WWDC 2019 Keynote Impressions

June 11, 2019
2 min read

Most people jot down some notes about keynote overall and then write or talk about each release in more detail. I’ve went my own way, first going through impressions for each OS – tvOS, watchOS, iOS, macOS, iPadOS and also for Mac Pro.

Now I want give my overall impressions about presentation. I mostly agree with Marco – Apple started listening again. And the reason is pretty simple on it’s surface – iPhone sales. Although thanks to increasing prices for a couple of years revenue from the iPhone didn’t fall, but unit sales plateaued. So now Apple has to sell iPhones more aggressively and give more attention to all other products in the lineup.

This was noticeable in every announcement, it wasn’t apologizing per se, but it felt like Apple was overcompensating. There were ver big changes that got at most one sentence mention during the Keynote and a lot of them were just a text on the slide with “everything else that’s new”. 

There was something for everyone, be it developers, users, professionals. We’ve got new OS, new hardware and new frameworks. We’ve even got the trailer for TV show. All of this in just 2 hours. The pace was unbelievable. Presenters were very proud of the product, just look at the display demonstration. 

I like how passionate, knowledgeable and funny Craig Federighi is. I’ve seen some of the first of his presentations and it’s not even close. It’s a very big growth in presentation skills. This year the biggest joke was about iTunes and with Craig delivering it – it landed perfectly. 

Overall, this was very strong keynote, one of the best in recent years actually. And this gives hope that Apple is able to make products and also improvements to those products afterwards, even if those aren’t iPhone.

WWDC 2019 Keynote Impressions – Mac Pro

June 7, 2019
2 min read

Between the trash can Mac Pro going for a couple of years without an upgrade and problems with MacBook Pro keyboards, you could see how Apple was not very serious about the professional market (excluding iPad Pro, of course). But then Apple assured everyone they are working on the new modular Mac Pro and also release iMac Pro. 

It was hard to imagine how Apple can release a more powerful machine and boy did they deliver. Speaking in car market terms this is super car. It is even close to the concept car. The amount of power this cheese grater looking machine has is unimaginable to me. 

I still can’t believe there is a computer in the world, which you can just put on your desk with 1.5TB of memory. I don’t even hame so much storage between all my computing devices. 

I hope pros are really happy with this announcement and will be able to use it. I can’t even imagine how much the top of the line configuration will cost, $40,000?

Pro Display XDR

This is probably the most controversial announcement from the keynote. This is the most amazing display I’ve ever seen. Basically Apple presented the $40,000 reference display for under $10k, now it sounds better? 

Regarding the stand – I will sound like a fanboy, but this looks like the most precise and engineered stand for the monitor. Also, this display is for professionals, who have mounts already on their desk, the display part is swappable, so when they buy a new display they just put it in place of the old one. They don’t need a stand and it’s actually better that this one is sold separately. 

The one thing I wish Apple would do and I think a lot of people agree – also make a prosumer display. Take iMac 5k display and sell it separately. Right now if I want to buy Mac Mini or even an external display for my laptop or iPad I have nothing from Apple, I sure won’t spend $7000 on a display. 

Overall, even as someone who doesn’t need all this power, it was amazing to watch what is possible and it sure shows that Apple is still serious about pro Mac market.