Recorded in front of a live audience at The California Theatre in San Jose, John Gruber is joined by Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi to discuss the news from WWDC: new Mac hardware, the new iPad Pro, Mac OS 10.13 “High Sierra”, iOS 11, the upcoming HomePod, and more.
While at WWDC this week I had a chance to listen to Apple’s new HomePod and compare it to some of the competing products on the market. The results were somewhat surprising.
Music is a huge part of my life. I play guitar, record, mix, play live and listen every single day. I love many genres of music and the talented people that make it. I want my music to sound the best it possibly can, in all situations.
I use Future Sonics Ear Monitors because they are quite simply the best in-ear headphones on the market—nothing beats them. In my home, I have a Sonos bar and a few satellite speakers to fill the room wirelessly. They do sound great, but I don’t often use them for just listening to music.
I mentioned that the results of listening to the HomePod were surprising—that’s in a good way. I never expected the sound from this relatively small speaker to fill a room so well. It wasn’t just loud, it was crisp, clear, warm, and filled with bass. It sounded so good, I was truly surprised.
And that was just with one HomePod speaker.
The real listening magic came when I heard two HomePods together. The HomePods automatically talked to each other and split the channels of the song. It wasn’t just adding another HomePod increased the loudness of the music in the room, they seemed to intelligently know what the other was playing.
The HomePod will also adjust its sound depending on where you place it in the room. If it’s against a wall, it will know and play the music according. If you move it to an open space, it will readjust for those conditions as well, all automatically.
I also listened to the same songs using the Sonos Play 3 and Amazon Echo. The Echo was so bad, it’s not even worth discussing. The sound was awful—it’s like it was being played in a tin can. I understand that people have the Echo for many uses, but I hope playing music isn’t one of them.
The Sonos was better, but it still didn’t measure up to the HomePod. Being a fan of Sonos and owning a system myself, I expected a lot more from it.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about the HomePod, from setting it up to how many can be connected and what that experience would be like. I’m not even sure how Siri will work on the HomePod.
What I can say is that from a listeners standpoint, the HomePod is one hell of a great sounding speaker. One will certainly not be enough for me.
Sports Illustrated:
Could a 45-year-old writer with no baseball experience beyond seventh grade, armed with only desire and an obsessive work ethic, go deep in a major league park? It would take a helluva lot of swings to find out.
I can identify with this quest. 40lbs ago, I could dunk a basketball; not Jordan-like but I had some hops. I used to be able to throw a perfect spiral 60 yards downfield. Not accurately but with some distance. And I’ve scored my fair share of hockey goals. But I’ve never held a bat in a major league ballpark and “gone yard”. Definitely a bucket list item but, after reading this article and realizing the work it took this guy, I may have to scratch it off as impossible.
Hong Kong Free Press:
Chinese authorities say they have uncovered a massive underground operation run by Apple employees selling computer and phone users’ personal data.
Twenty-two people have been detained on suspicion of infringing individuals’ privacy and illegally obtaining their digital personal information, according to a statement Wednesday from local police in southern Zhejiang province.
And:
Of the 22 suspects, 20 were Apple employees who allegedly used the company’s internal computer system to gather users’ names, phone numbers, Apple IDs, and other data, which they sold as part of a scam worth more than 50 million yuan (US$7.36 million).
The statement did not specify whether the data belonged to Chinese or foreign Apple customers.
The good news is, it looks like this is news about the breaking up of this black market, not simply uncovering it. But the allegation that this was an operation run by Apple employees is, if true, a big black eye for Apple in China.
PC Gamer:
As far as specifications go, the iMac Pro is a pretty beefy PC, and in all the right places. It’s got one heck of a CPU, and a yet to be announced AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56.
Apple says that the $5000 base price for the new iMac Pro is a good deal, comparing its new computer to similar systems, specifically HP, which Apple said would have costed you $7000 for a similar system.
