I’m hoping for a couple of things. A few minor refinements for Stage Manager, a more customizable Status Bar that can behave more like the macOS Menu Bar on the iPad, and easier app icon customization. I also would love to see the macOS app icons on iOS and iPadOS as well, but even if they just make app icon customizations easier, I could do that myself more easily. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if we’ll get a redesigned Status Bar this go around if they don’t have as many resources devoted to it, but I think it could make some sense if they change the Notification Center. Sideloading could also be really big. I’m a bit concerned that they’re having to rush to make the changes, so it could make an impact in the level of security of the system, but it would be kind of interesting to see what changes that could bring about. An emulator like UTM Virtual Machines could be a major boon for some people on the iPad. I may even consider doing that if I’m convinced it’s secure enough, that way I could run macOS apps such as Blender on the iPad. I think Apple should role out a new set of tools for developers (think Catalyst 2.0) that allows developers to almost automatically port their Mac apps over to the iPad. I’m not sure if that’s going to happen this year, but I’m actually pretty convinced they will do this sometime in the future, especially considering the tools their giving developers in Swift for cross-platform features. I think eventually Apple will have a unified App Store ecosystem that gets the software on as many of their hardware platforms as makes sense (obviously Adobe Photoshop on the Apple Watch wouldn’t make any sense, unless a companion app? 🤔). I think iPadOS and macOS will inevitably become so similar that it will basically be more a choice of hardware than anything else. I’d argue it’s already pretty much there for average users and even pro artistics who don’t need full system-level file access, or a native Terminal app.
9to5mac.com
