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Title: Is it wrong the iPhone's AI battery management is the only WWDC rumor
I'm excited about?

Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2025 14:30:28 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/general/is-it-wrong-...

AppleΓÇÖs Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) kicks off next week ΓÇö but
if I'm honest with myself, IΓÇÖm struggling to care. I used to watch the
shows with eager anticipation as to what new goodies would be coming to my
Mac across the next year. But in recent years, a lot of the features
highlighted either fell into the bucket marked ΓÇ£wait, you couldnΓÇÖt do
that already?ΓÇ¥ or the one marked ΓÇ£well, thatΓÇÖs not a thing IΓÇÖm going
to use.ΓÇ¥

It doesnΓÇÖt help the rumored slate of announcements for this year is mostly
stuff I know IΓÇÖm not going to need to engage with. The loudest rumor is a
Vision Pro-inspired UI overhaul to bring the iPhone, iPad and Mac in line
with their youngest sibling. Consistency is a fine thing to aim for, but
Apple is reportedly justifying this change by saying itΓÇÖs jarring to switch
between platforms. I canΓÇÖt say IΓÇÖve ever had an issue, and my concern is
Apple will forget that each of those devices is different, and operates in a
different way to its stablemates.

If a promise is made too often, thereΓÇÖs a risk youΓÇÖll stop believing it
will ever be fulfilled. Apropos of nothing, AppleΓÇÖs going to make the iPad
more useful as a productivity tool. The rumors hint the slates will get
better multitasking and app window management to make it more Mac-esque. But
unless iPadOS gets the sort of radical changes thatΓÇÖll make it operate a
lot more like macOS, nothing will change. And IΓÇÖm doubtful Apple would
bring true multitasking to the iPad, lest it eat into Mac sales ΓÇö not to
mention the constraints of its form factor.

As someone who is aggressively indifferent toward generative AI and voice
assistants, tweaks to Apple Intelligence and Siri leave me similarly cold.
IΓÇÖm not sure I would ever want a gussied up pattern-recognition algorithm
writing messages and emails in my voice. Neither am I too into the idea of
using generative AI to create images. I'd much rather stay in the real world.
Sure, IΓÇÖm a young man yelling at a cloud, I donΓÇÖt care.

Apple

According to Apple, IΓÇÖm clearly in the minority since the only time I ever
engage with Siri is by accident. I can think, type and operate a phone far
faster than I can say out loud ΓÇ£Hey Siri, dim my living room lights by 50
percent,ΓÇ¥ so the slowness of speech irks me. Of course, IΓÇÖd love a
virtual assistant that was as skilled and imaginative as a flesh-and-blood
person who could marshal all of my data, organize it and keep me on track.
But I donΓÇÖt believe weΓÇÖre close to that point, and Apple has failed to
deliver on its promises in this area more than once.

The only rumored feature that excites me is the ΓÇ£AI-poweredΓÇ¥ battery
management mode for iOS 19 (or 26, as the rumors indicate). I say ΓÇ£AI-
powered,ΓÇ¥ since IΓÇÖm not sure how much we need to oversell an algorithm
that tracks your usage patterns to make power-saving adjustments. But itΓÇÖs
the sort of feature that, if itΓÇÖs able to make meaningful improvements to
the iPhoneΓÇÖs longevity, could be transformative.

After all, as a relatively heavy iPhone user, I rarely find my device lasting
until the end of the day without a top-up charge. This isnΓÇÖt a new problem,
either, since the iPhoneΓÇÖs battery has been lackluster since the first
model was launched in 2007. In a world where most Android handsets boast of
multi-day battery life, the iPhoneΓÇÖs battery life remains embarrassing.
Yes, you can take that as a not-too-subtle dig at the rumored thin-and-light
iPhone Air, which feels to me like the most egregious waste of development
resources imaginable.

Maybe this is a sign of my subconscious frustration with Apple that it feels
so compelled to push forward rather than tidying up behind it. I groused last
year that the company gave so much attention to the addition of multitrack
recording to Voice Notes despite the feature already being in Garageband. I
would love nothing more than Apple to do what it did in 2009 with Snow
Leopard and in 2017 with High Sierra. In both of those instances, the company
opted to focus on tidying up the existing code to make it smaller and run
faster rather than over-extending itself with new features. That, to me,
would seem like a far better use of AppleΓÇÖs time than repainting the home
screen with snazzier icons.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/general/is-it-wrong-...
management-is-the-only-wwdc-rumor-im-excited-about-143028037.html?src=rss

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