Apple Prophecies and Predictions for 2025
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Hello and welcome back to App Stories. This week's episode is brought to you by Memberful. I'm John Voorhees and with me is Federico Vittici.

Hello, John. Welcome back. Happy New Year. A happy new year to you, too. We haven't done this in quite a while. It's our first episode of 2025. It's a new year, and you just came back from CES in Las Vegas. You attended with our fellow NPC co-host, Brandon Bigley.

That's right. We talked about CES on the latest episode of MPC, which is coming up tomorrow. If you're watching this, and it's going to be a fun one. Today, we're going to do something different. We talked about CES in the pre-show for AppStories Plus members. On the main show, we are going to do something that I think we do every year, our 2025 AppStories.

app-related and sort of Apple-related, to an extent, predictions. So we're going to predict the trends, the things, the themes, and

the problems maybe that we're going to see in 2025. Yeah, I agree. I agree. We haven't, we, the one thing I think we have, we have steered clear of is the legal stuff. I can tell you that. Oh gosh. Yeah. I don't think we, I don't think it's much of a prediction to expect that Apple will remain in hot water with the EU and other governments in 2025. Yes. Your honor. We're not going to do that today. Okay. You rest my case. Yes. I kind of want to start.

Sure, go for it. We're going to run through these. I have a list. You have a list. And I'm just going to pick from this list. I think I'm going to start with AI. Okay. Just rip the Band-Aid off. I think...

We saw this in last year, you know, toward the end of last year. It's only going to continue. I think in 2025, it's going to be agents, agents, agents everywhere. Every AI company is going to be talking about agents. It's going to be talking about agentic AI and this idea of, you know, the word chatbots. The chatbots will obviously continue. There's going to be new models. There's going to be new versions of ChatGPT, new versions of Gemini, new versions of Lama and all the models of Cloud. But

I think all of these companies, including Apple, will start, and we very much saw this with Google already, everybody's going to start talking about these agents, these little tools that maybe live in a browser, that maybe live on your phone, that are going to complete tasks for you in the background.

No, I was going to say, we're going to see, I think, is that a lot of things are going to be called agents that aren't really agents. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Things that are just people calling APIs because that was one thing that was very true at CES. Literally everything has AI in it now, Federico. I saw a barbecue with AI in it, a barbecue that you put on your porch to smoke your meats.

With AI. We truly have come full circle with smoking meats and now AI. But yeah, I think a lot of companies, I think obviously Google will continue to show up. They have their, what's it called? Project Mariner. I think it's their...

agent in Chrome. I think we're going to continue to see these integrations where maybe it's browsing the web for you, maybe it's signing documents for you, maybe it's managing files for you. And it's going to be just a brand that all these companies will use. I think...

There's going to be an Apple version of this as well. Now, I'm not convinced that Apple will call it like agents, although I wouldn't be surprised if Apple in their obsession with catching up with the rest of the industry will come up with like Siri agent or whatever, like something along those lines. I think I will be interested in seeing if

I think 2025 is going to go this way. In the first half of the year, we're going to see the intense integration on Apple platforms that Apple has already announced for Apple Intelligence that supposedly is going to launch within the iOS 18 cycle. We still haven't seen any of this, but supposedly it is shipping before iOS 19. And that will be

based on what we have heard last year at WWDC, it'll be a way for Apple intelligence to integrate with actions from apps in different domains. And in theory, you should be able to use natural language to perform actions on documents, on emails, on calendars, and all of those different domains. I think I wouldn't be shocked if in iOS 19, we see Apple come up and say, we also...

are going to offer agents that are going to be basically what you just said like everything is going to be called an agent right i think i wouldn't be surprised if the existing personal automations get rebranded to something like apple intelligence agents oh yeah you're probably right you're probably right i also i'll predict this right now that'll come to ios and ipad os but not the mac because i just i feel like that that's a trend that we've seen a lot a lot

Yeah, so, you know, it wouldn't be a shock, I think, if what used to be called the personal automation, something that like, oh, when you, I don't know, when something happens on your phone, the agent does this for you. And the agent would be an app intent or a Siri shortcut or a combination of the two.

I just think it would be a perfect opportunity for Apple to reuse their existing technologies, continue expanding the Intense Framework, and also slot right in there with the rest of the industry and say, we also have agents, but we do it natively on device in a non-creepy way. - Yeah, and hopefully this will force Apple's hands that they expand the number of triggers for personal automations, 'cause it's pretty limited still, even though those have been around for years and years.

