I love my apple products and I really enjoy developing with apple tools but I find the apple platforms themselves less and less appealing each year. Even on new hardware each iteration of iOS feels slightly more clunky than the one before it. I really want this years wwdc to blow my socks off but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I'd want to wait personally till the next intel chipsets to be honest. A new haswell isn't all that intriguing.
So I have mine with dual 1tb drives in a software raid setup, i'm curious what the mini needs for media centerish stuff? I have mine hooked up to my tv and it does the trick quite well. Just plop a full screen chrome window up and I can watch netflix/prime streaming/whatever. Can't really play games with it but eh, it plays things like the stanley parable well enough.
I have a decent NAS - Netgear ReadyNAS4000 (i think thats the one).
4 x 2TB drives in there gets me 6TB of space.
Plex is amazing, I used to use it on my TV through my macbook, but that wasn't powerful enough for the latest and greatest movies.
Anyway, didn't see the news I was hoping for today :(
What with? I don't think there are significantly faster CPUs available. They could switch to the 8 core Atoms (20W), but peak single thread speed is slower. They could switch to Arm64, but they will probably do that on a laptop-like machine first probably.
I think this is one of the most reasonable "predictions" read so far.
"I’d rather use an iPhone that can’t make phone calls than use one with a broken camera."
It's very true IMHO, but having an "free" iCloud means that apple should face a very high bill for this.
I think that the next big thing is the phone-camera, so I expect that in future we will see a run for more (u)megapixels if not raw formats... and that like for HD video doesn't play well with the cost curve. They probably can do like for G+ or similar that the jpg 80% is free the 100% is limited. We'll see.
However, can't wait for OSX ten ten! I expect big things for it.
Apple has always been one for visual unity. I am willing to place all my chips on the fact that OS X will get a UI overhaul to play well with it's iOS counterparts.
Wow. The iTunes for Android rumors weren't entirely wrong. Apple has decided they need to engage with Android. They just did it in a way no one expected: buying a separate brand for "insulation".
From that perspective, the Beats acquisition could be considered cheap. Comparable brands for a streaming-music service would have been Pandora or Spotify. But either would have cost more than $4 billion and neither would have come with a profitable headphone business.
I don't think Pandora is a good comparison with Beats or Spotify. Pandora is more of a radio station. You can't make play lists, pick the song you're playing or do much other than pause and skip a limited number of times. I actually prefer that, because I couldn't make a decent playlist to save my life.
...but if he wanted streaming deals he would have made it happen, even if he had to break the law a bit and extort/threaten music labels. He would never have bought a company for a name.
This Beats purchase appears to me as a weakening of Apple post-Jobs. In this day Apple needs streaming more than it needs iTunes sales, but they weren't able to get rights because the labels didn't want to sacrifice iTunes sales; the labels are short-sighted and conservative like always. Apple was not able to convince the labels so they had to buy the streaming licenses instead.
It amazes me that this represents the bulk of the new things we can expect from Apple. In my mind, this really drives home the point that Fred Wilson and others have made with regard to Apple's tremendously weak showing in the area of "the cloud". Hardware is becoming increasingly commoditized and Apple's cloud services are really pretty terrible. At some point soon, these kinds of updates are going to become so tired and meaningless.
I don't know about microsoft, but, I switched to an android phone (for a better camera) and I miss every single day iCloud. After like 8 months I haven't found a reliable solution on this platform. Backups seems totally broken, photo and and other stuff like contacts it's okay, but apps data, password etc... is still not here. Maybe they don't have their owns "servers" or infrastructure they rely on s3 or azure, that's fine if it works.
If Apple really wants to impress nerds with the "Yosemite" reveal, they should loop "Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain?" as people take their seats. ^_^
If I had to bet money on WWDC announcements, I'd probably go with Gruber's predictions. Nothing mentioned stands out as particularly unlikely.
And that's why these predictions worry me. If you do the mental equivalent of zooming out, these predictions seem to focus on two things:
1. Centralizing storage of user-generated content.
2. Catering to consumers instead of professionals.
The vast majority of Apple's value captured (AKA revenue) is from consumer products: iPads, iPhones, iPods. But much of the value created by Apple products comes from professionals. Artists, programmers, writers; countless creative professionals use Apple hardware and software in their work. If Apple focuses on consumers, it will almost certainly be to the detriment of professionals.
I love my MacBook Air, but I can see Apple's trajectory. I can see my laptop becoming a locked-down Duplo version of itself. Then I'll be forced to switch to something else, and my knowledge and experience of OS X will become worthless. More importantly, many other professionals would be in the same boat. Millions could be stymied and frustrated by these changes.
I don't know anyone who has one and I've never heard anyone talk about even wanting one. I think dumbing down of the OS interface is what people might fear?
