Apple WWDC 2019

A new Mac Pro, iOS 13, iPadOS and a $1k Stand

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Apple held its annual WWDC event in San Jose on Monday this week and has given us plenty to look forward to. In brief, here are the highlights:

• A New Mac Pro that comes at an astronomical price
• iOS 13 (with dark mode)
• iPads own iOS
• A new voice for Siri
• The Death Of iTunes

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Mac Pro

The new 2019 Mac Pro is the most powerful Mac ever. It has been completely redesigned with a futuristic look and an incredible amount of power. The new Intel Xeon processor with up to 28 cores and 1.5TB of memory mean that you’ll never, ever wait for anything to load. A newly developed processing card supports up to 3 consecutive streams in 8K or 12 streams in 4K not that we can every see the need for 12 streams at the same time. All in all, this $5,999 power house is one hell of a machine, but it will cost you!

The new Mac Pro is best used with Apples new 32 inch Retina 6K XDR display. This new display boasts an incredible 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. But it should do, for the astronomical $4,999 you’ll have to shell out to get your hands on one.

Unfortunately for Apple, the most reported on product of the flagship WWDC event was the $999 stand required for the $4,999 monitor. For a developer, editor or gamer arguments can be made for the new Mac Pro to be worth the enormous price but for the rest of us, maybe not.

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iOS 13

After weeks of speculation, the WWDC event failed to disappoint as everyone tweeted excitedly about all the new features. By far the most talked about feature was the new ‘dark mode’ that will be available on iPhone and iPad later this year.

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Furthermore, Apple are finally integrating a native swipeable keyboard into iOS, which will make typing with one hand must
faster and more convenient.

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Apple Maps are also getting a major redesign, finally making it a serious competitor for Google Maps. Seemingly, the most significant upgrade is the ‘3D mode’ - which looks like a much more impressive Google Street view. Even in the 3D mode, Google Maps will bring up shop names and suggestions from Tripadvisor. By the end of 2019 it will also be able to share your ETA with a friend, show your flight stats and give real-time traffic updates.

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Apple’s Photos app has also been redesigned yet again; this time in pretty big ways. The standard 4 picture wide grid has been replaced by a ‘highlights’ themed view, where by AI in your phone detects which are the best photos and displays these slightly bigger than others (see below).

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Furthermore, the Photos app has gained some new and improved photo editing tools. Whilst the majority of the tools remain the same, the UI has been totally redesigned to allow easier use.

However, the biggest improvements lie with videos. At long last, video editing controls are coming to iOS. Finally, we can rotate videos, retouch the colour and adjust many more setting such as speed.

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Apple CarPlay has also had a redesign to make it a little more intuitive and easy to use. The dashboard has been redesigned to allow more info on the screen at once, and Apple has also expanded its range of partner apps.

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Apple have also launched the ability to ‘share music with a friend’ via the updated iOS 13. This will allow two AirPods users to listen to the same audio source, be it a video or song, at the same time. Gone are the messy splitter adapters of our childhoods!

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MacOS & The Death of iTunes

The new macOS, also known as “Catalina” has a whole host of new software functionality. This software emphasis at WWDC demonstrates how aware Apple is that its hardware sales growth is declining as people are upgrading their phones less frequently.

But by-far, the biggest news is the end of iTunes as we know it. Launched in 2003, iTunes has been the backbone of the Apple software. Its name has been synonymous with music downloads and backing up your phone. But no more! Instead, Apple are breaking iTunes down into 3 separate apps; Music, Podcasts and TV.

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Catalina also introduces /Sidecar/ which is the ability to use an iPad as an extra display for your Mac, via both wired and wireless connection.

Further, soon both iOS and MacOS will offer complete voice control; supposedly you can open apps, adjust the volume and type via more advanced speech-to-text functionality.

Finally, the ‘Find My Friends’ and ‘Find My iPhone’ apps will be rolled into one app known simply as ‘Find My’. It will have some further enhanced functionality, but we know very little about it right now.

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watchOS & tvOS

The new tvOS redesigns the current, slightly clunky, Apple TV homepage. It also brings more support to 3rd party devices like game consoles and their respective controllers. Soon tvOS will receive the support of the new TV services that Apple announced in March.

Lastly, the new watchOS 6 update finally brings the Apple Watch its very own App Store.

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