Apple is renowned for its obsession with detail and making even the slightest things — such as internal components — just as beautiful as the devices that house them. That’s why, during his recent WWDC keynote, Tim Cook said Apple’s new MacBook Pro was more beautiful on the inside than rival machines are on the outside.
This attention to detail is evident in iOS 6, where the slider reflections change as you tilt your device.
Don’t have time to watch the full WWDC keynote? No problem; we’ve taken the whole thing and mashed it down into just 90 seconds for your viewing pleasure. Check out the video after the break.
It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when Apple’s computers were accused of being strictly last generation.
Their computers were made with clunky Power PC processors, and Windows PC owners smirked at the wheezing Mac platform. Michael Dell even famously said the whole company was so behind the times that if it were up to him, he’d euthanize it.
How things change.
While the rest of the industry was counting Apple out, a Steve Jobs newly returned to Apple spent the early part of the last decade quietly assembling a time machine. Following the iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air before it, the retina-display MacBook Pro announced Monday at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco is just the latest time traveler Apple has sent back to us from the future.
It’s a machine so shiny, so shimmering, so futuristic, so unlike anything else out there that it will take the PC-making competition at least a year to release a truly competing product. How did this even happen? How did Apple assemble its time machine, and why can’t the likes of Sony, HP, Dell, Acer and Lenovo seem to catch up?
We’ve already shown you a whole host of new iOS 6 features that Apple didn’t get time to mention during its WWDC keynote yesterday, and here’s another one. In fact, this is probably one of the coolest in the bunch. Notice how the status bar above certain stock apps — like Settings or Mail — is now blue? Well, that actually changes color to match the theme of the app you’re running.
The new Maps app that Apple showed off at WWDC yesterday has made it pretty clear that the company will be ditching Google Maps in iOS 6. That means beautiful new 3D maps, voice guided turn-by-turn navigation, and more. But before you get too excited, just remember this: As soon as Google leaved, so does Street View.
We’re still trawling through the new iOS 6 beta releases that Apple pushed out after its WWDC keynote yesterday, and we continue to find nice new features and improvements. If you’re as excited about iOS 6 as we are, you’d probably like to hear about them.
Here’s a few changes Apple has made to emoji, Reminders, and more.
There were suggestions that Apple would refresh its iMac at WWDC yesterday — alongside the updates it issued to the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro. However, the Cupertino company’s popular all-in-one didn’t get a mention during the two-hour keynote. That could be because it is hard at work on redesigning the iMac and the Mac Pro.
According to one Apple executive, both machines will receive big updates next year.
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.
Despite delivering excellent business solutions in many of its products, there’s always a consistent refrain that Apple doesn’t understand business customers or corporate computing needs. Apple didn’t focus on many specific business uses of the new and upcoming products announced during today’s WWDC keynote. If you look closely, however, there are definite signs that Apple is designing iOS 6 and Mountain Lion,.
During today’s keynote Apple showed a slide that mentioned iOS 6 would get some “Redesigned Stores” but Scott Forstall never went into detail on what the stores look like. Now that we’ve got iOS 6 loaded up on our iPhones we’re finally able to see what the new stores look like and boy are they a great improvement over the predecessors. Here’s what the new App Store, iTunes, and iBooks look like in iOS 6:
There have been concerns about the fate of the Mac Pro ever since Apple killed off the Xserve a year and a half ago. Although Apple didn’t say the Mac Pro was on the chopping block, the company did let it go without an update for quite some time. Although the Mac Pro didn’t get featured in today’s WWDC keynote like the MacBook lineup, which includes the new MacBook Pro, it did receive a long-needed update.
The biggest reaction to the Mac Pro’s update today is a sense of relief by many creative professionals and Mac-focused IT departments. The update proves that Apple isn’t signing the death warrant for its most powerful and most expandable Mac. That makes the updated specs a symbol of Apple’s commitment to high-end and high-performance systems in addition to being a major product update.
If I had to pick on adjective for Apple’s upcoming iOS 6, it’d be “local” – Apple is integrating an immense range of local features and giving businesses amazing tools for attracting new customers. Regardless of whether you’re talking about a large chain like Starbucks or a family owned local business, Apple is offering virtually any customer-facing company an immense range of tools to attract and retain new customers.