I really hope, Federico, that these agents don't sign documents on your behalf. To me, that opens up a... I have seen today, just today, I opened Reddit and I saw someone post, I built an MCP. It's one of those cloud integrations. I built a cloud thing that you're going to have chills.

with the next sentence that i'm gonna that i'm gonna speak that opened and signed an llc in the united states for me yeah this opens up a huge can of legal worms it really does

I mean, so can you count on a document that's not been signed by a person? I mean, you know what I mean? That to me is not a legally binding contract. We had to invent all kinds of laws to allow even digital signatures around the world. You know what I mean? So you could sign things online because that was a problem in the early Internet is even getting back going.

Still. All right. Well, I think it'll piggyback on digital signatures probably. So I think we'll get there too. But I think I'm going to refrain from signing my documents with an agent for a little while until that's all figured out. I want to stick with AI for a little bit because one of the things that I've been...

playing with over the holidays is some of these, these apps that have burst onto the scene, especially on the Mac where you can combine various models into one app and they'll have like pre-programmed, uh, you know, like prompts and things built into them so you can use them for different kinds of tasks and they'll save a lot of your information in different ways. And, uh,

I have not found them especially useful yet. I think that the apps that are being built by like Anthropic and OpenAI are good enough for probably 95% of the people out there. And I think one of the problems, there's a couple of things going on here. One is, I just don't think that, I think a lot of these apps are not super well thought out and there's just too much hanging off of them. There's just, they're confusing to use. And I think

Most people are going to find a model that they think works well for them and not want to have three or four versions of the same answer. That's just makes the whole thing more, more burdensome. The other thing is that there are a lot of these companies that are creating AI tools that are charging people based on the fact that they are using the open AI or anthropic APIs or Gemini or whatever.

And so if you're a person who already subscribes to one of those models, now you're paying twice. And I don't think that at the end of the day, with the apps being as good as they are from these companies that are making the models, that that's a model that's going to be sustainable. I think that that segment will kind of shrink. There will still be a place for like,

complex, special use case type of things for researchers in different kinds of fields. But I don't think that for just general productivity work that most people are going to wind up using one of these third party apps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was a

That model, like the wrapper for OpenAI or Cloud, I think it has been an excellent business model for a lot of companies. I see a lot of companies making a lot of money on the App Store with in-app purchases that are basically charging people for access to OpenAI. But I think as Google and Anthropic and OpenAI, they add more and more exclusive features to their app.

I think people are going to be more incentivized to use the official clients instead of these third-party wrappers around them. Google's a really good example because Gemini is part of a Google One subscription. So that comes with online storage, it comes with Gemini, soon it's going to come with Notebook LM. That's a really nice, compelling package, I think, because it's essentially the same price as people pay for Dropbox now, maybe a little bit more, but not much more.

Yeah. I am going to continue with more AI picks. I'm going to actually combine two small predictions into one. I think, because of agents, that we're going to see even more Chromium-based browsers.

I think we are already seeing startups like that Surf browser. There's another one called Data. I just got an email about that, yeah. Yeah, me too, me too. I think we're going to see more and more of these Chromium browsers, basically what the browser company has also been doing. I think...

I think we're going to see more startups with those Chromium browsers that will allow them to build like an AI layer on top of that desktop browser. And it's going to be desktop only. So there's also another trend to keep an eye on as, you know, more and more of these AI integrations are desktop only. And I think that's only going to continue. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the browser company, especially since they've kind of committed to keep their existing browser in play because they're

In a way, that feels like now, at least given their new direction, legacy baggage that's going to put them at a disadvantage to some of these other companies potentially. Yeah. And the second part of the prediction, I think...

Apple will make more AI acquisitions. And I wouldn't be shocked if they also end up acquiring one of the popular sort of B-tier large language models. Mistral...

Would be an interesting acquisition. I think I wouldn't put it past Apple to say, well, we're building our own LLM, but in the process, we're also going to acquire people who have been putting in the work. So obviously, Apple is not going to acquire OpenAI. Apple is not going to acquire Anthropic, especially with the valuation that Anthropic now has over, what is it, over $60 billion, I think.

So Apple is not going to make that acquisition, but some of the smaller companies like Mistral, for example, would be interesting. Or maybe, maybe...

I also wouldn't be shocked if Apple ends up acquiring a Chinese AI company. Oh, to help them access the Chinese market. Yeah, because I know they've been having trouble getting the Apple intelligence off the ground in China. Yeah, especially for regulatory approval and obviously doing training with Chinese data sets. Like I could see Apple making that sort of acquisition in China. But yeah, and that's about it for my AI predictions.

