Five products we’d love to see from Apple in 2020

Apple has never had more products and services on offer than it does today. Simply updating them in the expected ways (like an iPhone that is faster, has a better camera, and has 5G) would certainly be enough to fill up the calendar.

But we want more than the expected releases. We know that Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June will bring iOS 14 and macOS 10.16. We know September will bring a few new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. There can be no doubt that iPads and Macs will get, at minimum, minor updates to include faster processors and a few other small tweaks (like bringing the new Magic Keyboard from the 16-inch MacBook Pro to the rest of the line). Apple Arcade and Apple TV+ will continue to add content all year long.

Here are five things we don’t know we can expect, but still hope to see, from Apple in 2020.

Apple Tags

We heard rumors all throughout 2019 that Apple was producing little tracking pucks similar to Tile. Apparently called either “Apple Tags” or “AirTags,” they were supposed to be released earlier this year. Then later this year. Now…not this year.

If Apple gets Tags right, they could be a game-changer. There are plenty of other trackers out there, but they all rely on networks of other users with the same app. Apple could tap into the entire iPhone and iPad install base in a way that protects your privacy, making them far more trustworthy and useful.

Tile

Hopefully, Tags will use both Bluetooth LE (for broad compatibility with the most iPhones) and Ultra-Wideband (for precise location on the newest iPhones), should be water-resistant, and have either replaceable batteries or wireless charging. And let’s just hope they’re priced reasonably! Budget Tile deals give you four trackers for less than $50, and the high-end Tile Pro is just over $100 for a set of four. That’s a good price range to fill.

It’s odd that the Tags aren’t out yet. Let’s hope Apple Tags aren’t the next AirPower and Apple is instead just waiting for the perfect moment to announce them.

A MacBook with an Apple processor

The long-term expectation is that Apple will not continue to use Intel processors in its laptops forever. The company seems to want to be in control of its own destiny, and while adding the T2 chip to Macs is a step in that direction, the company will ultimately need to produce its own CPU and GPU, just as it does on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

Making macOS run on the ARM architecture used in Apple’s chips, as opposed to the x86 architecture of Intel and AMD processors, is a challenge. The bigger challenge is moving the ecosystem along with it—the apps and plugins and everything else that makes a Mac more than just an iPad with a keyboard.

This is going to be a multi-year process and I would love to see it start this year. In an ideal scenario, Apple introduces a whole new…