But the old adage is that Apple computers are overpriced for what they are and that if you DIY, you can get an equivalent system for cheap. So let’s try it! We went to our friends at PCPartPicker and built a system that attempted to match the new baseline iMac Pro feature for feature, to see how much we would actually save:
“Things are worth what people will pay” may be true but, in this case, it looks like what Apple is charging for the new iMac Pro is actually in line with what you can reasonably expect a powerful system like this to cost.
The New York Times:
Davey Lambert, a 48-year-old man from Gateshead, England, died this week after crashing at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, an annual motorcycle event here that claimed two more lives on Wednesday. Four competitors died in the races last year, and another was killed the year before that. Those fatalities brought the death toll at the event, known as the TT, to 146 since it was first run in 1907. If one includes fatal accidents occurring during the Manx Grand Prix, the amateur races held later in the summer on the same Snaefell Mountain Course, the figure rises above 250.
For this reason, and others, the TT has few parallels within global sports. The concept of mortality underpins everything here. It gives the race its prestige, opens it to criticism, makes it exhilarating, makes it terrifying. It puts the island on the map.
The people who race the Isle of Man TT are certifiably insane. YouTube has lots of videos of the racing and it’s often terrifying. Thanks to my friend Jared Earle for the link.
Quartz, on this Reddit story about a junior developer who inadvertently erased all data from the company’s production database:
The CTO told me to leave and never come back. He also informed me that apparently legal would need to get involved due to severity of the data loss. I basically offered and pleaded to let me help in someway to redeem my self and i was told that i “completely fucked everything up”…
This is a timeless tale, oft repeated. Some examples:
In December, a coding error in Snap’s latest iOS update accidentally jammed the network that keeps more than 15 million computer systems synchronized to the clock. A typo from a busy Clinton campaign aide inadvertently opened the door to the Russian hack of John Podesta’s emails. The British Airways power outage that disrupted tens of thousands of flights last week was reportedly caused by a tech support worker accidentally flipping the power off.
And this, about psychological safety:
An extensive review of employee teams at Google found that the most successful were those with a high level of psychological safety. In other words, when employees felt safe enough to take risks (and make mistakes) without being shamed or criticized, they did better work.
And:
“For all that’s wrong with Amazon, the best part was when someone fucked up, the team and the company focused only on how we make it never happen again,” a former employee wrote on the forum. “A human mistake was a collective failure, not an individual one.”
Terrific read.
This is one of my all-time favorite iPhone ads, mostly due to the voiceover by the great Carl Sagan.
To get a sense of why I think so highly of him, spend a minute reading Sagan’s Wikipedia page. To me, he’s the real deal and his words ring true.
If you missed the keynote and want to learn more about iOS 11, Jeff Benjamin from 9to5Mac has your back.
The video embedded below does an excellent job walking you through the interface changes, and there are a lot of them. This video is definitely worth your time.
Hey, there’s a headphone jack!
Lots and lots of interesting stuff here, both in pictures and in the walkthrough text.
Edward C. Baig, USA Today:
Alexa and Siri, rival voice assistants on Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s iPhone, don’t directly communicate with one another. But the Amazon executive in charge of Alexa and the Amazon Echo said he’d welcome the idea.
“You should be able to tell `Alexa, ask Siri X,’” said David Limp, senior vice president of devices at Amazon.
“If Apple or Google want to come calling, my phone number is out there, they can call…I don’t know if I can envision it but I hope that will happen on behalf of customers,” Limp told a group of journalists at the Wired Business Conference Wednesday in New York.
Interesting politics, Limp reaching out through the media.
I would welcome a common currency for AI assistants, a language that would allow them to communicate with each other. There’s obvious resistance to that approach, since it would weaken the walls of the ecosystem. But it would open doors for collaboration, and that’s a win for end users.
Apple:
The Apple Design Awards recognize state-of-the-art apps that reflect the very best in design, innovation, and technology on Apple platforms. Learn about these winning apps and the talented developers behind them.
