rob.rho.org.uk

A quick post to throw out a couple of predictions about the upcoming iOS 7. The first is pretty much received wisdom by this point. The second seems obvious to me, but I’ve not seen it written down elsewhere, and hence seems worth recording.

1. iOS 7 will have some kind of inter-application communication mechanism along the lines of Android’s Intents or Windows 8 Contracts. iOS is already behind in this respect, and as Android catches up (and arguably overtakes) in areas like performance and aesthetics this is a deficit Apple can ill afford.
2. The feature will be called “Services”. This seems like a foregone conclusion to me, as it’s the name of a very similar facility that OS X has had since the it was NextStep. Using the name would allow Apple to (with some justification) spin it as being ported from their other OS as opposed to cribbed from their competitors, and they could even reuse some of the existing APIs.

There. Now we just need to wait for WWDC to see if I’m right.

Update: Maybe in iOS 8.