Well, I have one more, which is I think that the App Intense stuff that we were talking about is going to be a pretty slow burn. It seems to me like it kind of has been so far. And I'm not surprised. I mean, I think that in the end, App Intense combined with Siri is going to be a really useful thing for users. However, I'm not so sure it's a great business move for all app developers, especially the larger ones, because Siri

you know, I was thinking about this the other day, Apple has been breaking apart the apps. You and I have talked about this over and over again, how they're becoming atomic parts that are sprinkled out throughout the OS. And so far though, you

in most instances, those bits have still been identifiable as the original app. And that's especially true for something like widgets or even app shortcuts for that matter. The thing about App Intents is you'll be able to ask Siri to do something that isn't necessarily obviously tied to the original app, I think.

And that is a potential problem because it's commoditizing the functionality inside third-party apps, which pulls those developers even further away from their users. I mean, they're already in the app store where most people think those apps are made by Apple and not by a third-party developer. And once people are using just bits and pieces of those apps as app intents, I think that that might be even more difficult to

for users to kind of discern what they're dealing with. And that to me is a potential business issue for app developers. Yeah. This episode of App Stories is brought to you by Memberful. Do you have clients for whom you're building membership sites? If you are, you should check out Memberful. It's best in class membership software that's used by the web's biggest creators, publishers, and media companies.

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All right. Now, something completely different. I have a couple of predictions for the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The ones that I'm wearing now. If you're watching the video, it's the ones that I'm wearing now. So, I think we will see more companies come up with alternatives to the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. I saw a bunch of them.

Oh, interesting. I'm not talking about XR glasses. I'm not talking about glasses with a display, just glasses with cameras and speakers. I think we're going to see more and more of this. The second part is, I think, as meta becomes more and more creepy and kind of gross with what they're doing regarding moderation, I think someone that really likes the meta glasses...

will become fed up with the company at some point. Someone will reverse engineer the Meta Ray-Ban glasses and someone will come up with a custom firmware for them. I think there's been chatter over the past couple of years in different places that I've seen about people trying to figure out how to flash a custom firmware on the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. It used to be called the Ray-Ban Stories, I believe. Huh.

I think someone will figure it out in 2025. We will see the first custom firmware so that you can continue using this without meta software and meta integrations. Yeah, the glasses market is really starting to splinter. And I don't think people have consolidated around what to call the different versions because you're right. There's glasses like the Meta Ray Bands, which are primarily cameras and speakers. Yeah.

But there are ones that are projecting lenses inside your eyes. There are ones that are projecting data somehow either into your eyes or onto like a screen on the glasses. And then there are the ones like we've used in the past, like the X-Real Air and Pro, which are more like external displays for...

for other devices. - Private monitors, they call them. - Private monitors. Well, I used some private monitors at CES. I used the Rocket ones, which were actually really nice, really nice. - Nice, nice. - All right, so let's see here.

I think that this is going to be the year that Apple really expands with the Apple Watch again. We haven't seen a lot of movement on the Apple Watch for the last few years in terms of like the hardware itself. I mean, there's been software development, but I think we'll see more. We're going to get new sensors is what I'm hoping we'll see. Maybe something to test blood pressure. There's been some rumors about that.

Uh, I, I think that if new sensors are on the horizon, that Apple will find a way to finally settle the dispute with Massimo over blood oxygen in the United States so that that can come back to us. Apple watches, uh,

and that those things combined with the health app and the fitness app will become kind of the false story for the next phase and generation of Apple watches. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you're right there. I think they will settle. They will,

It's been a long time. It's surprising they haven't yet. But I think the incentive will be if they have other things, other hardware features that they want to push in the fall, it'll be a nice cherry on the top for the US market to say this is coming back. Okay, yeah. I have two more. I think, speaking of XR, I think we will see some formerly exclusive VisionOS apps

finding their way to Android XR. Do you have any in mind in particular? I would say if they, I forgot if they showed it off or not. I would say Fantastical. Like I wouldn't be surprised, especially since now they're expanding onto Windows. Yeah, they are. Fantastical is, yeah. I wouldn't be shocked to see Fantastical on Android XR. Yeah, that's a good call.

Some of those like educational apps, you know, the things that show you like museums or like biology, you know, those sort of like educational apps. And obviously like, I just think games, especially if Google can do a better job than Apple with supporting controllers and supporting like external peripherals or maybe even better hand tracking. I think a lot of these games, you know, that we've seen on the Vision Pro, I think they will become available on Android XR, if only because like...

If you're a developer and you invested on that like sort of XR experience, why wouldn't you sort of try and maximize your profits by also being available on Android XR? And all of these different headsets that in theory should launch with Android XR integration. Yeah, they're all small markets, but if you combine them all, then maybe they make more business sense that way. Yeah, I think...

The one thing that I'm going to close out with today before you do your last one is I think we're going to have a very similar review season to what we have this year when it comes to iOS, iPadOS and Mac OS. Yeah, that what we're going to see. I hope so. So well, by that, I mean that I think we're going to go to WWDC and we're going to hear a lot more about AI again, as you kind of said at the top of the episode.

