Here's what app makers want to see from Apple's big event next week

Apple's yearly Worldwide Developers Conference is next week, so we talked with some top app developers about what they'd like to see Apple address at its big event.

Apple is expected to unveil quite a few things at this year's WWDC including its new mobile operating system, iOS 9, its connected device ecosystem, HomeKit, a new music streaming service powered by Beats Music, and a preview of what the new wave of Apple Watch apps will be like.

So what are developers looking for?

A lot of them want to see dramatic improvements in Apple's suite of tools for developers, which were described as "broken," "buggy," and lacking many of the useful features found over at Google's Play Android app store.

They also told Business Insider that they were chiefly concerned with getting the opportunity to build richer apps for the Apple Watch - something that Apple has promised it will address at WWDC .

App makers are crying for better tools

Here's a sampling of concerns about Apple's developer tools.

General quality has slipped. "One big thing on the developer side that doesn't get talked about a lot publicly is it feels like the quality of Apple's developer tools has slipped," Jeff Grossman, co-founder and chief product officer of confidential messaging app Confide, told Business Insider.

"iTunes Connect, which is the portal developers use to interact and manage apps, it's pretty buggy. TestFlight - while it's really nice that we have TestFlight for developers - is also fairly buggy."

Submission process. Jordan Edelson, CEO and founder of the mobile app development studio, Appetizer Mobile, echoed Grossman's concerns. "From a developer's standpoint, I really want Apple to pay more attention to their developer submission process and the platform," Edelson said.

"Apple botched the integration with TestFlight. When they bought TestFlight, they screwed up big time in the back end to the point where now they've just made our lives so much more complicated to test devices. It now has to go through a different submission process, they have to approve each beta build that we put up there, and on top of that we only have 30 days with it before we have to renew it."

"You're trying to make a beta release and you can't," Grossman said. "I'd really like them to firm up those things, and it really shows that Apple doesn't use those developer tools internally, because they don't need them. They don't necessarily have to go through all the co-signing steps that developers have to go through, across multiple developers and multiple computers. This has been a complaint for years, and they have made it better, but there's still more to do."

App discovery. Rahul Dewan, a former Apple engineer who created the popular app Duet Display, said that progress has been made, but Apple still is lagging behind Google when it comes to how easy it is for people to find the app they're looking for in the App Store.

"The new App Analytics data is great!" Dewan told Business Insider. "It has some of the valuable data we've all been waiting for. However, it'd be great to see what people are searching for when people find your app. Almost half of downloads come from search and one of the biggest problems for an app is discoverability. Allowing developers to see where users are coming from would help effectively market a product."

A way to respond to user reviews. Dewan also mentioned that he'd like to see Apple catch up to the Google Play store in terms of feedback, as app developers currently have no way to respond to user reviews like they can on Android.

"Whether they love or hate the product, I want to be able to reach out to anyone who has written a review," Dewan said. "It's a great way to get feedback as well as help people use the product effectively. Whoever writes a review could be your biggest fan, because they cared enough about your product to write about it."

He continued, "The reviews and the comment that you get back on the App Store, there is no way from a development standpoint to respond to those questions....It can be a quick question like 'Oh this app sucks because this feature isn't working or I can't find it' and all it requires is for a developer or customer service person to say 'Go over here and there's the feature' and that would improve your review. So it's very frustrating to see that."

Swift. Ben Rubin, CEO and founder of the popular livestreaming app, Meerkat, said that he'd love to see Apple build out Swift, its new programming language for iOS and Mac.

"We love Swift," Rubin told Business Insider. "And we realize that since it's still a young technology there are gaps left to be filled, so we are looking forward to seeing improvements on the development experience. We would also like to see Apple continue to open up and improve on video capture and playback APIs."

Let us do more with the Apple Watch

When the Apple Watch arrived, it quickly became clear that most third-party apps were limited in their features, sluggish, and severely constrained by Apple's limitations on its Apple Watch developer platform, WatchKit.

But big changes are coming at WWDC, and Apple Watch executive Jeff Williams promised at Code Conference that Apple would soon allow app developers to build native Apple Watch apps, which has been a chief concern for developer seeking to build richer apps that can accomplish more.

"I'd love to be able to access the Digital Crown and the Taptic Engine," Grossman of Confide said.

"Right now with the Digital Crown, Apple controls how it works. We're looking forward to that, as there's definitely limitations involved when we built Confide. We even held ourselves back a little with what we built, partly because we had to build it without using the watch. So those kind of things being able to be used in our apps. We want to use the Digital Crown to 'wand' over your message in Confide, to reveal it piece by piece."

Matt Ronge, another former Apple engineer who created the drawing app Astropad, agreed. "We really want access to the Digital Crown, and the current SDK is just a little too limited."

He added, "With the Watch, what I think is going to make it really fly is developers tapping into the sensors and coming up with really new and creative ideas. A lot of the Apple apps are pretty cool but I think when you get it out there to developers you'll have some really novel stuff that will be really fun."

Appetizer Mobile's Jorden Edelson said, "We'd love to get access to all the sensor data that's being captured." He added, "When Apple eventually opens that up that's going to be a big game changer for developers."

iOS and Mac: Stability, stability, stability

After a rocky rollout of iOS 8, Apple is reportedly focusing on stability as a core feature of iOS 9, and most of the developers we talked to agreed that it was a smart move.

Astropad's Matt Ronge said, "From an engineering perspective, I'm really understanding of them slowing down a bit and cleaning things up."

He continued, "I'd love to see it not just on iOS but I'd love to see it on the Mac as well. Especially the Wi-Fi, we've just had a huge number of problems, especially on Yosemite. Our products rely on Wi-Fi, so that's a really big deal for us, and we'd like to see that improved. We'd like to see that more reliable."

Confide's Jeff Grossman agreed. "If Apple announced that they focused on stability and there were no new features, I would be very happy."

He said, "Before with iOS 8, we had a lot of trouble getting it to work properly, or as well as you expect Apple-quality software to be. So that's one example, we'd really like them to work on improving existing features, especially stuff that's newer - some of the stuff that's already been established works pretty well - but fixing performance, fixing stability."

Remember the iPad!

"I do agree there's going to be a lot of stability updates, I also think they're going to revisit what I consider kind of the neglected child, which is the iPad," Appetizer Mobile's Jordan Edelson said. "The iPad didn't really get much love from Apple, at least in terms of innovation, in the last update. I think we are going to see something in regards to split screen multitasking."

Astropad's Ronge also voiced a desire for a renewed interest by Apple in the iPad, mentioning that he'd like to see it add new features like Force Touch, a screen technology currently available on the Apple Watch and new generation of Macbook that allows users to access additional layers of menus with a stronger tap.

"We really want Force Touch just for the artistic side of things," Ronge said, explaining how the new input technology could allow for more precise sketching and painting with Astropad.

"With Force Touch, you could just get a dumb stylus and if you could have some amount of pressure sensitivity, that would be really cool. That would just make the barrier of entry into Astropad and what we're doing in the artistic and design space much easier for us."

Confide's Grossman said, "One thing that I would really like is more granular control over notifications,"

He said, "Right now, especially with the watch, notifications are kind of all or nothing on an app to app basis. So I'd love to have Apple give access to developers to be able to mark notifications in certain ways and let users control which ones they, which ones they want on which devices - with Confide I'd love to give users the ability to send only certain notifications to their Apple Watch."

Apple is expected to reveal iOS 9, its new music streaming subscription service, and announce fully native apps for the Apple Watch at next week's conference.

Business Insider will be attending the conference, and we'll be live blogging all the announcements from the keynote, which kicks off Monday June 8 around 9 am PT.