WWDC is only one day away! Tomorrow (June 22, 2020), Apple will broadcast their livestream of the annual developer conference.

With all the rumours going around, it's fairly certain that Apple will announce the first ARM based Mac. We made a prediction back in 2017 that Apple would put a A10 processor in a MacBook. It will be powered by their A series chip, and it's pretty much guaranteed it will be the upcoming A13 series. It will run macOS (and not iOS or iPadOS). Which leads to our prediction that…

macOS 11 will be announced. This will be the next major overhaul with some huge changes. This is what we think will happen:

1. It will only run on ARM based processors, so it will only be available for the new A series based Macs.
2. Only apps from the App Store will be able to be installed. Now that DriverKit is part of macOS, even apps that need to install drivers can be on the store since they no longer need admin privileges to install a kernel extension.
3. All recent apps on the App Store that have been uploaded with Bitcode will be recompiled automatically for ARM. This will allow existing apps to be available for the ARM based Macs without having to get developers to make any changes. This will allow an almost immediate switch over for customers from the x86 based Macs of today to the ARM based ones of tomorrow (literally).
4. The Finder will disappear and be replaced with a Files app.
5. Almost all of the pre-installed apps will be Catalyst ports of the iOS versions.

Overall, it will technically be a Mac, but macOS will be so locked down that it will no longer be a "Mac". If this is true, it means that any apps that push the boundaries (private APIs, kernel extensions, Finder replacements, etc) will be locked out and only cookie cutter apps that fit nicely into the sandbox will be allowed.

We hope we're wrong, and we'll find out tomorrow!

Tags: mac, macos, wwdc