TwinIon Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 WWDC 2021 will be starting soon, at 10am PDT. It could be quite an interesting show. Lots of rumors of what we might see, and lots of weird pressure on Apple in the wake of the Epic trial. I've heard rumors (or perhaps simply hopes) that we'll see new 16" MacBook Pros, probably with a new M1x or M2 SoC, which would give us our first insights into how Apple plans to scale up towards high performance chips. There are rumors that we'll get better multitasking on the iPad, but I wouldn't be surprised if all we get are widgets. I'd love for some crazy iPad action, like true windowing or anything else to justify putting an M1 in the iPad Pro, but I won't hold my breath. The twitter hashtag emoji and the splash screen indicates something with iMessage. It's a hugely outside shot, but it's plausible they open up iMessage to Android to lessen some anti-trust concerns, but odd are it's likely just some new junk they've thrown in there. I doubt they'll even acknowledge it, but whatever they say it'll be hard for Apple to escape the cloud of the Epic trial and Tim Cook essentially saying that Apple owns and deserves to profit on every piece of software sold in their store. They could try playing up how great they are to devs and how many opportunities Apple provides to them, but they might just try and sidestep the issue entirely and talk about privacy or how fast the new chips are the whole time. We'll find out soon enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ort Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 It's getting harder and harder for them to make a splash during these. Everything has been so boring so far. The truth is that these OSes are now very mature and we don't have a lot of room for exciting innovation or features every year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ort Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 ZZZzzzzzzzzzz... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwinIon Posted June 7, 2021 Author Share Posted June 7, 2021 Well, the iMessage stuff wasn't terribly exciting to me, but I don't use it, so I'm not one to judge. The new multitasking UI on the iPad is better, but not as big a change as I was hoping for. Also, no indication as to them changing what apps have to do to support multi-tasking, which is often my biggest pain point. Nothing like navigating the confusing UI gestures only to figure out that a certain app can't be run side-by-side. The homescreen changes also feel minimal. Basically the iPad gets some of last years updates to the iPhone. Still no option to add more apps to the huge iPad screen. Why they keep that grid so small is beyond me, and I don't even have a 12.3" version. The website and app privacy reports seem like a good idea. Transparency is one of the best things a company like Apple can do to show individual users how their data is being used. I'm interested in the idea they'll be blocking IP addresses. Honestly not sure how big of a deal that is for how apps and websites track users, but I have the feeling it'll be pretty significant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwinIon Posted June 7, 2021 Author Share Posted June 7, 2021 Somehow missed that Windows and Android users will be able to open Facetime links through the web. Not full Facetime app for other systems, and I don't think those systems can initiate a Facetime call, but that's still kind of a big deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ort Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 It feels like they are running out of time to do new hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ort Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 It also feels like they are running out of time to show me anything I actually care about... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 I'm disappointed there was no hardware. I want to get a new laptop but it's hard to justify getting the initial M1 laptops at this point knowing we're likely coming on M1X/M2 stuff in just a couple of months. I might still get an M1 MBA depending on what's announced but I'd like to have a sense of what's coming before I make that decision. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwinIon Posted June 7, 2021 Author Share Posted June 7, 2021 That was disappointing. Nothing very exciting, no hardware at all, and the changes made were less than I'd hoped for, but probably about what I expected. I do have to say that the Universal Control stuff is something that I would have loved at a certain point in my life. There was a time where I ran a triple monitor setup at work with each monitor being driven by a different computer. I used some software that basically did exactly what they showed off, and it worked between operating systems, though it was a bit temperamental. These days it's not really something I have much use for. Even though I have an iPad with a keyboard on my desk right now, I probably wouldn't enable universal control even if I could on my Windows PC. I have to imagine very few people will get a lot of use out of it, but for those that do it'll be awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal-El814 Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 For me personally, it’s been several years since I messed with my phone, tablet, or computer and thought, “man I really wished it did X,” where X was a big feature. For me it’s all smoothing the edges at this point and I can’t really bring myself to care about that stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said: For me personally, it’s been several