Apple’s 27 platform updates plant the seeds of future devices

Apple’s annual software updates have implications throughout time. They reach back to older devices, some years making them more performant and usable or, alternatively, removing support for them altogether; they deal, obviously, with the products people are using and buying right now; and, perhaps most interestingly, they hint at what we might see from the company down the road.

This year’s updates, in what we’ll call the 27 model year, do all of this. Though, when combined with the pervading reports of significant new types of devices from Apple, it provides some of the most tantalizing hints about what’s to come.

Know when to fold them

Given that the annual updates see their release around the time that Apple puts out a new iPhone, people are always spelunking for interesting tidbits in the code to see if they can find anything that informs those next generation of devices.

It’s a poorly kept secret that Apple is working on its first foldable device. Look in the right places, you can see cases, purported leaked photos of its exterior, and even 3D-printed dummy units.

For all of that, it’s the details of the implementation that are still unknown for now, but iOS 27 gives us a few clues about how this might impact developers.

For example, there are a couple of features on Apple’s big wall of text that seem to point to the foldable phone being nigh: “iPhone app resizing in iPadOS” and “App resizing in iPhone Mirroring”, as well as a bit in the keynote where Craig Federighi demos the latest device simulator for developers allowing them to test said resizing.

iPhone apps have, of course, long been available in both landscape and portrait modes, obviously, and various sizes to support the different size displays that iPhones have had over the years. But allowing users to resize them is certainly a new feature, one that feels plucked from the recent iPad multitasking updates.

While this doesn’t definitively tell us how iPhone apps will behave on a larger, unfolded iPhone display, it certainly makes it clear that iPhone apps are going to have to deal with a new multi-size future.

Reach out and touch your Mac

Second only in speculation to the folding iPhone might be the reported MacBook Pro that will be Apple’s first Mac with a touchscreen.

Apple’s been more than happy to make the iPad more Mac-like, first with support for keyboard and pointing devices, more recently with Mac-like multitasking. This year, the iPad gets an option to keep the menu bar visible all the time—and it’s now pinned to the left. Look familiar?

Turnabout is, of course, only fair play. Not unlike with foldable phones, touchscreen laptops have been sold by Apple’s competitors for years. But Apple seemed intent on keeping the iPad and the Mac in separate lanes.

Until, it seems, now. A preponderance of drawing related features are specifically making their way to the Mac, including both in Notes and in Freeform. Those features have existed on Apple’s touch-first platforms for some time, but this is their first jump to the Mac. While nominally this will work with your trackpad or even using an iPad as input, it’s not hard to imagine a future where you might be able to draw right on your Mac’s screen.

Messages now has a Drawing app on all platforms.

Likewise, a new drawing app in Messages across all of Apple’s platforms, including the Mac, and some other touch-related improvements, such as the Mac’s Sidecar feature, which now has a full-fledged touch interface, instead of just being limited to certain two finger gestures. And Apple also called out the addition of “pull down to refresh” on apps like Mail, Calendar, Safari, and more. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that’s a perfectly fine feature on a multitouch trackpad, but as an interface convention, we all know where it comes from.

Apple’s willingness to adopt Mac interface conventions on the iPad’s touchscreen—including the iconic stoplight controls—shows that such an idea isn’t nearly as farfetched as some might have thought. And it certainly feels like the touch future of the Mac is just around the corner.

A vision of the future

Not every future Apple device is imminent, though. While a folding iPhone and touchscreen Mac might be in people’s hands before the end of the year, Apple’s got plenty of ideas for farther off devices up its sleeves. Or, I guess, on your face.

During its preview of visionOS 27, Apple showed off the implementation of its Visual Intelligence feature on the Apple Vision Pro, saying that you could get information by an object just by looking at it.

Which is cool, but the Vision Pro is a device that stays in the confines of my house—and even there, generally in my office. Frankly, there aren’t a lot of objects in my office that I really need to know more about.

But take a similar device—say, a smaller, lighter one—into the wilds of the outdoors and there are any number of things that you might want to learn more about, from plants and animals to cars or clothing.

Reports suggest Apple is working on wearable devices, both in the form of glasses and AirPods, with cameras that can tell you about the world around you. Don’t be surprised, if and when they arrive, if they have a Visual Intelligence implementation that draws upon what they’ve done here with visionOS.

Future proof

With Apple notoriously tightlipped about its future plans and product roadmap, you might wonder why exactly Apple continues to roll out features that seem to provide evidence of just such a future.

At the base level, of course, is that if there’s a cool feature that’s ready to go at the time of an update, then there’s no reason not to put it out. (And said speculation also builds buzz, which doesn’t particularly hurt them.)

But moreover, in the same way that Apple builds in APIs and features for developers to prepare their apps for future releases, putting these features in early helps lay groundwork. In part to be able to best show off those new devices when they arrive—”And if you want to draw in Notes, just use your finger on the screen!”—and in part to let users themselves prepare for all the cool things they might want to do in the future—whether on the devices they have right now, or the ones they might someday get.