Great Production Value, Not A Lot Of Surprises

Last night, like many around the world, I tuned in for Apples World Wide Developer Conference and whilst it was visually great, I have to say the only stand out announcement was something that a lot of people knew was coming for quite a while.

Let’s start off with the overall look of the event. As you can imagine, the reason it was prerecorded was due to COVID-19 disrupting the world once again, so the entire thing was pre-recorded. The production values were amazing and actually kind of make me hope for more of these pre-recorded events in the future. It did lack some of the banter of previous years but that is understandable there not being an alive audience.

I wasn’t surprised that Tim Cook started the Keynote talking about the protests and COVID-19, it’s a very apple thing to do as they like to show themselves as being part of the world and a solution to many problems. But let’s get onto the main event.

When it comes to iOS apple seemed focused on catching up to android and implementing features that have been commonplace there for years. We got the “new” ability to add widgets on the home screen and the app library, that intelligently organises your apps into folders so you don’t have to. An updated Siri that doesn’t take up the whole screen, app clips, a translation app and incoming calls will no longer take over your screen.

There were at least a couple of features that Apple didn’t nick of google. The first being improved privacy, something most of you will admit google really doesn’t do (as it would cost them money), They’ve also updated their maps app to include electric car charging routes and started rolling out their next-generation maps outside of the US. They’ve also added Picture in Picture to the iPhone, not something that I’ve been needing but a nice to have all the same as well as updating message so you can pin contacts and reply inline when in group chats.

One feature that I really like the look of, but can’t use… yet, is the Car Key feature. You’ll be able to unlock and start your car using the Apple Wallet. It’s really simple and if you pair it with smart locks on your home you’ll never need a bunch of keys in your pocket again.

iPad got a couple of upgrades too. It can basically do everything new in iOS (except I’ve not been able to get widgets to integrate on my home screen or get the app library to work) and you can now use your Apple Pencil to fill in texts boxes using scribble. This is something that has been needed for a while now, I mean it been on the Apple Watch since the beginning why not with Apple Pencil.

The Apple Watch got a couple of upgrades too. It will now track your sleep (so make sure you wake up that extra half hour early to put your watch on charge) and you can use more than one complication from the same app on the watch face (mind-boggling I know). They also add a hand wash timer to the watch that will automatically kick in when it detects you are washing your hands.

Apple TV also gets Picture in Picture and the ability to play multiplayer games (so those two steel series controller I bought years ago may actually get used at the same time) and that’s about it. Well not according to apple as they seem to have lumped HomeKit in with Apple TV (I really think they should make it it’s own thing) You’ll now be able to view Cameras live on the Apple TV and they will automatically have facial recognition using your phone’s contact. This also enables rich notifications if someone is at your door, for example, you’ll get a notification saying that Bob is at your front door.

macOS has had a design overhaul and prepping for the next stage in the Mac evolution, I’ll come to that in a mo, the icons that they changed to a flat UI design a few years ago are now gone and are now basically the iPad app icons. The menu bar is more transparent, in-app menus have been a shift to side menus where possible and they have increased the spacing in the menus. Apple has added a new notification centre that has come straight from iPad’s (could this be a hint at touch screen macs in the future) and updated the layout of its apps and made them slightly more intelligent.

Safari has had an upgrade too, it now has the ability to add a background on your home page and will let you know what trackers are on each site you visit. I’m annoyed they didn’t go one step further and add a built-in adblocker.

The big announcement though, even if it didn’t surprise anyone, was that Apple will be moving their Macs over to their own ARM-based processors. I think this is a good move on Apple’s part. Intel has been stagnating in the consumer CPU department for a long while and has stopped Apple from releasing a new range of mac each year like they do their iPhones. It also gives apple greater freedom over what they put in their hardware as they will now have control from top to bottom.

I’d love to get my hand on what apple is calling their Developer Transition Kit which is basically a Mac mini running the iPad Pro’s A12Z chip but with 16GB of RAM. The reason I won’t be is that Apple wants me to pay them £500 for the privilege and I don’t even get to keep it, that’s right you have to give it back at the end of the transition program. No thank you I’ll just wait till September when they release their new ARM-based macs when they will hopefully have a Mac Mini with the chips they are actually going to use in their desktop computers.

If fear this does mean the end for those that like to build their own Hackintosh machines, well until someone starts selling ARM SoCs for desktops and I don’t think that is going to be for a few years at least.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Apple can do with the ARM chips and putting them in something like the iMac or the Mac Pro. Power constraints and thermals are really an issue when you compare them to the iPhone or iPad. This could mean we see CPU core counts that you’d only see in server boxes or GPU that might even dethrone AMD on their best day. It’s going to be an interesting few years as ARM desktops start to become the norm and it looks like Apple plans to lead the charge once again.

Did you see the WWDC keynote? What were your thought? Are your looking forward to ARM Macs? Let me know in the comments below.