WWDC was a 2-hour sprint this year starting with the MacBook Air 15”. It does, slightly disappointingly come with M2, but the larger display makes the bezels look even thinner in comparison to the 13.6” version, and it gains a couple of extra speakers too. The headline though may be the price. The M2 13” Air got a price cut of $100 to $1099, with the 15” starting at just $1299, at least a couple of hundred cheaper than everyone thought – and with the full fat, unbinned 10 core GPU in that price, while the 13” starts with the 8 core variant. All around, it’s pretty good, and I don’t think Apple would have brought M3 to the table as well as a price cut. If nothing else, this bodes well for M3 ACTUALLY being 3nm.
Then, of course, we got the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, both with M2 Ultra, and M2 Max available in the studio. On the surface, many have wondered why the Mac Pro exists given the chip choices, with Team Kinetix asking “#iCaveAnswers what PCI express peripherals can an Apple Silicon Mac Pro make use of? And are a bunch of empty PCI slots worth $3000?”
I was ready to argue that the Mac Pro started out with the unbinned M2 Ultra, so the price difference was actually $1000 less, but no, it turns out that even the higher-end Mac Pro starts with the binned SOC. Same unified memory, same core counts, same storage. The Mac Pro does come bundled with the Dark Mode Magic Mouse or Magic TrackPad and Magic Keyboard with Magic Touch ID, so I guess that’s the best part of $300 if you buy them separately.
The Mac Pro, however, doesn’t get an SD card slot, while the studio does. That’s weird, but you do have plenty of room to add an SD card… Card I guess. And wheels. You can only spend $400 on wheels on the Mac Pro, not on the studio. But if you really WANT wheels, I built some for my Mac mini a while ago, which also added RGB lighting. Apple won’t sell you one, but I can fix you up for just $300. Slide into my DMs.
Also, I asked for your guesses but no one nailed the name of macOS – we had Santa Cruz, Red Wood, and Sequoia. It was Sonoma, wine country. I’ll place my bet that next year it could be Napa or Napa Valley. And yes, Project 91 is running macOS Sonoma. Let me know what you want me to try with it!
Before we move on to the star of the show, Apple Vision Pro, I’m aiming to be at the Apple Battersea store opening this Thursday, fingers crossed we’ll see Tim Cook there, so if anyone else is heading over to London for this, please feel free to say hi!.
So, on to Vision Pro – The rumours got some stuff right and a decent amount wrong. First, there doesn’t seem to be any carbon fibre going on, at least not that was mentioned or shown. It did get dual processors, but instead of a pair of M series chips, it’s an M2 and an R1, with the R (reality?) chip dealing with all the sensor data primarily. The displays are in fact more than 4k, presumably around 4k resolution across but with a squarer aspect ratio. The price was higher than expected, $3499, which has been mocked in the press. There’s been a lot of people complaining, but you know who hasn’t said “underwhelming” or “pointless”? The people who’ve tried it.
Reviews from those who got time to use the device have been overwhelmingly positive, the pass-through being both stereoscopic and full colour, with minimal latency has been widely praised. The array of external sensors and eye tracking make using the device nothing short of Magical, according to Marquez Brownlee. However, people have concerns. Team Kinetix asks “#iCaveAnswers thoughts on Apple Vision Pro? The internet seems somewhat divided. I think the technology is amazing, but the proposed use case borders on creepy. Is this because I’m old and looking at Vision Pro the same way my grandparents see smartphones and social media?”
So if you do want to capture a scene in 3D video memory, perhaps you could set down the Vision Pro and trigger recording from your iPhone? You could capture the whole family entering the living room, including you on Christmas morning, capturing your kids reactions before you’re in the room. Sounds pretty magical.
Evan Rodgers
#icaveanswers now that Apple has released Pro iPad apps, how will people complain about the iPad software?
Team Kinetix
#iCaveAnswers with so much news from dub dub, people aren’t asking the big questions: When will we see / hear about sideloading or third party App Store support in iOS?
Do you think Apple will even mention it? Or might it be a toggle deep in settings that no-one from Apple every speaks of?
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