Apple held its annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco on Tuesday, and the Macworld Australia team was in the office at 3am, hooked up to IV drips of coffee to cover the event. Here are the highlights:
MacBook Air & MacBook Pro gets updates
Apple overhauled its laptop range, launching new, cheaper MacBook Air models, updating the MacBook Pro line and unveiling a MacBook Pro 15in model with a ultra-high-definition Retina display.
Apple senior vice president for iOS software Scott Forstall told the developers and press in attendance at WWDC that iOS 6 – to be launched in the northern ‘fall’, which means about September – includes 200 new features. These include Facebook integration, a Do Not Disturb feature and VIP support in Mail.
Apple had plenty to say about Siri, its voice-driven personal assistant, during the company’s keynote. Not only will Siri be vastly improved in iOS 6, it will also be coming to the iPad and to cars from GM, BMW, Mercedes, Land Rover, Jaguar, Audio, Toyota, Chrysler and Honda.
Mac OS X Mountain Lion demonstrated
In his keynote speech the Apple CEO delivered some amazing numbers, including the facts that 30 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, and that Apple has written cheques for over US$5 billion to developers – and that’s after taking its 30 percent cut of all App Store sales
I was barely able to wipe the drool from my chin when reading the specs for the new Macbook Pro 15in. It ticked all boxes, a fast quad core, a truly muscly GPU, great looks. I was in the act of dredging the lower depths of the sofa for the required coins when an iFixit article not only pricked my bubble but dragged it through the mud. How could they, what was Apple collectively thinking – soldering the RAM to the mother board and then rubbing salt in – even the SSD hard drive is not owner replaceable. Straight back to the era of the first 300 Mhz MacBook in terms of upgradability. I have to say being denied the right to spend around $3,500 hurts, deeply but I outlasted Microsoft when they pulled VBA from the Mac version of Office and I reckon I’ll do the same with Apple until someone (Tim Cook?) sees sense.