What to expect in Apple's 'iOS 10'

With history as our guide, look for Apple to introduce iOS 10 during the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. The event is likely to kickoff on Monday, June 13, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Developers should receive the first beta iOS 10 at that time.

The general public should expect to see iOS 10 arrive in September, alongside the “iPhone 7” and “iPhone 7 Plus.”

iCloud Voicemail

Since at least 2015, Apple employees have been testing an iCloud voicemail service that uses Siri to answer your calls and transcribe voicemail message.

According to Business Insider, the new service allows Siri to take your calls when you’re unavailable, rather than the standard digital audio recorder. In doing so, Siri can relay current information to your callers, including where you are and why you can’t answer.

Find (all of) My Friends

The Find My Friends app has remained much the same since it was first introduced with iOS 5 in 2011. An Apple patent filing suggests change is coming. In the filing, Apple describes a system that can detect where your friends are, whether they’re available to talk and the status of their phone.

They note: “The operating status of the second mobile phone is displayed on a display of the first mobile phone as a part of contact information of the remote user associated with the second mobile phone, where the operating status includes current locality of the second mobile phone.”

Control Center customization

We fully expect more customization tools to arrive for iOS Control Center this year. Visual designer Sam Beckett expects 3D Touch to play an important role here in iOS 10. We would agree

Take a look:

A Home app

Apple’s HomeKit is still in its infancy. However, we believe it will take an important step in 2016 with the introduction of a new “Home” app in iOS 10. The app would serve as a hub for communication with smart home devices.

There are some iOS features we’ve been requesting for years. Among these:

App previews

Apple should allow developers to offer apps with time and/or content limits that expire after a threshold is reached. This way, users would have a better idea of what to expect from an app without spending a dime, and developers would have the choice to ditch “lite” apps once and for all.

Merge Apple IDs

Some Apple IDs were created 15 years ago as membership IDs for people paying for their iTools and .Mac services. Apple IDs are now used elsewhere, including the iTunes and App Stores. Because of this, many people have more than one Apple ID. We should be able to merge these.

Weather and Stock apps on iPad

Apple doesn’t offer native Weather and Stocks apps on the iPad. This continues to be a head-scratcher since both apps on the iPhone were beautifully redesigned in iOS 7.

Regardless of what features Apple includes in iOS 10, we know that the update won’t be for everyone. Some older devices probably won’t support the new software. Owners of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, we’re talking to you.