New Mac Pro being released

[OtinG]

Mac Pro

New Mac Pro being released, finally. They are currently introducing it now at WWDC.

• 28 cores
• 8 internal PCIe ports
• 1.5TB RAM
• External MPX (Mac Pro Expansion) Module for graphics cards
• 1.4 kW power supply
• Wheels for chassis so it can be moved around easily (optional)
• Starts at $5,999

It looks like a giant cheese grater from the ends!

Pro Display XDR

New 32" 20MP 6k Retina Display also introduced, with XDR (Extreme Dynamic Range), named Pro Display XDR, starts at $4,999.

MacOS 10.15 Catalina

New MacOS named Catalina. Comes with Apple Music, Apple Podcast, and Apple TV. It has Sidecar where you spread your screen onto your iPad.

Final Thoughts

That is all I watched. Most of the event was boring IMO. It was rather painful to watch an old fart strutting on stage trying to be hip with a room full of Millennials! And as usual, painful to watch the mindless, robotic applauding and cheering of even lackluster announcements. Most of the iOS stuff I saw was fluff and form. There were some great new security features though, and a Dark Mode which didn't look as good as I would have liked. And some nice improvements to the iPad portion of iOS, now called iPadOS. I sh*t you not, he called the new iPad features iPadOS. I got bored with the MacOS portion and ran some errands, so no clue what new stuff was announced for it other than the name and an improved Maps app. It looks like Maps is now a little closer to the functionality and detail of Google Maps.

Oops, I almost forgot another good feature, Apple Sign-In. Rather than use Facebook or Google for easy sign in, you will now be able to use a truly secure Apple Sign-In to simplify the sign in process without messing with those data minors from Facebook and Google.

....

[pwalker8]

The big things were
1) iPad app support, i.e. Catalyst.
2) Redesigned Apple Music, Podcasts and Apple TV apps for the mac. iTunes goes bye-bye. I wonder if this means they are finally including audiobooks in the Books app on the mac.
3) Use your iPad as a secondary display for your mac (sidecar)
Sidecar sounds interesting since you can use your Apple pencil and thus use your iPad as a drawing tablet.

plus a bunch of tweaks to various apps.

That Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR sounds really neat, especially if you just won the lottery. I suspect it's mostly going to be used in very high end design and graphics shops.

Apparently one of the Siri enhancements is that with SiriKit for Audio, you can control 3rd party audio apps with Siri, including music, audiobooks and radio.

I will be interested to see if my car stereo can be upgrade to the new CarPlay when it comes out.

(update - yes they have included audiobooks in the Books app on the mac and yes it supports audible. The collections with audible books don't seem to be syncing, but that could simply either be a beta thing, or a version thing, i.e. the different versions of books don't match perfectly. I guess I'll find out when the public beta comes out in a month or so)

[Dylrob]

I like that they’re officially forking the iPad into its own OS. It started moving its own direction in the last update, and this new one shows their commitment to making iPads more productivity devices.

Btw, The operating system was originally called iPhone OS, up until the iPad was released. So iPadOS isn’t that odd.

[Dylrob]

I wonder which Macs will actually support sidecar? While all this sort of functionality has been available for ages in third-party apps, I imagine Apple is going to limit it based on hardware performance.

[John F]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

The big things were
...
2) Redesigned Apple Music, Podcasts and Apple TV apps for the mac. iTunes goes bye-bye. I wonder if this means they are finally including audiobooks in the Books app on the mac.
...

With iTunes going away, how will I be able to get mp3s onto my iPhone?

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by John F

With iTunes going away, how will I be able to get mp3s onto my iPhone?

They said that syncing will be built into the Finder on Mac. Meanwhile iTunes will be sticking around on Windows.

[skb]

Originally Posted by John F

With iTunes going away, how will I be able to get mp3s onto my iPhone?

