Every year Apple picks the very best apps in the App Store as recipients of its prestigious Apple Design Awards (ADAs). iPhone apps like Infinity Blade and Mac apps like Pixelmator won last year, and this year’s winners are just as good.
11 apps were awarded ADAs today by Apple at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California during WWDC. The awards are meant to “celebrate excellence and recognize the outstanding work of iOS and OS X developers.”
Here are the winners of the 2012 ADAs:
While the new MacBook Pro’s retina display, light weight, and thin format factor were all show stoppers, the notebook’s battery is also a major feature and feat of engineering. Apple claims that despite powering all those pixels, the new MacBook Pro with Retina display has a battery will last for seven hours on a single charge and offer a full month of standby power. Unsurprisingly, much of the its internal space is devoted to the mammoth battery required for that feat.
The new MacBook Pro with Retina display isn’t the first Apple device to sport a massive built-in battery. The new iPad also sports one and the MacBook Air line has had most of its internal space devoted to its battery for years. Each new mega-battery from Apple represents an advance of battery technology that few other companies could deliver.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of Apple events: the secrecy, the frenetic guessing games, the lines at Starbuck’s. It’s like Christmas–before your older brother ruined Santa for you–and it happens a couple of times a year.
So Cult of Mac got the inside scoop from developer Chris Lott, who was sitting inside on this unusually warm San Francisco day with a restless crowd of developers at the World Wide Developer Conference, for his take on the keynote announcements. Lott works with Darren Murtha Design; the two currently have eight iPhone/iPad apps in the iTunes store, most of them nifty learning games aimed at the preschool set.
Apple introduced updated MacBook Air and Pro models alongside a totally new MacBook Pro design today at WWDC. Every time one of the laptops was addressed during the keynote, no mention was made of a 17-inch model. Apple only talked about updates for the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Airs/Pros.
Now Apple’s new MacBook Pro listings make no mention of the 17-inch model. It looks like the largest MacBook Pro has been axed once and for all.
Wow! Apple just unleashed a thunderstorm of new products and software on the world. Our heads are still spinning trying to keep up with all the new awesome features but we’ve managed to compile a list of everything Apple just announced at today’s WWDC keynote so you know all about the goodies coming your way. Take a look and see what you might have missed.
Apple unveiled a completely new Mountain Lion feature today at WWDC. “I want to introduce you to a new technology in OS X that we call Power Nap,” said Craig Federighi. “Wouldn’t it be great if our computers still worked for us when we weren’t working? Now it can.”
The new feature automatically refreshes data, conserves battery life, and backs up a Mac while it’s asleep. You can use Time Machine, refresh Photo Stream, download App Store updates automatically, and keep processes running all while your Mac is asleep. Recent MacBook Airs and the new MacBook Pro will support Power Nap when Mountain Lion ships next month.
Following a refresh to the MacBook Air lineup, Apple’s Phil Schiller unveiled a revamped MacBook Pro today at WWDC12. The updated machine boasts Intel Ivy Bridge 2.7GHz (turbo boosted up to 3.7GHz), USB 3.0, Nvidia GeForce GT 650m graphics, and 7 hours of battery life.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro spec upgrade costs $1199, while the 15-inch will sell for $1499. The 15-inch is offered in $1799 and $2199 models with beefier quad-core chips. The outwards design of these upgraded MacBook Pros have stayed the same.
“”Nobody turns over their entire line as quickly and completely as we do at Apple. So what’s next? We need to make room on the slide for this.” And Apple is about to announce a completely new and improved MacBook Pro, the next-generation.
““With the MBA, the engineering team did something bold. They reenvisioned the consumer notebook, and were aggressive in embracing new technologies, and discarding legacy technologies. Things we could eventually do without.”
“So what would make a next-generation MacBook Pro?” Schiller asks.
According to Schiller, the next-gen MBP is the most beautiful computer Apple has ever made. It’s thin, its light, it has no optical drive, it’s exactly what the rumors had us believe it would be: a cross between the last MBP and the MacBook Air.
The new MBP is about as thin as the current Air, and weighs under four and a half pounds. And it has a Retina Display.
Today at 10AM Pacific, Tim Cook will take the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Apple’s annual WWDC keynote, and if the rumor mill is to be believed, he’ll be hard pressed to fit everything Cupertino is ready to announce into its 90 minute presentation. We’re looking at massive upgrades to the entire Mac line, the official unveiling of iOS 6, loads of new apps, and maybe possibly even our first glimpse of the iPhone 5 and Apple HDTV.
Here’s what we think Apple will (and won’t) announce today, ranked in order of likelihood.
Apple’s online store has gone down ahead of the company’s keynote presentation at WWDC in just under four hours. We’ve had our suspicions that the company will be refreshing a number of its Macs, and this almost confirms they’ll be available to order today.