WWDC 2013

Its been a while since I've posted and this week seems as good as any to get back into the writing with both WWDC and E3 on the same day but I'll be focusing on WWDC in this piece.

For those of you that don't know WWDC is Apple's annual worldwide developer conference held in the Moscone Center in California, The purpose of this is usually to unleash upon the world the most recent musings of their secretive R & D department.

The Things that I most expected to see this year were, The announcement of iOS 7, The updated Mac Pro and the New Macbook Air as well as the iPad mini with a retina display. What we actually got, well. Was all of those minus the iPad mini but th
at was a bit of a pipe dream anyway.

iOS 7

Lets start off by talking about the new mobile OS for iPad, iPhone and iPod. Since the disaster that was apple maps occured last year under the leadership of Scott Forstall there has been a fundamental upheaval in the upper echeleons of the Apple creative team. These events and his swift departure afterwards paved the way for Jony Ive, The British hardware guru who has been developing products for them for many years. He now heads up "software and hardware development" and has thus been tasked with re-imagining iOS. It has up until recently started to look very dated up against the ever changing flavours of Android and Apple fans have been starting to jump ship as every year the updates only fix minor flaws and there has been a lack of a major over haul until now. The main changes have been applied graphically with a complete redesign of the GUI making it look some what lighter and more spacious regardless of screen size however other than that there were a few tweaks made to the control center which you can pull up for the bottom of the screen and a promise to improve multi tasking functionality within separate apps. Other than that it wasn't particularly inspiring if I'm honest.


OS X Mavericks

This also heralded the announcement of the newest edition of the Mac's Desktop OS X. This was to be expected as they have fallen into a yearly cycle of refreshing the software since OS X Lion, however this brings on a new naming convention departing from using the names of feline species into apparent land marks in California. This change brings in Apple Maps for the desktop (not sure if that's actually a good thing to be honest) as well as iBooks, tabs and tags in Finder, improved support for multiple displays and promises of improved multi-tasking and energy efficiency. The improved support for multiple displays is a major, major plus. Since 10.8 (mountain lion) they have added a full screen feature for apps on the desktop which hides the dock and the menu bar so you can focus fully on the task at hand however if you were using multiple displays this meant that your second display would be rendered un-usable, they have changed this however so that this feature does not occupy both displays and that the other can be used for whatever you need it for.



The New Mac Pro

AT LAST! A new Mac Pro, It's been a long wait but by the sounds of it my god was it worth it. We didn't get to see much of it physically but we were bombarded with potential specs for the new device which included: up to 12 core configurations, 1866MHz DDR 3 Memory (fastest which has ever been put into an apple computer), Intel Haswell Processors and AMD Firepro Graphics capable of running multiple 4K resolution machines. Needless to say Power users everywhere will be rejoicing.

The New Macbook Air

Also announced yesterday was the refreshed version of the Mac Book Air, Not too much light was shed on the details of the new version but what we were told is that they would now be boasting up to 9 hours battery on the 11 inch version and 13 hours on the 13 inch version with brand new intel processors as well intel 5000 graphics. The new intel chips claim to boost performance by upto another 40%.

Round Up

I'm quite happy with what we got yesterday, I'm looking forward to trying out the new Control Center Interface on iOS and especially looking forward to getting my hands on an updated Mac Pro. The new OS X isn't something I'm thrilled about but its inevitable this time of year and besides with the Multi Display issues fixed maybe I can actually do some work and watch netflix at the same time now?

3D Printing Your Own Home?

3D Printing, That Ole' Futuristic Ball Game.....Not Anymore.

3D printing has long been perceived as something that will only be developed and become useful years in the future....but it may be more important than we think already.

3D Printed Buildings & Homes

Designed by dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars, this construction can be put together using components which have been printed using one singular 3d printer which binds granules of building blocks using a chemical future. Built into the continuous shape of the mobius loop, an idea conceived with the help of mathematician Rinus Roelofs using blocks each sized at around 6x9m. Only down side is that the project will cost between 3-4 million GBP.

Myo: The Future Of User Input?

Who Remembers Minority Report?

For those that do, you will recall the unforgettable scenes in which Tom Cruise navigates through computer systems using only his hands and no mouse and keyboard....NOT EVEN A TOUCH SCREEN. We all wish we could do this and as of a couple of days ago the reality is a whole lot nearer than we thought....

My Preorder is done.......SWEEET.

Possible PS4 Announcement This Month?

Finally!!