As usual, this page will cost me a small fortune.
Join the women@wwdc and James Dempsey and the Breakpoints for an evening of mingling and music to benefit App Camp For Girls!
I’ll be there tonight with my guitar to help support James and App Camp for Girls. There’s still time to grab a ticket!
Variety:
Apple’s first offering, “Planet of the Apps,” feels like something that was developed at a cocktail party, and not given much more rigorous thought or attention after the pitcher of mojitos was drained.
It’s not terrible, but essentially, it’s a bland, tepid, barely competent knock-off of “Shark Tank.” Apple made its name on game-changing innovations, but this show is decidedly not one of them.
I haven’t seen it yet (I’ll watch it eventually but I’m in no rush) but this is the exact review from a “real” TV critic I would have expected on the show.
FastCompany:
Privacy has been one of Apple’s core messages over the last few years, especially as it’s positioned itself in stark contrast against major rivals like Google and Amazon. While the new anti-tracking feature may not have a direct impact on those companies’ bottom lines–the fine details of Apple’s implementation of its privacy protection feature seems to differentiate between first-party sites that you visit and third-party tracking networks–Apple is still drawing a strategic line in the sand.
Companies such as Google, Amazon, and even Facebook want to know everything about you, and then use that information to present you with ads for products that you might like to buy–good or bad, those are their business models. Apple, on the other hand, is focused on selling hardware to consumers, and it’s less interested in monetizing where you go and what you do afterwards.
Apple is in a unique position because of their stance on privacy and their business model.
This is pretty incredible.
Snopes: >Numerous brands of color laser printers leave coded metadata in barely perceptible yellow dots that can be used to trace a printed document to its source, a feature originally intended as a deterrent to counterfeiting currency with laser printers. > >While a majority of laser printers are designed to produce this secret metadata, it is unclear exactly how many printing companies and models employ the technology.
I thought everyone knew about this. I remember hearing about it in the late 1990s as color printers were becoming more common in offices. We were told not to try and photocopy money – it wouldn’t work and we’d be tracked. If you have documents with sensitive information that you need to dispose of, consider using a secure document shredding Lynchburg service.
The Intercept:
The ad blocker — which Google is calling a “filter” — would roll out next year, and would be the default setting for Chrome when fully functional. In other words, the normal user sparking up their Chrome browser simply wouldn’t see the ads blocked by the system.
What ads would get blocked? The ones not sold by Google, for the most part.
This is a way for Google to crush its few remaining competitors by pre-installing an ad zapper that it controls to the most common web browser. That’s a great way for a monopoly to remain a monopoly.
I was automatically and understandably skeptical about the stories that Google would create an ad blocker for the Chrome web browser. As expected, this benefits Google the most and might actually hurt many users.
EFF:
Contrary to the inviting “Sounds good” button to accept the new policy and get to tweeting, the changes Twitter has made around user tracking and data personalization do not sound good for user privacy. For example, the company will now record and store non-EU users’ off-Twitter web browsing history for up to 30 days, up from 10 days in the previous policy.
Worst of all, the “control over your data” promised by the pop-up is on an opt-out basis, giving users choices only after Twitter has set their privacy settings to invasive defaults.
It’s typically sleazy for Twitter to have the pop up give the impression that nothing will change.
From Apple’s Planet of the Apps web site:
The season premiere is finally here! Watch this groundbreaking new series about apps and their creators. Featuring Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gary Vaynerchuk, and will.i.am.
The first episode is available here for a limited time. Join Apple Music to get new episodes weekly.
The feel of the show is like Shark Tank meets The Voice, all built around app developers looking for funding. You can watch the first episode, for a limited time, on Apple’s official Planet of the Apps site.
D’Marge:
Coming at you from Scotland’s Brewmeister, Snake Venom boasts a warning label and a whopping 67.5% ABV.
