The 5 biggest disappointments from Apple’s WWDC 2019 keynote

That’s a wrap, folks. Apple’s gargantuan WWDC 2019 keynote is in the books, and it was a doozy.

The iPhone maker unveiled major new features for iOS, macOS and the newly renamed iPadOS. Apple also showed off a $6,000 cheese grater that’s also a very powerful desktop computer. All in all, it’s tough to be too disappointed with what Apple showed relative to our expectations.

Still, nothing is perfect. Here were the things we found most disappointing about WWDC 2019.

No update on Apple TV+ pricing

Being a developer-focused event, it’s tough to expect too much on the services front. That said, Apple started the show with a brief acknowledgement of its new Apple TV+ streaming service. That’s great, but we still have no idea what it’s going to cost to use.

Apple dedicated a couple minutes in its incredibly lengthy WWDC keynote to a trailer for For All Mankind, an Apple TV+ original show. While it certainly looked interesting, it’s still tough to gauge whether or not we want the service because we have no idea what Apple will charge for it. Two stage shows without pricing information is a lot; three would be overkill.

What’s up with Apple Arcade?

Just like Apple TV+, it’s not super reasonable to expect a ton of Apple Arcade info at WWDC. Regardless, we’re now about halfway through 2019 and we still don’t know much about the mobile gaming subscription service that’s supposed to launch this year.

There was a decent amount of gaming at the show — Apple announced PS4 and Xbox controller support for Apple TV, while showing off Minecraft Earth for the first time. It would have been nice to get some more details on Apple Arcade, which has similar pricing questions to Apple TV+.

No searchable emoji keyboard

Apple showcased a host of impressive new iOS 13 features on Monday, but it didn’t address one of the ones we wanted most. Trying to find specific emojis in the default iOS emoji keyboard is a tedious exercise, one that’s enough to make even seasoned iPhone users feel old. Why not just let us search for them by default?

This would theoretically be easy enough, as there are ways to do it in other apps. There’s no reason to make us endlessly scroll left and right to find the right emoji.

RIP iPhone 6

Apple didn’t address this on stage, but there was one sad detail hidden in the fine print of its iOS 13 news. When the software update comes out this fall, it will not be compatible with the iPhone 6. 

This is a natural consequence of the passage of time and something we fully expected, but still, it’s never fun when a phone plenty of people probably still use loses software compatibility. That means the iPhone 6S is next on the chopping block, too; once Apple kills off support for that, you will only be able to install the newest software on iPhones without headphone jacks.

No nighttime iPhone camera shooting

Last year, Google released a software update to Pixel phones that made them capable of shockingly good low-light photography without new hardware. Night Sight was a big hit with Mashable, and we wanted Apple to take a similar approach with iPhone cameras.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get what we wanted. The iOS Photos app was significantly overhauled with new editing and sorting options, but it doesn’t look like we got anything like what Google gave Pixel owners last year.