I don’t “need” a new MacBook Pro with Retina display and maxed out specs, but I really want one. I want one like really really bad, and maybe you do too, but if you’re frothing at the mouth to shell out the $4,000 for the top of the line MacBook Pro you’re going to have to be really patient because right now the shipping estimates are 3-5weeks. That’s just long enough for buyers remorse to sink in.
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 CEO Tim Cook has just taken the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to deliver the keynote address, and are we excited.
Over the next hour and a half, Tim Cook is expected to announce some radical new products for Apple, including new Macs and iOS 6. Apple is expected to abandon Google Maps for its own in-house solution. We will also likely hear a release date for OS X Mountain Lion.
Stay tuned for updates, and keep refreshing our home page for the latest scoops from the keynote. We’ll be live-blogging the whole thing over the course of the next 90 minutes, so as soon as something’s announced, you’ll see it on the front page.
What are you most looking forward to Apple announcing today? Let us know in the comments.
At every WWDC, Apple dresses up the Moscone Center with beautiful banner graphics to promote their newest software and hardware. Sometimes before the keynote, they keep some banners veiled in black cloth to prevent any keynote spoilers. This year is no exception. So what’s under this year’s black banner? Let us hear your guesses in the comments.
With just a few hours to go before Apple kicks off WWDC, some analysts are rushing to make predictions right up till the last few moments. London-based research firm Ovum, for example, delivered a list of three things that its Chief Telecoms Analyst Jan Dawson feels are essential announcements that Apple needs to make during the WWDC keynote later today.
Dawson’s assessment breaks ranks with many other analysts who have insisted that Apple must unveil its own HDTV at the event or sometime later this year but does think Apple needs to bring apps to the TV experience. The remainder of his comments focus on iOS and changes that a wide swath of iPhone and iPad owners, developers, and tech journalists have suggested since Apple released iOS 5 last fall.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference has spawned some huge lines this year, with many waiting outside San Francisco’s Moscone Center a full nine hours before the keynote will begin — as we showed you earlier. But it isn’t just Tim Cook and co. who will be enjoying all of the attention; the local Starbucks is struggling to keep up with thirsty attendees.
Apple’s unveiling of its next major operating system, iOS 6, is right around the corner. Scott Forstall and Co. are expected to announce the new OS to developers at WWDC next week. Very little is actually known about iOS 6, but there have been some rumors that made headlines over the last few months.
iOS 6 looks to be an evolutionary upgrade from iOS 5, rather than a revolutionary jump forward. Here’s what we expect to see.
As we patiently wait for Tim Cook to kick off Apple’s WWDC keynote in just under five hours time, the last of the WWDC rumors and reports are spilling in. One of the more questionable pieces comes from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who believes the new MacBook Pro won’t get that thinner, lighter, MacBook Air-like form factor we’ve all been hearing about. But that a resurrected MacBook will instead.
We’re almost certain Apple will announce a new MacBook Pro at WWDC this week, but what we’re not quite so sure of is exactly what the new notebook will bring. An Intel Ivy Bridge processor and a high-resolution Retina display seem like the most feasible changes, but there’s also been much debate over a new design.
Some reports have suggested the device will sport a thinner, lighter form factor that will be heavily influenced by the MacBook Air. While others have claimed the design will remain the same as existing MacBook Pros. Now a leaked logic board for the upcoming device seems to side with the latter.
A hardware bomb! That’s what CultCast special guest and Ars Technica writer Chris Foresman thinks is about to go down at next week’s WWDC. I think he’s right, and on our brand new CultCast we’ll tell you why Apple might be about to refresh every Mac they make. Plus, there’s iOS 6. We’ll tell you what to expect from Apple’s new mobile OS too.
And don’t miss our winner of Faves and Raves, the game where we pitch our favorite hardware/apps and then vote on which is best.
All that and too many LULZ on our brand new CultCast. Subscribe now in iTunes and read on through for our show notes.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has been a staple event for the company since since the turn of the 21st century. The first ever WWDC was held in 1983, but it wasn’t until 2002 that Apple started using the conference as a major launchpad for new products. Since then, Steve Jobs and Co. have unveiled products like the Power Mac G5, Mac Pro, iPhone, and plenty of software. Because WWDC has always been a developer-focused conference, Apple uses the event to announce new apps, OS X versions, major iOS updates, etc. For an Apple fan, it doesn’t get much better than WWDC.
With WWDC 2012 set to kick off on Monday, June 11th, we decided to take a look back at the big announcements Apple made at WWDC over the past decade.