New Macs, iMac Pro, High Sierra, iOS 11 and HomePod

At Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference today they announced many new products and future software including macOS High Sierra and iOS 11. In addition to new iMacs and MacBooks, Apple announced the iMac Pro and HomePod which will be available at the end of the year. Learn about the highlights of today's Apple keynote event.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today Apple had a ton of new announcements at the Worldwide Developers Conference. Let's take a look at the highlights.
So we finally know what the next version of macOS is going to be called. It's going to be called High Sierra. It's kind of like how we had Lion, and then Mountain Lion, Leopard, and then Snow Leopard. We're going from Sierra to High Sierra. Apple seemed to imply that there's going to be an emphasis on improving performance and optimizing the system. Not necessarily throwing a whole bunch of new features in there. But we are going to get some like the ability to prevent AutoPlay on pages that we visit in Safari. A split view that's going to allow you to do the compose window and the regular mail window at the same  time. The APFS file system which is Apple's new file system which is going to be faster and more reliable. Also, just some better graphics and all sorts of things for developers that are going to lead to better apps. 
Next Apple got into hardware announcements. They announced, basically, that they are updating all iMacs and all MacBooks. So there's going to be new iMacs with speed bumps across the board. More memory in them including up to 64 gigs of ram available in the highest end. There's going to be better graphics chips. There are going to be Thunderbolt 3 ports. Faster drives and bigger drives as well and those are available today. The prices are about the same.
Also MacBooks. So there's going to be speed bumps along all the different MacBooks even including the MacBook Air which a lot of people thought maybe wouldn't be updated at all. But you'll be able to get some pretty good MacBooks and those are also available today. 
Now kind of a surprise is a new iMac called the iMac Pro. This is going to be a different color. It's going to be space gray and it's going to go all the way up 18 cores Xeon processor and 128 gigs of ram if you want to max it out. This is not going to come out until later this year. December. It's going to start at about $5000. You'll be able, of course, to go up from there with getting the top specs and everything like that. But it's a little unclear whether this is actually replacing the Mac Pro and we won't see another one of those or whether this is going to be in addition to a new Mac Pro perhaps next year. 
Now we already knew, of course, what the next iOS would be called. Simply iOS 11. But now we know a little more of what's in it. There's some cool features. Like, for instance, Apple Pay you can now do person to person through the Messages app. So if you owe someone some money you can send it to them. Siri is going to have a translation feature. You can ask to have things said in different languages. 
There's going to be better compression in Camera and they also talked about live photos. You know, little bits of video that are included with the photos you take. It looks like the new version in iOS 11 will have full frame video for everything so you can choose which frame you want to use for the picture and you can also apply effects. Like, for instance, make loops or bouncy loops going back and forth kind of like animated GIF kind of things. You can also convert to long exposure using multiple frames. So some really neat things there. There's also a redesign of parts of iOS 11 like the Control Center. It's going to look very new and it's going to be one screen again. 
Maps is going to have things like lane guidance and speed limits listed and some maps from malls and airports.There's also going to be a Do Not Disturb While Driving mode that recognizes when you're driving and then it stops things like messages and such from coming through. There's a bunch of different controls for that so we'll have to see how it works out when we get it. 
Also a complete redesign of the App Store app. There's a new piece of hardware in the iOS world too. It's going to be a new iPad Pro. So instead of being a new one on the smaller size or the larger size, it's going to be right in the middle. So it's going to be 10.5 inch screen. There's still going to be the 12.9 inch screen as well. So those are going to be the two versions of the iPad Pro. There's going to be speed bumps and improvements including using the new 810 processor. There's also going to be double memory so it's going to be 64 gigs of memory in both MacPro models. Those are actually going to be available next week. You can order them today. 
Perhaps the most interesting part of today's announcements were changes to iOS 11 that are only for the iPad. So the iPad is going to get all these features that's going to make it a lot more Mac like. These features don't look like they are going to be available on the iPhone. Just the iPad. So you're going to get things like the ability to drag and drop between apps. You're going to get a Dock where you can put more than just six app icons and you can get it to appear while you're using another app. Not just on the Home screen. Plus you're going to get a new app called Files which basically looks like the Finder. It allows you to access the files in iCloud. So kind of like iCloud Drive is now but also in other places. So, for instance, DropBox, Box.net and some other services. So it looks like complete access to all the different files and it integrates with other apps. 
Finally, as many people expected, they announced a competitor to the Amazon Echo and it's called the HomePod. It's a speaker system and they emphasized the quality of the sound. It actually is going to have an iPhone chip in it. An A8 chip in it. So it's going to be pretty powerful and supposed to have this great sound. It's going to be able to access all of Apple Music and you'll also be able to use it to access Siri for all of the things you use Siri for. It's going to run $349 and it will be available at the end of the year and come in two different colors. I think this will be a big hit initially but whether or not it's a longterm thing we'll have to see.

Comments: 2 Responses to “New Macs, iMac Pro, High Sierra, iOS 11 and HomePod”

Bob

8 years ago

I hope Apple adds a Touch Bar to a keyboard -- at the least for an iMac Pro

With all of the 'smarts' in the HomePod I hope they provide an option for two properly placed HomePods to run as a stereo pair!

Comments Closed.

New Macs, iMac Pro, High Sierra, iOS 11 and HomePod

Comments: 2 Responses to “New Macs, iMac Pro, High Sierra, iOS 11 and HomePod”

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