Nobody show this to Jim. Every bottle comes with a bright yellow hang-tag warning label. It should come with a lock and a designated EMT. Yeesh.
iOS 11 is a 64-bit only operating system. That means that any phone made before the A7 chip was released won’t be able to upgrade to iOS 11.
The first iPhone with the A7 chip was the iPhone 5s. The iPhone 5 and 5c do not have the A7. The iPad Mini 2 does have the A7. The iPad Air does. The iPad 4 (iPad with Retina Display, released September 2012) does not.
As to your apps, head over to Settings > General > About, then tap Applications. You’ll likely see a list of applications under the heading NO UPDATES AVAILABLE. Those are the apps you’ll likely lose access to if you upgrade to iOS 11.
Once you make the transition to iOS 11, if you follow the same path, you’ll see a similar list. If any of these apps are critical to your workflow, check with the developer to see if there’s an update planned. If not, start looking for a replacement and a way to port any data you may still need.
Reuters:
Apple Inc customers will soon have more choices as the company looks to reduce long wait times for iPhone repairs at its retail stores.
By the end of 2017, Apple will to put its proprietary machines for mending cracked iPhone glass in about 400 authorized third-party repair centers in 25 countries, company executives told Reuters.
Among the first recipients is Minneapolis-based Best Buy, which has long sold and serviced Apple products. The electronics retailer already has one of the screen-repair machines at a Miami-area store and one coming soon to an outlet in Sunnyvale, California.
This should take some of the pressure off of Apple Stores, extend the reach of iPhone repair to people who live near a Best Buy, etc., but not near an Apple Store.
CydiaGeeks:
In iOS 11, managing your storage just got a lot easier. Apple has renamed the Storage & iCloud Usage into iPhone storage. Within this page, the design looks a bit different too. The interface didn’t capture my attention as much as a new option called Offload did.
This is a real boon to folks with storage issues, especially valuable for 16GB phones.
[Via The Verge]
Some very interesting questions from Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, including the question of HomePod being able to place a phone call, and whether Apple has retails aspirations (ordering product on your HomePod). The answer seems to be no to both. The approach seems to be, a limited version of Siri for starters, then more and more domains added in over time.
AppleInsider:
The second day of Worldwide Developer Conference opened with a conversation with Michelle Obama, first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, and Lisa Jackson, Apple’s Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives.
Obama discussed her experiences in the White House, including efforts to address childhood obesity, support military veterans and their families, to inspire young people to achieve higher education and global efforts to help girls attend school. She specifically noted that there are still many areas around the world where girls still aren’t considered worthy of an education.
AppleInsider has some video but I hope Apple posts an “official” version soon for us to watch.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off on Monday in San Jose, California, the first time it’s been in the city since 2002. Not only did Apple have the pressure of putting on the conference in San Jose, they also had to release great updates for developers and consumers. They delivered on all counts.
Before I get to my favorite parts of the keynote, I have to say a few words about WWDC in San Jose. I’ve talked to a lot of developers and journalists this week and the one thing everyone keeps saying about this year’s WWDC is that it is more relaxed. It’s true.
There’s a very chill feeling about the conference this year. From the front plaza where they have tables and chairs for developers to eat, work and chat with friends, to the surrounding area of restaurants and bars, everything seems happy and relaxed. The hustle and bustle of San Francisco is gone, replaced with a clean, warm, and relaxed atmosphere.
Okay, let’s look at what Apple did during the keynote.
Apple had a busy keynote day, unveiling a lot of new software and hardware products. Two of my favorites were the iMac Pro and iOS 11 for iPad.
Any doubt that the Mac is important to Apple should be gone now. We all wondered what was going on with the Mac earlier this year, but the company delivered yesterday.
For many pros, the iMac design is perfect, but it needed more power—workstation-class power. That is exactly what the iMac Pro delivers. A 27-inch 5K display and up to 18-core Xeon processors will give you all the power you can handle.