And it'll be, there'll be modest updates to everything else. And we'll probably get everything rolled out on kind of a rolling basis like we are now because Apple is behind. I think that they're working really hard and really fast to get everything out. But I don't see them catching up by this coming summer. I think they'll still be doing kind of the same thing that they're doing today a year from now. Yeah.

My final prediction is that we are finally going to see proper native game streaming apps on the Apple App Store. Yes. So Xbox Cloud Streaming, uh, Nvidia GeForce Now Streaming, uh,

Yeah, I think at the very least, I would say one of the two will be native on the App Store before the end of the year. And I will be shocked if that's not the case. I think, you know, obviously the policy changed last year. I think, you know, especially if Apple continues to open up the App Store following, you know, whatever's going to happen in the EU, whatever's going to happen in the U.S.,

But I think if anything, as a sign of goodwill, Apple will work with these companies and they will be like, please launch your game streaming app on the App Store. And I think that'll be

especially GeForce Now, which just announced that they're going to launch on the Vision Pro via Safari. But I think obviously a native experience would give them a much better integration with features like HDR, higher resolutions, higher frame rates, better game controller integration, all those things. So I think before the end of the year, we'll see native game streaming on the App Store. How about Microsoft? Do you think that they'll do their store version?

Depending on what commission Apple wants. Yeah. That's the problem, right? That's the problem. So I don't know. I don't know. Maybe we'll see some other company, you know, come up with, maybe Valve will eventually announce some sort of game streaming, which they don't have. Maybe actually PlayStation will be first to have native cloud streaming on the App Store. Who knows? Who knows?

Yeah, that could be. Sony sure seems to have a pretty good relationship with Apple these days. I mean, the rumor goes that they're going to sell the PlayStation VR controller for the Vision Pro with Vision Pro integration. So I think I would,

bet on Sony having a pretty good relationship with Apple and maybe working with Apple to get PlayStation Cloud streaming as a native experience on the App Store. That would be interesting. I can see that. I can see that. And I also think that we're going to continue to see some really innovative game controllers. That's something that Brendan and I saw at CES last

we saw the we saw the mcon behind glass we saw some crazy thing that gamester is doing and the game baby which game baby the game baby is coming for real baby i just heard from jay saw about that again recently so yeah well i think i think now that they're all iphones are capable of doing emulation that we're going to just see more and more of these

these ideas thrown out into the market to see how they work as controllers for the iPhone.

Can I say one final thing? Sure. Because you just mentioned emulation. Someone will try to come up with PS4 emulation on mobile. Oh boy. And that'll be a story because it's going to be rejected by Apple. Big time. Because it's not considered retro enough. No. Well, the people are still releasing PS4 games, right? A lot of the games that are being released are PS4 compatible. I mean, maybe a lot's overstating it, but it's not uncommon. Yeah.

And I mention this because we... Over the past two months, there's been like a breakthrough in PS4 emulation on PC. We're now past the point where a lot of PS4 games can be emulated with... You know, it's like...

I'm old enough to remember when Dolphin, the original version of Dolphin, came out. And it's kind of like that now for PS4. Only a few games are supported, but it's starting to work. And these things tend to snowball when they start working. And so I think within the next year...

I could see that sort of story. Like PS4 emulation, somebody makes an iOS version or a Mac version. They try and get it on the app store and it gets rejected. Yeah. Once they find a technique that works with one game, it tends to spread to a bunch of other games. That's very true. That's very true. All right. We're back. Predictions. We're back. We did predictions. We're back. Let's do it. And, you know, who knows what's going to happen next in iOS and iPadOS, macOS.

Too many OSs. And realistically, we're going to have one more with the HomePod Touch, whatever it's going to be called. So we're going to drown in operating systems in 2025. And that's what we do. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, everybody. You can find us at MacStories.net. You can also find us at Club Mac Stories.

is our subscription service. We do email newsletters. We do all sorts of bonus podcasts, all kinds of content for club members. You can go to plus.club to learn about that. Federico and I are also doing a bunch of other podcasts. NPC, Next Portable Console with our good friend Brendan Bigley, which comes out every other Tuesday. Check that out. Plus Mac Stories Online. And thanks again to our friends at Memberful for supporting the show.

You can find us on social media too. I'm just going to let people search for that these days, Federico. You'll find us. You'll find us. Just look for Fatici or John Voorhees. You'll know it when you see it. You know, oh, this is John. Oh, this is Federico. You'll know it. All right. Well, that's it for today. App Stories signing off. Talk to you later, Federico. Ciao, John.