TextEdit Icon Spotted on iOS 10 During WWDC 2016 Demo

During its What's New in Metal, Part 1 session at WWDC 2016, Apple used an iPad to demo the graphics API's new adaptive tessellation capabilities on iOS 10. At the 17:58 mark of the video, a TextEdit icon can be seen on the iPad's home screen from the multitasking app switcher screen.

TextEdit-iOS-10-WWDC-2016-demo
TextEdit is Apple's basic word processor preinstalled on macOS Sierra and previous OS X versions, but the company has not released a mobile version for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch as it has done for some of its other first-party Mac apps. There are also no third-party apps that fully match the app shown in the screenshot.

TextEdit and Preview icons were previously spotted in a pre-release iOS 8 screenshot, but neither of the apps were included in the public version of the software update. An early 2014 report had said both apps would debut on iOS 8 as read-only document viewers for Preview and TextEdit files stored in iCloud from a Mac.

While there is an outside chance that Apple plans to release a basic text editor on iOS to complement Notes and Pages, the most likely explanation is that TextEdit serves as a simple "Hello World" testing app for internal developers. Apple is known to have several internal apps for use by software engineers and employees only.

Game Center is also shown, despite being removed as a standalone app on iOS 10.

Apple previewed iOS 10 at its WWDC 2016 keynote on June 13 and has seeded the first beta to developers. A public beta will be available in July ahead of an official launch in the fall. iOS 10 is compatible with most devices that can run iOS 9, excluding the iPhone 4s, iPad 2 and 3, original iPad mini, and fifth-generation iPod touch.

(Thanks, Ahmad!)

Related Roundup: WWDC 2024

Top Rated Comments

ike1707 Avatar
102 months ago
Is it sad that this intrigues me way more than anything in their presentation?
[doublepost=1466401143][/doublepost]
Love the commitment of :apple: fanatics combing through the WWDC video. Well done.
Love the avatar.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
APlotdevice Avatar
102 months ago
If we already have Pages and Notes (free) AND they're pushing 365 (paid), can someone explain why we'd need TextEdit as well? Not intended to be snide, could just be something I'm overlooking lol.
Neither Pages nor Notes are designed to handle plaintext documents. Textedit is.

I suppose it is something thats more useful to web designers and programmers than your average user. But then again it would let you open more files from your desktop now that we have access to that through continuity.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
garirry Avatar
102 months ago
I'm kinda curious how did it take a week to get spotted. Regardless, if implemented, I think it would be nice (but to be fair, I don't see if that's very important when we have Notes for small notes and Pages for actual text).
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Apple Knowledge Navigator Avatar
102 months ago
I think that if Apple put TextEdit on the App Store, then it would serve a purpose for those who have files on a Mac that are of some use.

But for the majority of users, including it as a stock app would only confuse them as Notes and Pages are useful enough. One upside however is that the app is bound to be very small in size, compared to Pages 500+mb.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TurboPGT! Avatar
102 months ago
I would be happy with this. I still use Text Edit on the Mac all the time. All of those documents are stored in iCloud these days. To have those available on iOS, like almost everything else, would be great.

I don't use Pages. Too much overhead. Hard to explain. There's a difference, and TextEdit is what I want.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BrianM Avatar
102 months ago
With TextEdit having iCloud storage of documents, I'm surprised they either haven't released an iOS version, or added a link to Pages on iOS to access these TextEdit documents stored in iCloud.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...