I’m in San Jose this week attending some of the WWDC festivities and catching up with many friends in the Apple Community. Tonight I spent some time talking to friends about expectations and hopes for tomorrow’s keynote. 

There is a distinctly different feeling this year. Last year, a lot of people were getting impatient. Particularly those of us that use the iPad to get our work done were feeling like Apple had waited too long to improve the iPad’s functionality. That’s what led to me writing my post about the minimum table stakes the night before the 2017 Keynote presentation. Here I am again, the night before a WWDC Keynote and I am not feeling nearly so surly. Talking to my friends here in San Jose, I get the same impression from most people.

This year Apple has done a better job of keeping things under wraps (except for that slip up about dark mode for the macOS) and most people here in San Jose are eager to just see what goes down tomorrow.

If I had one wish for tomorrow’s keynote it would be that we get to see the results of Apple’s acquisition of the Workflow app. Over a year ago, Apple bought Workflow and while they’ve continued to maintain the app since the acquisition, it seems, from the outside, that the Workflow team is working on some new automation-related tool for the operating system. It sure would be nice if Apple baked automation in so we didn’t have to rely on things like URL schemes and chewing gum to make working between different apps on our iPads and iPhones possible. Anyway, that would be a big thing for me tomorrow but, like most people I’ve met in San Jose, I’m just looking forward to seeing what Apple’s up to.