Slashdot Mirror
Apple Shows Off New iOS 7, Mac OS X At WWDC
Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off his company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco with a short video emphasizing the importance of design, particularly that which evokes some sort of emotional connection such as love or delight. But that sentimental bit aside, this WWDC was all business: huge numbers of developers attend this annual event, packing sessions designed to help give their apps an edge in Apple's crowded online marketplace (some 50 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, Cook told the audience during his keynote). Apple also uses its WWDC to unveil new products or services, attracting sizable interest from the tech press.
This time around, the company introduced Mac OS X 'Mavericks,' which includes 'Finder Tabs' (which allow the user to deploy multiple tabs within a Finder window—great for organization, in theory) and document tags (for easier searching). Macs will now support multiple displays, including HDTVs, with the ability to tweak elements between screens; Apple claims the operating system will also interact with the CPU in a more efficient manner.
On top of that, Apple rolled out some new hardware: an upgraded MacBook Air with faster graphics, better battery life (9 hours for the 11-inch edition, while the 13-inch version can draw 12 hours' worth of power). Apple has decided to jump into the cloud-productivity space with iWork for iCloud, which makes the company's iWork portfolio (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) browser-based; this is a clear response to Office 365 and Google Docs.
And finally, the executives onstage turned back to iOS, which (according to Apple) powers some 600 million devices around the world. This version involves more than a few tweaks: from a redesigned 'Slide to Unlock' at the bottom of the screen, to the bottom-up control panel that slides over the home-screen, to the 'flat' (as predicted) icons and an interface that adjusts as the phone is tilted, this is a total redesign. As a software designer, Ive is clearly a huge fan of basic shapes—circles and squares— and layering translucent elements atop one another."
This time around, the company introduced Mac OS X 'Mavericks,' which includes 'Finder Tabs' (which allow the user to deploy multiple tabs within a Finder window—great for organization, in theory) and document tags (for easier searching). Macs will now support multiple displays, including HDTVs, with the ability to tweak elements between screens; Apple claims the operating system will also interact with the CPU in a more efficient manner.
On top of that, Apple rolled out some new hardware: an upgraded MacBook Air with faster graphics, better battery life (9 hours for the 11-inch edition, while the 13-inch version can draw 12 hours' worth of power). Apple has decided to jump into the cloud-productivity space with iWork for iCloud, which makes the company's iWork portfolio (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) browser-based; this is a clear response to Office 365 and Google Docs.
And finally, the executives onstage turned back to iOS, which (according to Apple) powers some 600 million devices around the world. This version involves more than a few tweaks: from a redesigned 'Slide to Unlock' at the bottom of the screen, to the bottom-up control panel that slides over the home-screen, to the 'flat' (as predicted) icons and an interface that adjusts as the phone is tilted, this is a total redesign. As a software designer, Ive is clearly a huge fan of basic shapes—circles and squares— and layering translucent elements atop one another."
I mean really... why?
The new IOS 7 UI looks an awful lot like another mobile UI I've seen without the 3d effect. We better check to see if flat images are patented or part of brand distinction.
Things that caught my eye were (1) iCloud keychain to allow better mobile-system tracking of passwords within the iOS and OS X framework, (2) iBooks on Mac (FINALLY!), (3) some expanded multitasking in iOS 7 (although it's not clear if it's really extended capabilities over iOS 6 or just a spiffier UI), and (4) Airdrop from within iOS 7 to nearby devices. The new Mac Pro line looks sharp, and I definitely lust for one even if I don't need one.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Windows Explorer for Mac OS X.
Explorer in Windows or one of a million shitty things that sort of work in Linux.
Macs will now support multiple displays, including HDTVs,
Um....
Macs have supported multiple displays for something like 20 years. They've supported HDTVs since DVI-HDMI adapters were invented. The news here is that OSX Mavericks has significantly improved multi-monitor management, such as the ability to have a menu bar and dock on all screens simultaneously and new window grouping features.
I know it's hip to complain about how the editors can do basic fact checking, but this is ridiculous.
Two words: Apple Maps.
Is it me or is iOS 7 a total rip-off of Android and Google's apps? Same flat style icons, same "cards", similar notifications and on-going events, similar features etc,
I'm just... surprised.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
We waited a half hour after the end of the keynote for this terrible summary, really? Multiple-monitor support has been in the Mac OS since 1987; the summary doesn't make it even reportedly clear that today's announcement was about (much-needed, IMO) new features for said ability. And "including hdtvs"? Again, this has been possible since hdtvs came into existence (via hdmi out or div->hdmi adapters). The new feature here is being able to use an airplay-cable device as a secondary display.
