Apple WWDC 2021 rumors: What we know and what we don't know

With Apple's WWDC less than a week away, there's a lot of speculation about what's coming out of Cupertino. WWDC of course is the Worldwide Developer's Conference, and while the focus always includes developer-related content, Apple has historically shared big news as part of the event.

ZDNET Recommends

The best iPhone deals available right now

Looking for a good deal on a new iPhone? Here are the top promotions we found.

Read now

Let's take a peak at the news we're almost certain to get, as well as some we'd consider within the realm of possibility.

• Apple WWDC 2021: How to watch and what to expect

What we know

Apple always announces its new OS versions at WWDC. While this serves to give developers three or four months to update their products for new OS features and changes, it's also a good way for Apple to build anticipation prior to the big iPhone launches that come in the fall.

Victory lap

Almost without a doubt, expect a good helping of self-congratulation coming out of California. At the last WWDC, Apple announced the move to Apple Silicon-based Macs. This has been one of the most ambitious and successful technology migrations we've ever seen. Apple rightly deserves to take a victory lap for it.

Consumer satisfaction with the new Macs is at an astonishing high, mostly due to the tremendous performance gains from the M1 chip over previous generations. Expect Apple to talk about the number of Mac applications native on Apple Silicon, make some comments on user uptake, and more.

Also expect a victory lap for AirTags, with Apple discussing the adoption level of the locators in the few months since launch. You can expect them to spin the growing privacy concerns as new consumer-friendly privacy features.

Mac OS "tok" update

Given how much was introduced last year in Mac OS 11 "Big Sur," expect this year to be mostly a "tok" year. Apple, as many of you probably know, has something of a tik-tok cadence for OS upgrades.

Big upgrades with lots of new features are generally considered "tik" upgrades, while upgrades that have internal improvements and somewhat smaller new feature sets are considered "tok" upgrades.

We certainly expect to see more iOS-related migration capabilities added to MacOS, and probably some other features for both the UI and applications, but we do expect this to be a "tok" year.

iOS "tok" year

Similarly, iOS 14 was a big upgrade, with a wide range of new UI features and functions. More to the point, as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reported just yesterday, iOS 14 has been full of problems.

See: Why is iOS 14 so bad?

While it's extremely unlikely that Apple will admit to problems, expect to see discussion of improved reliability, performance, and battery life. Don't expect to see radical feature upgrades.

iPadOS "tik" likely

Apple just announced (and we're still waiting for ours here at Camp David) ridiculously powerful iPad Pros just a few months ago. These new iPad Pros are based on the same M1 chip as the new blazingly fast Apple Silicon Macs. The thing is, those new iPads are almost absurdly overpowered for what iPadOS 14 is capable of doing.

So, expect iPadOS 15 to remedy that, adding a bunch of new "it's a computer" level capabilities. Although Apple has long claimed that iOS and MacOS aren't going to merge, expect to see some features migrate from Macs to iOS.

One key feature we expect: better external screen management where the external screen isn't just a mirror of the main screen, but formatted to match the display and with its own content.

What we don't know

That would be enough for any announcement event, but Apple's been on a roll lately, and is likely to try to shoehorn even more announcements into WWDC. While the rumor mills have been working overtime, we've long known that rumors are notoriously unreliable. AirTags, for example, had been rumored since at least 2019.

Given that, everything I discuss from this point on in this column is pure speculation. 

watchOS update, but no hardware hints

The Apple Watch is, to quote ZDNet's Liam Tung, "totally dominating the wearables market." As such, you can no doubt expect new watchOS features -- but don't expect any hardware hints. Any features that might tap into a new capability, like glucose monitoring, won't be discussed until the Apple Watch Series 7 launches in the fall.