Of course, there are still going to be pro markets that require the modularity of the Mac Pro, and Apple has promised to deliver on that too.
iMac and MacBook models did get updated yesterday, bringing faster processors and graphics performance, so anyone that was waiting for an update to the regular iMac can now get one.
We all expect software updates at WWDC, but I was very impressed with the attention Apple paid to the iPad in iOS 11.
iOS 11 makes multitasking on iPad even more powerful with a new customizable Dock that provides quick access to frequently used apps and documents from any screen, and a redesigned app switcher makes it easier to move between pairs of active apps, used in Split View and now Slide Over. The new Files app keeps everything in one place, whether files are stored locally, in iCloud Drive or across other providers like Box, Dropbox and more, and with Drag and Drop available across the system, moving images and text is easier than ever. Apple Pencil is more deeply integrated into iPad with support for inline drawing and a new Instant Notes feature opens Notes from the Lock Screen by simply tapping Apple Pencil on the display.
That is very impressive. It says to me that Apple is getting more serious about the iPad as a computing device. Changes needed to be made to iOS so people could take advantage of what the iPad is, and they did that. Will they do more in the future? I think they absolutely will.
Mac OS High Sierra is not full of brand new features, but it’s difficult to say it’s not an important release. The introduction of an all-new files system is enough to make this a great release. Apple will include some other changes in the OS that will make it better to use on a daily basis. I’m good with that. To be honest, these are some of my favorite types macOS releases—clean up and make it better.
I love my 9.7-inch iPad Pro, but I have a feeling I’m going to like the 10.5-inch even more. I use the iPad quite a bit, but I switch between the 9.7-inch and 12-inch models. At first glance, I’m thinking the 10.5-inch may be the perfect size and give me the Tru-Tone display. I’ll need to spend some time with it to see though.
Apple had a lot of balls in the air for WWDC and as far as I’m concerned, they pulled off a great keynote, with a lot of significant updates for developers, consumers and pro users.
IOS 11, macOS, High Sierra, iMac Pro, MacBook, iPad—it was a power packed day.
BuzzFeed:
Today, the company debuted two iPad Pros targeted at hardcore users — a next-generation version of its 12.9-inch-display model and an entirely new 10.5-inch-display model. Both boast dramatically improved displays, more powerful innards, and more storage (a 512GB option!). Alongside them, Apple unveiled iOS 11, a new version of its mobile operating system that’s heavy on iPad-specific enhancements.
I’m very impressed with the new iPad and even more so with the next version of iOS. The combination is going to be enough to get me to (finally) retire my old iPad and buy the newest one.
The Verge:
Among the many announcements at WWDC yesterday, Apple cut the cost of its 2TB iCloud storage plan in half — from $19.99 a month to $9.99. This replaces the now-defunct 1TB plan that was previously offered at that price point.
That leaves three options for iCloud pricing now: $0.99 per month for 50GB of storage, $2.99 per for 200GB, and $9.99 per month for 2TB. Free storage (unfortunately) is stuck at a mere 5GB for now.
Any cost savings is good. This makes it much easier to recommend iCloud storage to my photography students.
The Washington Post:
Analysts say the question of whether Apple can succeed in building great artificial-intelligence products is as fundamental to the company’s next decade as the iPhone was to its previous one. But the tech giant faces a formidable dilemma because the nature of artificial intelligence pushes Apple far out of its comfort zone of sleekly designed hardware and services.
AI programming demands a level of data collection and mining that is at odds with Apple’s rigorous approach to privacy, as well as its positioning as a company that doesn’t profile consumers. Moreover, Apple’s long-standing penchant for secrecy has made the company less desirable in the eyes of potential star recruits, who hail from the country’s top computer science departments and are attracted to companies that publish research.
I don’t agree with the “struggling” part of the story but it’s still an interesting look at Apple’s AI efforts.