Shortcuts

Last year I got my wish of coupling Home automations with Shortcuts; in fear of flying too close to the sun and melt the wax off my wings, I hope for Apple to release an API for apps to donate events to Shortcuts automation as triggers. The idea is similar to WebHooks, where the events carries information the automation can consume, like if someone sends a message, who it is and what the message is.

And if that idea is not crazy enough, I'd also love to see Apple make automations more hands free. I want events and triggers to happen in the background, without me having to press a notification. I can see the security implication is there, that if someone gains access to a given persons phone, this system makes it easier to spy on them, but then make it more difficult for some on to breach this somehow?

Apple TV

While the Apple TV in the home app has gained a remote, a step up from just appearing last year, it doesn't do anything in regards to home. I'd love to see Apple do more with this appearance, like make it possible to control other CEC devices connected to the TV, and donate to Shortcuts and home for fancy automation. Let's take this a step further from last year, and make it so apps can donate events to my beforementioned automations system, and these events are sent to the users Shortcut app, much like how HomePod currently does it. This will use the Apple TV's user function better than is currently being used.

Speaking of the user function, I'd love to see app's adopt the user function, or maybe even be sandboxed by force. When I open YouTube today, it doesn't matter if I'm on my fiancée's or my profile, YouTube will still have it's own user selection with the same users regardless of who's signed in. If Apple sandboxes this, YouTube wouldn't even have to adobt new API's and could just continue as normal.

Last year the files app on iOS got first party support for SMB, this year, as with last year, I want SMB forwarding over the Apple TV and other Home hubs. Originally I wanted to hook my SMB server as an iCloud node for my own data, but realised that was too ambitious for now so SMB forwarding so I can access my network drive away from home.

These have been my 2020 WWDC wishes, let's see if any of them gets fulfilled this summer!