It’s that time of the year when we pull out our prognosticating hats—you were issued yours, right?—and try to imagine what Apple might announce a couple of weeks hence when they take the stage at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

The main event at WWDC is generally the future of Apple’s software platforms, most crucially macOS and iOS. So, with that in mind, it’s time to whip out that old standby: features that Apple’s platforms still need.

This week we’ll start with macOS, which just celebrated an important milestone, as the current generation of macOS (formerly OS X and Mac OS X) has now been shipping as long as the classic Mac OS was when Mac OS X first arrived on the scene. Seems like only yesterday, doesn’t it? 

After 17-plus years, it’s gotten harder to come up with features that macOS still needs: our Macs are amazingly capable devices. And rumor has it that this year may be more in the vein of a Snow Leopard-style maintenance release than chock-a-block with new features. Still, there are a few areas that Apple could stand to focus some much-needed attention.

Make Mail and Calendar more productive

One of the great things about the macOS is that it’s replete with fantastic third-party alternatives to many of Apple’s own built-in apps. But close integration with the OS and the fact that Apple’s apps are pre-installed and free means that a lot of people end up sticking with the first-party options.

Mail, in particular, is an aging app that could use a top-to-bottom refresh. While Apple does tend to roll out one or two new Mail features in every macOS release—last year it was a new Top Hits display in search—the app could use a little more substantial love. Plenty of competitors, including Google’s web-based Gmail, have added smarter features, using algorithms to sort out junk mail, mailing lists, flight confirmations, and so on. With the current deluge of privacy policy updates, such a feature would be more than welcome. Not to mention other commonly-used features, like setting reminders on emails, timed sending of emails, and—dare I even suggest—an option for end-to-end encryption.

Apple

The same goes for Calendar. I have a bunch of calendars that I maintain, some of which have redundant information on them. It’d be great if Calendar were smart enough to condense that into a single event with tags to indicate that it lived on multiple calendars, rather than squeezing in three copies of the exact same event. I’d also like to see it provide an option to condense the blank space within individual days—I don’t need to see all the time where I’m not doing anything.

Play around with iTunes and QuickTime Player

Speaking of apps that need improvement. Oh, iTunes.