So, Steve Jobs gives us the NeXT CUBE and Cook and Co. give us the Mac Pro CyLINDER.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Does OSX Mavericks come with a Sarah Palin or a Tom Cruise doll?
I mean really... why?
Now that Apple.com is updated, you can find out why - it's a cylinder because the GPUs and CPU are mounted around a central cooling core made from a single piece of aluminum with a single massive fan on top.
If only there was a way to google it!
The TB bus does not have a lot of bandwidth it's only pci-e X4 and I hope that each port or has it's own X4 link or at least one X4 link for 2 ports.
Thunderbolt 2 is 20Gb/s. There are 6 ports and 3 Thunderbolt controllers (each controller handles a full 20Gb/s across 2 ports).
FWIW, PCIe 1.0 x8 is only 16Gb/s and x4 is only 8Gb/s.
The bandwidth here is basically faster than 6 x8 slots.
Anyhow... that's a lot faster than any consumer or prosumer storage solutions. It might be a little slow only if you were driving an external video card but the internal cards can handle 3X 4K displays already.
Looking at all the work Apple has done on that Mac Pro and Macbook Air, it seems they aren't putting all their eggs in the mobile basket any more.
Good to see some common sense. Post-PC is marketing hype. The PC will be standard technology for at least the next 100 years.
missing the point how are the TB chips linked to the chip set? and does each controller have it's own X4 link?
Does OSX Mavericks come with a Sarah Palin or a Tom Cruise doll?
No. But it does come with images of the big wave surfing location, Mavericks, for which it is actually named. A location that has 25 foot surf on an average day. A really cool place.
"Thunderbolt 2 is 20Gb/s"
Remember that 'Thunderbolt' speed numbers include both the PCIe and the Displayport data channels(and, to the best of my knowledge, the capacity allocation between the video and data channels is fixed, even if only one is being used). By aggregating the previous 4 10Gb channels into two 20Gb channels, they allowed full Displayport 1.2 resolution and expect to bottleneck external storage devices slightly less; but the PCIe side still looks like PCIe 2.0 x4. Not slow; but substantially slower than x8 and x16 PCIe 2.0 and slower still than PCIe 3.
The Finder is the windowing aspect of the OS. It's what the windowing system of NeXTSTEP has become.
It all starts at 0
And PCIe 1.0 is well and truly obsolete. PCIe 3.0 is shipping already and we have devices targeted at workstations maxing out PCIe 2.0 x8 links handily. Never mind the latency increases imposed by Thunderbolt.
TB has its place, but as the exclusive means of expansion in a system it is lacking.
I've been waiting for this event for weeks, as we're buying 90ish laptops for our school district... faculty use.
First thing I noticed was the MacBook Air update... and how they are surprisingly dropping the clock speed of existing systems in favor of battery life. While I know their new software may be more efficient, and even the chipset itself may be more efficient, it just surprised me. Being around for the grand ol days of the "great hardware race", I didn't think they would actually move backwards (from 1.8GHz to 1.3GHz). First thing I thought of was that they are doing this so that they can have the great hardware race again... and announce faster systems all over again for that lineup.
Next up, the Mac Pro looks like an homage paid to the G4 Cube. While I will admit owning one and thinking it was cool at the time, I think someone else pointed out here that the elegance is lost in the external cable mess. But let's be honest, the people who are being power users are already going for external enclosures for everything (especially storage) because it can be had faster and cheaper by going not Apple. To all those also who say "OMG you can't upgrade it", my experience has been those who buy Mac Pros work them hard and run them until they quit or completely replace them anyway. They want an all in one solution that they can use and replace as a whole... because they know about graphic design / video editing, and not necessarily about performance computing.
iOS7. Auto updating, super cool for what we do with 800 iPads sitting here. I like it, even though it seems to be more like the Android phone I tested for a week recently (Galaxy S4). I was really hoping that with the release of iOS7, they would have been releasing what I consider "a properly sized phone for 2013". They didn't. Le sad.
iCloud ... platform agnostic document modification through a web browser, cool... but not when you start having to pay for an over X amount of storage every month. They are just trying to generate more recurring revenue. iCloud keychain seems like a terrible idea in terms of security. I say this because of the whole keys to the kingdom approach. All of my users use iCloud now, and they still are using sticky notes on their laptops, though I'm trying to break them of this.