I'm not quite sure if you're saying that Apple may start selling the MacBook Air with some locked down iOS-like OS on them while leaving OS X on their other chunkier PCs, or if you're saying they're going to entirely get rid of OS X as we know it today. I think both scenarios are pretty unlikely, though the latter one would be most unlikely IMO. What would they expect people to develop iOS apps on if they fully lock down or take away OS X? The biggest single reason I switched to a Mac (about 5 years ago now) was because it was a reasonably well curated (in terms of the GUI) Unix machine with a lot of commercial support and I could employ the various *nix utilities that I was used to, having previously used a combination of Linux and Windows for my computing needs. If Apple no longer offered a full featured Unix based environment, they'd precipitate a mass developer exodus of which I would certainly be amongst. I believe such a move would be no less than the most egregious foot shooting of all time for any tech company ever.
But all this is not to say I don't have a Plan B if against all reason, Apple was to decide to enrage just about every developer that builds on their platforms... I would sigh somewhat heavily, shake my head in disbelief and then it would be back to Linux with a touch of Windows (and possibly Android) on the side. Not my first preference obviously, but not such a bad thing all in all.
The iPhone was announced in 2007. The SDK was released only a year later. So the iOS ecosystem, as a platform, is between 6 and 7 years old.
Also in that time, Mac OS X has had 5 releases, with a 6th obviously coming later today. None of those version have substantially reduced the power available to professionals or developers. Yet I still see comments on HN about how Apple's "trajectory" is going to take away that power.
The question is how Apple will choose to focus their own application development. Is it worth their time to continue to develop Aperture to compete with Lightroom? Lightroom runs great on Macs; what does Apple gain from competing? They've never bothered to compete with Photoshop. They never bothered to compete with Illustrator or InDesign or Quark Express.
If this is the WWDC prediction thread, I'll go ahead and be the guy who predicts a new Apple hardware device. I expect Apple's predicted "iWatch" is actually going to be an "iBand" and is going to be a simple, elegant wristband (likely with a minimal or non-existent display) that is meant to augment the functionality of iOS 8 on your iPhone through the use of always-on sensors that measure heart rate, etc. The announcement of iOS 8 seems to be the proper venue to introduce this device since my guess is a lot of the focus in iOS 8 will seem misplaced unless you consider the value of this companion device.
In turn, I expect there to be the usual major backlash that Apple did not release a unicorn Dick Tracy watch from the future. Many folks will say that Nike, Fitbit, etc, already did this. But Apple's will be better designed and incredibly tightly integrated. There will also probably be some genuine novel parts to it, most likely around recharging (solar/wireless? Never take it off?) and the ability for the person to customize how the device looks. There will probably also be a few other applications beyond fitness and health. (Payments?) Ultimately I'd guess it will eventually be worn by most folks who buy the latest Apple phones. I expect it to be relatively cheap compared to most new Apple products, prob $149 or something. When iPhone 6 hits you'll probably be able to buy one for $99 or something when you buy the phone.
All in line with Apple except for the price. Probably north of $299 else how would you stand out? They aren't willing to lower the prices on obsolete / commoditized items. No way they would price a premium, hot fashion+tech must-have accessory at that price.
Apple's thing is not high prices but high margins. I'd imagine they can get embarrassingly good margins for a sensor-only, display-less device even at what seems to be a low price point. We'll see I guess!
I think we'll see a demo of the 'iWatch' today. When you look at the iPad launch, it was shown a few months in advance to give developers time to prepare. They have to do the same for the iWatch. And if it will be released in September/October what better time to show it to developers than at WWDC when iOS 8 is being unveiled and they can teach people how to develop for it in the sessions. This seems obvious to me which is why I'm surprised no commentators have suggested it (that I've seen).
I'm betting on no new hardware except maybe a 4k Cinema Display. Intel's Broadwell delay may have pushed everything back this year. Hopefully, this doesn't depress me as much as tonight's Game of Thrones.
> They wanted to hire Jimmy Iovine. Apple needs to make more deals with the entertainment industry, and by all accounts, having Iovine on team Apple will help.
When Apple was putting together the iTunes music store, Steve Jobs bought a condo overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. He had no intention of moving from his home in California, but he knew that he would need a place to wine-and-dine the record label executives, and even the penthouse at the Ritz wouldn't cut it.
I don't think people really appreciate how much Jobs "got" the entertainment industry. He knew not only how to work with, and negotiate with, entertainment industry executives, but he was also the head of a ridiculously successful movie studio himself.
Apple without Jobs doesn't have to worry about design, as Ive's team has that (mostly) under control, they don't have to worry about marketing, as Schiller is still one of the best at what he does, and they definitely don't have to worry about operations with Cook at the helm. What Apple without Jobs is still missing (if they still care about being in your living room) is someone who really understands the entertainment industry.
I wonder why it wasn't announced at the keynote though, we've been waiting for it for so long, it was the last obstacle to WebGL, even Internet Explorer did it before Apple.
Like AlteredQualia said, WebGL is now probably the biggest graphics platform there ever was (in terms of reachable devices, should be billion or more).
It just seems so overdue.
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