Amazing Tech From Apple Developers Conference
Yesterday Apple held their annual World Wide Developers Conference in San Jose, California. With a packed house of over 6,000 developers and media, Apple showed them and the world that they still have the ability to make high-quality hardware. Tim Cook and the Apple crew talked about six products that were improved. Those products were the Apple TV, iWatch, Mac, iMac, iOS and the big reveal of the Home Pod. The conference contained some exciting new features and products, but some stood out more than others.
The biggest surprise was at the end of the conference when Phil Schiller announced the new Home Pod. Joining products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, Apple finally released to the public their version of a smart speaker. To be available in December for purchase at $349, the Home Pod seems to be the speaker of all speakers. Touted as the speaker that will Rock the House the Home Pod contains a 7-tweeter array allowing for consistent 360 sound and one big woofer which is supposed to create the best music experience for the listeners. The Home Pod is also meant to be Spatially aware using its surroundings to optimize the sound that it produces. Finally, it contains Siri as well. With Siri, you will be able to do everything you could with it on your phone but now with the Home Pod, even send messages. Currently, though the Home Pod only uses Apple Music, you are not able to connect Spotify.
The new HomePod Courtesy: Apple
Another big release by Apple was the new iMac Pro. It is the same size as the big iMac, but the insides are completely different. Coated in space gray, the iMac Pro is a professional gamer and producers dream. After watching and listening about the new specs and getting lost, I can say three things, it’s crazy fast, state of the art graphics and it looks sexy. The iMac Pro is capable of 18 cores instead of the regular eight core iMac, up to 4.5GHz and 42MB cache and can have up to 128gb in memory so you could do a lot all at once. It also contains four USB-c ports and can produce One Billion Colors, yes that is a Billion. The price will be $4,999 for those who want to have that kind of power within a computer.
The new iMac Pro Courtesy: Apple
Among these two massive releases, Apple also announced a new 10.5 inch iPad Pro. This iPad will have a full, on-screen keyboard and allow much more multitasking for its users. Apple also announced its new AR-kit, this will give developers a chance to integrate more Augmented Reality into their apps if they wish. Other long-awaited additions which are a part of the new iOS 11 were lane assistance for divers in Maps. Also in iOS the ability to get translations through Siri and you will be able to pay friends through iMessages, all those features will be available with the release of iOS 11 in the Fall.
These Announcements are a great sign of what Apple views as the most important products to them. Later this year we will be getting a new iPhone which will be its 10th anniversary. Although many of the new announcements are already present in our lives such as the Augmented Reality SnapChat offers, the smart home systems like the Amazon Echo and Google home and the ability to pay your friends whether it is through Facebook Messenger or Venmo, it is great to see Apple join the rest of the world and create some competition with the other products available. I personally cannot wait to see what comes next.