I use a little program called Waltr. It's literally drag & drop. Just plug the phone in and open Waltr on your Mac. Then just drag the mp3s into the little er, vortex. Job done. You don't even have to have the mp3s in itunes, I think.

I wish Waltr worked for ebooks too. Oh well.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by John F

With iTunes going away, how will I be able to get mp3s onto my iPhone?

I have no answer only another question: How will we backup our iOS/iPadOS devices to our computers? I prefer to not use the iCloud for backup purposes.

You would think that Apple would offer a dedicated backup app on the Mac for iPhones and iPads. I never really understood why iTunes, which name suggests music, also was the app for podcasts, photo storage, books and docs, movies and videos and TV shows, iPhone and iPad backups, etc. It never really did any of those things very well due to bugs, but it seems to have been the app used for all the miscellaneous tools and functions that didn’t have their own dedicated apps. It was a mess, and had been for over a decade. Good riddance! But we need those capabilities and preferably in apps appropriately named and designed for each.

ETA: Okay I see I missed the discussion about using the Finder in MacOS Catalina to sync iPhones and iPads. That actually makes sense. I wonder if the Watches can be synced that way too?

[tomsem]

Dark Mode finally. Hopefully by the time of release most major apps will update to support that.

Looking forward to new Siri voice(s). I use Speak Screen a lot for TTS and it will be more pleasant.

I love all the iPad slideover/windowing improvements. Pencil improvements, undo gesture, etc. Will be nice if reading apps pick up the multiple window support quickly.

‘Desktop class’ Safari on iPad: love all the keyboard shortcuts.

External drive (hard drives too) and File server support (looks like you’ll still have to use cloud or iTunes to get files off?)

Looks like I won’t need Luna display any more with Sidecar.

Hand-off to HomePod. Wonder if that works with any media app?

SwiftUI looks great for developers.

Voice navigation of macOS and iOS is impressive.

[OtinG]

The improved Apple Maps app looked rather good. The current app blows chunks, and unless you live in CA it is pathetic as far as detail. I hope this gets it closer to competing with Google Maps. But they definitely need to extend the detailed maps to cover the entire US rather than just select areas.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

That Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR sounds really neat, especially if you just won the lottery. I suspect it's mostly going to be used in very high end design and graphics shops.

I was curious how it compared to the 1983 Apple Lisa. Turns out Apple sold the Lisa for $9,995 in 1983, which in 2019 dollars is about $25,645. Supposedly they sold about 100,000 Lisas, although that seems hard to believe, especially since they considered it a huge failure.

BTW, my Apple II+ cost about $2,200 in 1981. That would be about $6,185 in today’s dollars.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

They said that syncing will be built into the Finder on Mac. Meanwhile iTunes will be sticking around on Windows.

Plus, of course, you can always use iCloud which seems to be the preferred Apple method.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I was curious how it compared to the 1983 Apple Lisa. Turns out Apple sold the Lisa for $9,995 in 1983, which in 2019 dollars is about $25,645. Supposedly they sold about 100,000 Lisas, although that seems hard to believe, especially since they considered it a huge failure.

BTW, my Apple II+ cost about $2,200 in 1981. That would be about $6,185 in today’s dollars.

If I recall correctly, my Apple IIe cost about the same in 1983. Yea, computers were expensive back then.

For a while, you had to have a Lisa to program on the Mac, so that may have inflated the numbers a bit.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

If I recall correctly, my Apple IIe cost about the same in 1983. Yea, computers were expensive back then.

For a while, you had to have a Lisa to program on the Mac, so that may have inflated the numbers a bit.

Very expensive. At my work we looked into getting a 5 MB Winchester HDD for our PC in the early 1980s and it cost more than the computer had! So the bean counters said to keep using the two 5.25” floppies and forget about a HDD.

Rumor is that Apple buried 2,700 Lisas in a Logan, Utah landfill to get rid of them.

[tomsem]

mouse support too:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/3/18...port-wwdc-2019

Wonder about track pads...