Ok, so the WWDC (Worldwide developers conference) has started and in my opinion, the opening Keynote from the Apple developers is the most important thing of the event, as Apple announces its plans for the coming year and also go over a few things that are set to be hot topics!
Apple showed off three new products yesterday: the new MacBook Pro family, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the ever important new iPhone 3G S. I will go through each one briefly below and show to you what’s new for each.
The New MacBook Family
High performance now comes in three sizes: 13 – inch, 15 – inch and 17 – inch. Unfortunately they are all similar to the MacBook Pro released not long ago,
but with several good additions:
- Precision Aluminum – The new MacBook Pro’s will look and feel much better than before, thin, light, polished and refined.
- Breakthrough Battery – The built-in NVIDIA battery powers MacBook Pro’s for up to 7 to 8 hours on a single charge.
- Graphics - The MacBook Pro now reaches a new level of high-speed, high-end game-playing power. The NVIDIA GeForce processors in the Pro’s differ with what model you buy, but each delivers turbocharged performance for the most graphically intensive tasks.
- Processing Power – 13 – inch models reach processing speeds of up to 2.53 GHz, the 15 and 17 – inch models can go up to 3.06 GHz.
- 802.11n wireless technology.
The range of MacBook Pro’s are available to purchase now from the Apple Website.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard
“Refined, not reinvented” – that’s Apple’s slogan for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, as it’s not a completely new operating system, just a big improvement on the
current one. Here’s just some of the improvements:
- Quicker Time Machine backup – The revolutionary backing up system Time Machine has been made up to 50% faster.
- Loading times improved – Waking-up your Mac is now twice as fast, shutting-down is now 75% faster and joining wireless networks is up to 55% faster.
- Faster and more reliable installation times.
- Footprint – Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space, freeing up about 6GB worth of memory for you to use!
- QuickTime X.
- Safari 4.
- 64-Bit - All key system applications are now 64-bit so they can take advantage of all the memory in your Mac.
- Grand Central Dispatch - A revolutionary new way for software to take advantage of multicore processors.
- OpenCL - A new technology that unleashes the power of graphics processors to accelerate application performance.
Quite something I think you’ll agree. Mac OS X Snow Leopard is scheduled to be released in September 2009.
iPhone 3G S
Last up is the new iPhone model, the iPhone 3G S. Left till last on the Keynote, Apple developers were keen to show this off last as it is the biggest Apple
product in their opinion. So what’s new with this model, it still has the same name just with an “S” behind it, it still looks the same so what new?:
- Speed - Improved performance and updated 3D graphics deliver a brilliant gaming experience. In fact, everything you do on iPhone 3G S is up to 2x faster and more responsive than ever.
- Video - Now you can shoot video, edit it and share it.
- 3MP Camera – The camera has been updated from 2MP to 3MP, so now you can take great still photos as well as shooting videos.
- Voice Control - Voice Control recognises the names in your Contacts and knows the music on your iPod, so if you want to make a call or play a song, just ask.
- Compass - With a built-in digital compass, iPhone 3G S can point the way.
They are all the things that are unique to the 3G S, but with the new iPhone 3G update there are other notable improvements such as cut and paste, landscape available keyboard, spotlight search, accessibility and internet tethering.
The iPhone 3G is still available to buy from the Apple website, but the iPhone 3G S’s price has not been confirmed yet in the UK.
That ends this post on the new products announced yesterday at the WWDC. Exciting news certainly, but we’ll see how they all do over the coming months.