The future is looking bright (and faster) for Apple users
Apple held its annual Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose earlier this month. If you didn’t catch the live stream or watch the replay of Monday’s keynote (available on Apple’s website), here’s a summary of the parts I found most encouraging.
At least half of the 2-plus hour keynote was devoted to the next generation of Apple operating systems for iDevices, Apple Watches and Macs.
The most notable features in iOS 13 were Dark Mode; a revamped Photos app with on-device machine learning to organize your photos intelligently; an all-new Maps experience promising richer details and better road coverage; and Sign In with Apple, a new way to quickly sign in to apps and websites.
I’m stoked that Sign In with Apple includes a way to keep your real email address private by generating a unique random email address for each login.
iOS 13 will be faster and more responsive with improved app launch times, reduced app download sizes and even faster recognition by Face ID. And a new spin-off version called iPadOS will bring more powerful multitasking, desktop-class browsing, easier text selection and editing and other exclusive features to the iPad.
WatchOS 6 will add menstrual cycle tracking, real-time sound measurement with alerts, improved activity tracking with trend analysis, an App Store (no iPhone needed) and, for the first time, the ability to run apps exclusively on your Apple Watch with no companion iPhone!
MacOS Catalina will offer myriad improvements over macOS Mojave, but two of them really sang to me: the demise of iTunes and a new feature dubbed Sidecar.
ITunes will be replaced by three all-new apps, which Apple claims will, “greatly simplify and improve the way we discover and enjoy music, TV shows, movies and podcasts.” We’ll see about that, but they can’t be any worse than iTunes.
The Sidecar feature will let your iPad act as an extended display and/or high-precision drawing tablet for your Mac.
Finally, the good news for professional Mac users is that Apple introduced the long-awaited Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR.
The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and expandable Mac ever, featuring Intel Xeon CPUs with up to 28 cores; 12 DIMM slots for up to 1.5TB of memory (the most ever in any Mac); eight PCI Express slots; two Thunderbolt 3 ports; and two USB 3 ports.
Pro Display XDR is the largest Retina display ever, a 32-inch, 6K display with more than 20 million pixels and 40 percent more screen real estate than a Retina 5K display, wide color gamut and 10-bit color (more than 1 billion colors) and a new matte option with glass etched at the nanometer level for low reflectivity and less glare.
The bad news is that both Pro products are priced for pros: The Mac Pro starts at $5,999, but you could easily spend another $5,000 or more on RAM, storage, graphics and CPU upgrades; the Pro Display XDR starts at $4,999.