years since I messed with my phone, tablet, or computer and thought, “man I really wished it did X,” where X was a big feature. For me it’s all smoothing the edges at this point and I can’t really bring myself to care about that stuff. Indeed. Not concerned with new features, just having things work better over time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost_MH Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 1 hour ago, TwinIon said: That was disappointing. Nothing very exciting, no hardware at all, and the changes made were less than I'd hoped for, but probably about what I expected. I do have to say that the Universal Control stuff is something that I would have loved at a certain point in my life. There was a time where I ran a triple monitor setup at work with each monitor being driven by a different computer. I used some software that basically did exactly what they showed off, and it worked between operating systems, though it was a bit temperamental. These days it's not really something I have much use for. Even though I have an iPad with a keyboard on my desk right now, I probably wouldn't enable universal control even if I could on my Windows PC. I have to imagine very few people will get a lot of use out of it, but for those that do it'll be awesome. Synergy works great for just that. The only problem being that it worked over IP. These days if I do need such functionality, and I rarely do, I just use the Logitech Flow. Flow seems to work better than Synergy between Mac and PC, but I don't know if Flow supports iPadOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chakoo Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 So far from what I've read the only actually useful thing for me is Testflight for MacOS. Most delivery solutions on MacOS kind of suck when you want to get non tech people into testing early builds of your app. This will make the process much easier and we've kind of have been betting on this being a thing this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spawn_of_Apathy Posted June 8, 2021 Share Posted June 8, 2021 I wonder if Apple just isn’t investing in hardware R&D like they used to, or we’ve reached a plateau that nothing short of a revolutionary and transformative invention that can be affordable to the average consumer will take us to a “next” level. Not unlike the invention of the smartphone itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwinIon Posted June 8, 2021 Author Share Posted June 8, 2021 11 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said: I wonder if Apple just isn’t investing in hardware R&D like they used to, or we’ve reached a plateau that nothing short of a revolutionary and transformative invention that can be affordable to the average consumer will take us to a “next” level. Not unlike the invention of the smartphone itself. I'm bummed we didn't see hardware, but my understanding is that Apple has expanded their R&D spending. Their last quarterly report shows a more than 10% increase YoY. We're really not that far off the release of the M1, which is by far the most significant development in chip design in a very long time. Devices as transformative as the iPhone don't happen often, regardless of how much you spend, though there's reason to suspect that Apple is at least hoping that AR glasses will be that next thing, and they're spending billions to make them a reality. I still wouldn't expect to see them for years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ort Posted June 8, 2021 Share Posted June 8, 2021 Yeah, the truth is that things just don't change as fast as we think they do. People hold these companies to an impossible standard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spawn_of_Apathy Posted June 8, 2021 Share Posted June 8, 2021 31 minutes ago, TwinIon said: Devices as transformative as the iPhone don't happen often, regardless of how much you spend, though there's reason to suspect that Apple is at least hoping that AR glasses will be that next thing, and they're spending billions to make them a reality. I still wouldn't expect to see them for years. oh I know transformative technological advancements do not happen often. Nothing has been as transformative as the smartphone, the iPhone, since the cell phone itself. There’s years of improvements made with updates that keep making things better and better. Blu-tooth, multi-touch displays, HD displays, better and better cameras. And software that makes them all better and uses all the tech better. But eventually you can l’t go much further before you have to have that next big leap. What I’m wondering is how close we are to this point. Where phones and other connected devices can’t get much better, at least not enough that these show cases will be as interesting as they were 5-10 years ago. As if all we can do is just refine until somebody comes up with that next transformative thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chakoo Posted June 8, 2021 Share Posted June 8, 2021 umm this is WWDC. this is a software/dev event. Not for hardware announcements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ort Posted June 8, 2021 Share Posted June 8, 2021 True, but they've launched/announced major hardware at this event in the past. It's actually pretty common... History of hardware at WWDC: Every device launched at Apple’s developer conference in the last few years INDIANEXPRESS.COM A look back at some of the hardware announcements made by Apple at WWDC, its biggest software event of the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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