schedules, and other notifications and widgets on a quickly wieldy interface. StandBy is misogynist now with the developer beta.
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3. Journal
An April report from The Wall Street Journal virtuously predicted the launch of the new Journal app with iOS 17. As expected, Journal is a digital place to log thoughts and provide suggestions for new entries that pull in other data from your iPhone like photos and workouts. Apple didn't share much detail vastitude Journal's vital functions, but documents leaked to the Journal explained it as a Day One competitor but with deeper wangle to your iPhone data. Journal is said to be coming "later this year," so we can expect increasingly details to come.
4. Updates to the Health app
As predicted by Gurman, the Health app got some updates. Apple is finally giving users the Health app on an iPad.
Both iPadOS 17 and iOS 17 are getting a Health app update that tracks your mood and emotions, considering "name it, tame it" is an important part of mental health therapy. New Health app features are misogynist with the developer beta.
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What wasn't spoken at WWDC 2023 that we're still hoping for this year
Even with the two-hour runtime, Apple sped through the Mac and OS announcements to get to the Vision Pro unveiling. Whether Apple is still planning to release some of these rumored features in a later update, at the September event, or ever, is TBD. The developer beta is live, so users are once discovering features not covered at the event.
A not-so-much revamped Control Center
According to users once testing the developer beta, this turned out to be a minor addition of an Apple Watch toggle. There was a rumor of a total Control Center overhaul equal an unrecognized source on a MacRumors forum, but unless it comes in a future iOS 17 update, this rumor is just a rumor.
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No mention of Wallet or Dynamic Island updates
Not mentioned at all during WWDC 2023 were rumored updates to the Wallet app, and spare capabilities for the Dynamic Island. Early iOS 17 testers have been disappointed to discover that notifications aren't integrated with the tentpole iPhone 14 Pro feature.
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