Lastly, I am annoyed that none of this was even remotely ready to go today. I was hoping to be surprised with the release of software and that they had actually secretly worked with developers to have it out remotely soon. As a school, releasing iOS7 when school starts, well.. that's just a pain in the ass. Tim Cook is one of these most underwhelming speakers, and really just irritates me when I hear him. Whoever the dude in the blue shirt was... that guy was great with his speeches.
PS... thank god no more cat names
Oh sorry, we were looking for Google Maps.....that's GOOGLE maps.
missing the point how are the TB chips linked to the chip set? and does each controller have it's own X4 link?
The TB 2.0 chipsets use a x4 PCIe 2.0 link per controller. Guess that means that each pair of two TB ports shares the bandwidth of a controller (6 ports / 3 controllers / 12 PCIe 2.0 lanes total.
Probably not fast enough for external graphics that would outperform the (extremely fast) internal graphics solution but still orders of magnitude more bandwidth than any current external consumer or prosumer storage solution.
I noticed that I only see a single CPU package on the slides, yet somehow they can cram 12-cpu cores in there? The highest Xeon E5s I've seen appear to max out at 8cores/16threads. So the only way I can see that happening is if they can somehow get a multi-processor card or dual CPU mulit-cpu die package in there.
Except that Dolphin has tabs, and its predecessor Konqueror had tabs for as long as I remember. Windows explorer still doesn't.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Bringing iBooks to the MacOS is good.
MacOS and iOS need to merge - We need to be able to use our data and our applications no matter what the hardware.
Apple should offer legacy support back to Classic, at least, with full 68K/PPC support - there's a tremendous amount of excellent software that was never brought to OSX or iOS. People using that software can't upgrade and abandon their data and applications so they don't. If Apple offered legacy support I have eleven machines I would upgrade and I know of many more people in the same boat. Since they won't support my data and apps I keep fixing old machines and Apple's not making profits on new hardware and OS updates from us.
As punishment, you must use a green felt wallpaper for a week.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Sorry, but there is nothing professional about the new Mac Pro. It is Eye Candy; nothing more. Its proprietary layout means that there is very little that will be upgradeable (save for maxing out its measly four RAM slots, or swapping out the SSD). CPU not fast enough anymore? Graphics cards out-of-date? Sorry, time to buy a new Mac Pro. But of course that is what Apple want. Heaven forbid that someone would actually want to upgrade their CPU or change to the latest generation GPU.
What is really anti-Professional about the Mac Pro? Dumping Internal storage bays and PCIe slots moving everything to external interfaces. SSDs have their place and so too do spinning disks. I could choose what I wanted, but with this new Mac Pro I have no choice. I would now have to have a stack of external drives sitting at my workstation. It won't look so pretty then.
On top of that, plenty of companies have invested in PCIe-based hardware (Audio DAW cards and HD-SDI interface cards are just two examples of many). Companies who have invested heavily in such hardware are now SOL. What will they do? Buy an overpriced Mac Pro and reinvest in all new Thunderbolt-based hardware (that most likely doesn't exist yet given the slow uptake of Thunderbolt), or switch to PC based hardware?
I have to look at the reason for the redesign, and it is very easy to see: Apple (and Intel) own Thunderbolt. They make a cut of every Thunderbolt device sold. Of course, they are going to push Thunderbolt over everything else. Did Apple actually listen to what their professional clients need?
It's funny how people have this recollection of past Apple products being these dramatically original products. The only Apple product for which this could actually have been said to be the case was the original Mac (an even that is debatable). Every other major product was greeted at introduction with comments like "It's been done before," "a me-too product," "a niche product." And in the years between releases of new Apple product categories, there have always been numerous comments that to the effect that Apple has lost its creativity.
I guess people like to imagine in retrospect that they were perceptive enough to recognize at introduction that the iPod, iPhone, iMac, and iPad were going to be great commercial successes. But in fact, none of them were startlingly original in any obvious ways. All resembled products that had been done before. What has distinguished Apple's products has always been execution rather than concept.
That also means that I can't judge the significance of the changes to OS X or iOS. There were very few features that I haven't seen before. On the other had, none of them have every been done quite right. I won't be able to judge them until I can actually play with them to see if the execution is up to Apple's past standards.
Under the new naming convention, Apple employees will be known as Stallions, developers shall be know as Geldings, and the consumers shall be known as Mares. The apple education consumers are called Ponies.
And Apple Hater will be called asses.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.