Sony have whet every gamers tech appetite by sending journo's invitations to a press conference in New York, The invites said it is related to the companies future in the gaming arena.....dropping heavy hints? I think so...

When Sony announced after 10 years that they would stop production of the iconic PS2 it set the rumour mills into motion, They have declined to comment on what it's all actually about but its definitely expected that they will unveil the full specifications of the device and possibly the physical shape however I doubt we'll be getting a release date or any titles for quite a while yet.

Check this space as I will be updating this post and reposting it as more info because available!

Apple's Decline?

Could This Be The End Of Apple As We Know It?

Apple, ah how they have progressed over the last few years. They have become one of the most spoken about and admired / coveted companies in the world and one of the most successful. To prove this they had at one time a cash reserve bigger than the US government and were the first company to ever hit the $1000 mark per share but...all that is about to change.

Why?

The latter end of 2011 saw the passing of a visionary and the man who lead them there, who is of course none other than Steve Jobs. He was the man with the vision and creativity to bring the mostly average products to consumers, so why did we buy them? because they have the worlds best marketing strategy. The entire world has decided out of nowhere that Mac / Apple products are the be all and end all of Technology products. Of course thats if you're the average consumer, because lets face it you don't know any better. Since Jobs Passing the company is now helmed by Tim Cook, a very competent businessman indeed but sadly for Apple, he lacks the vision that jobs had and their output since has been below the mark. Jobs made sure everything was perfect, he was a perfectionist indeed and recently everything just seems to be average. From the Apple Maps fiasco to the average recycling of IPad 2 parts for the Ipad mini and the average IPhone 5, all not awful but....disappointing. Since stocks of tanked and Apple are no longer the most valuable company in the world with stocks hitting a low in the $300-$350 range this month its not a gloomy future ahead unless they can get their act together and this 128GB IPad isn't exactly a great start...

The Future?

Android are eating away at Apple's mobile share across the globe steadily and analysts are reporting drops in Apples Tablet market share from Q4 of 2012, when taking that includes the holiday season and the release of new desktops/laptops/tablets and a new IPhone, thats a pretty damning indicator. I believe that consumers hysteria over Apple will soon die down and by 2014 Apple products will only be used by the rich and stupid or by their intended users, the creatives. Photo Editors, Music Producers, 3D designers etc not the 14 year old girls taking selfies and food bloggers and that is how it should be in my opinion.

128GB IPad....

Do you really need it?.....

A tablet, in todays world is for product consumption. not creation, if you want to create you buy a high end macbook / imac/ windows desktop not a solely mobile device. So in short the answer is no. Though sometimes it would be handy to be able to carry around your entire Itunes library if you're like me highly indecisive about what you want to listen to but have over 60gb worth of music, movies and apps. Yes in that scenario a IPad with that much space would come in handy but people like that don't buy IPads as their internal storage isn't expandable unlike other brands. The largest capacity previous to this was the old 64GB models which in my opinion is plenty of space, but at $750 I would be hard pressed to buy one. So when Apple announce to the world that the Retina Display, 128GB, LTE IPad will cost $950 they can stick it. The only people who are stupid enough to pay their own money are the incredibly rich (and stupid) who probably don't understand these things and only want it because it has an Apple logo on it. Idiots basically. The only other acceptable time you would get one would be if you were lucky enough to be able to put on a corporate account at work, other than that its a no-no and on the whole a bit of a waste of time to be honest....silly Apple.

Apple Patent Store Design

And Fair Play To Them

Some would argue that Apple have pushed many boundaries in recent years which is a fair argument in some areas more than others. Their retail stores however I feel visually are a league above any other retailer on the planet. On their global patenting conquest they have every base covered, even their stores interior layout and design (bizarre i know!) Which in my eyes is fair enough. 

I was walking down Tottenham Court Road in London the other day and walked past a Samsung Store which I didn't even know existed and being a fan I decided to have a look around. I went inside and it felt strangely familiar, Mainly because the design of the interior was a complete and utter rip off of an Apple store with staff on hand in blue T shirts and lanyards just to complete the look. It knocked Samsung down a peg it my books because they fought so hard to prove that they hadn't copied Apples product design and then just so shamelessly go and essentially put their products and logo's in an Apple store just kind of made it all invalid. I don't think Samsung copied any of Apples products in the slightest but when it comes to the stores I can't agree.

(believe it or not the image above is a Samsung Store)

So in summary, Apple have patented their stores. Why, how bizarre? not really. Everyones ripping them off so fair enough.