WWDC 2023 Thread

[Jimmyjames]

I have had a "wild" (and almost certainly incorrect) thought. I have been criticising Gurman for saying the Studio wouldn't be updated until the M3 was ready. I took the news that a new Studio was ready was a sign that he was wrong and an M2 Studio was coming.

What if...he's right about the Studio having an M3, but it's ready now!

I know, I know. Wishful thinking.

 

[Cmaier]

Assuming our resident one-armed CPU architect is correct, there's a good chance that we will know more about the Apple Silicon Mac Pro by the time WWDC is over,

I didn’t say that…

 

[dada_dave]

I've been closely watching comment reactions at the other place with respect to Apple's upcoming entry into AR, going on at least 3-4 years now (it seems). It's been pretty ugly, with most people refusing to unlock their imagination and just dream a little, or even doing a wee bit of research. Instead, their minds are made up that it'll be a dud. In a word, frustrating.

While it seems many are still in the "it's going to flop" camp, I'm seeing some who are now speculating about real life AR possibilities. That's encouraging. I'm looking forward to seeing reactions there to next Monday's keynote presentation.

It's both amusing and frustrating, but typical for MR no matter what the product category. People post with such certainty.

I have no way of predicting if the AR/VR headset will be successful, but I can think of a lot of real-world applications, especially in vertical markets. I'm also looking forward to Monday's presentation more than I have any keynote in recent years, with announcements of new Macs and previews of iOS/iPadOS 17 and macOS 14 in addition to the other stuff.

Sometimes the expectation game can also set up something for “failure” where if a new Apple product doesn’t have iPod/iPhone levels of success it “failed”. To be honest I think AR/VR is neat with some potential - I have to admit I thought the market would be further along than it is but that’s partially a consequence of the technology not quite being there yet: the need for a high performance low power GPU that can drive a disconnected headset with high resolution and high refresh rate is non trivial beyond all the obvious tracking and UX intricacies the platform entails. Apple’s solution sounds pretty good but also consequentially even more expensive. So I wouldn’t expect massive sales just on that alone, but that won’t determine if the product is a failure or a dud. The rumors surrounding this first product are that it’s about showing what is possible, more than a tech demo, but still too pricey for mass adoption (again at the scale of iPod/iPhone/iPad). And again given where the AR/VR market is, that’s okay. It can still be a very exciting product line.

 

[dada_dave]

I didn’t say that…

Even if they don’t announce anything specific about the Mac Pro, hopefully they’ll at least say if it still exists! At this point that alone will qualify as knowing more than we do now …

 

[Citysnaps]

Sometimes the expectation game can also set up something for “failure” where if a new Apple product doesn’t have iPod/iPhone levels of success it “failed”. To be honest I think AR/VR is neat with some potential - I have to admit I thought the market would be further along than it is but that’s partially a consequence of the technology not quite being there yet: the need for a high performance low power GPU that can drive a disconnected headset with high resolution and high refresh rate is non trivial beyond all the obvious tracking and UX intricacies the platform entails. Apple’s solution sounds pretty good but also consequentially even more expensive. So I wouldn’t expect massive sales just on that alone, but that won’t determine if the product is a failure or a dud. The rumors surrounding this first product are that it’s about showing what is possible, more than a tech demo, but still too pricey for mass adoption (again at the scale of iPod/iPhone/iPad). And again given where the AR/VR market is, that’s okay. It can still be a very exciting product line.

For the last couple of years I've been advocating (hoping) the headset (glasses/whatever) would have minimal processing tech. A couple of hi-res displays, some miniature cameras, an ASIC to drive/control that, UWB for low-power short-range communications, and and a *relatively* small battery. All to make a lightweight unit.

The AR heavy-lift processing would occur in a user's iPhone kept in a pocket - which already has a decent capacity battery, efficient low-power UWB for handling multiple bi-directional wireless video feeds to the headset, internet communications for accessing information and the world, and most importantly a high-performance A-series gpu/cpu to handle AR processing tasks.

Someday.

 

[dada_dave]

For the last couple of years I've been advocating (hoping) the headset (glasses/whatever) would have minimal processing tech. A couple of hi-res displays, some miniature cameras, an ASIC to drive/control that, UWB for communications, and and a *relatively* small battery. All to make a lightweight unit.

The AR heavy-lift processing would occur in a user's iPhone kept in a pocket - which already has a decent capacitybattery, efficient low-power UWB for handling multiple bi-directional wireless video feeds to the headset, internet communications for accessing information and the world, and most importantly an high-performance A-series gpu/cpu to handle processing.

Someday.

I don’t know what their plans for it or the limitations of various options. My point is that product success/failure for something like AR/VR will likely be determined over the long term and how Apple responds to feedback and iterates. It’s true that some of Apple’s best products came from giving users what they didn’t know they wanted, but some of their worst ones came from not listening to what users wanted. I’m not saying that users are always right or at least the solutions offered by them to the perceived problem might be wrong but the perceived problem is still real and sometimes Apple can be overly stubborn. And they have blind spots (particularly gaming but hopefully that’s changing).

 

[Citysnaps]

I don’t know what their plans for it or the limitations of various options. My point is that product success/failure for something like AR/VR will likely be determined over the long term and how Apple responds to feedback and iterates. It’s true that some of Apple’s best products came from giving users what they didn’t know they wanted, but some of their worst ones came from not listening to what users wanted. I’m not saying that users are always right or at least the solutions offered by them to the perceived problem might be wrong but the perceived problem is still real and sometimes Apple can be overly stubborn. And they have blind spots (particularly gaming but hopefully that’s changing).

I wasn't addressing that, though I believe the market is ripe for a well-designed non-clunky headset solution to which customers would be receptive.

Contrary to opinions at the other place, there are certainly loads of potential AR applications out there, in both personal and commercial environments - medical, too. I suspect Apple's device will come with a great suite of apps to get people, and most importantly developers, started.

 

[dada_dave]

I wasn't addressing that, though I believe the market is ripe for a well-designed non-clunky headset solution to which customers would be receptive.

Contrary to opinions at the other place, there are certainly loads of potential AR applications out there, in both personal and commercial environments - medical, too. I suspect Apple's device will come with a great suite of apps to get people, and most importantly developers, started.

Absolutely

 

[Colstan]

I didn’t say that…

I was referring to this short interaction in which you responded to @Roller concerning the Apple Silicon Mac Pro potentially being addressed, in some manner, at WWDC:

I clearly read more into it than I should have. You aren't a journalist, you don't owe us anything, therefore I should respect your privacy. My own selfish desire for insider information lead me to an unwarranted conclusion. I apologize for putting words into your mouth; I respect you too much to have done so intentionally, and will strive to be more considerate in the future.

 

[Cmaier]

I was referring to this short interaction in which you responded to @Roller concerning the Apple Silicon Mac Pro potentially being addressed, in some manner, at WWDC:

View attachment 24150

I clearly read more into it than I should have. You aren't a journalist, you don't owe us anything, therefore I should respect your privacy. My own selfish desire for insider information lead me to an unwarranted conclusion. I apologize for putting words into your mouth; I respect you too much to have done so intentionally, and will strive to be more considerate in the future.

Yikes.

 

[Cmaier]

Ok. My prediction: you hear something, but not much, about the Mac Pro. That’s just a guess.

An apple silicon Mac Pro does exist. I believe it will come at the end of the year.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Ok. My prediction: you hear something, but not much, about the Mac Pro. That’s just a guess.

An apple silicon Mac Pro does exist. I believe it will come at the end of the year.

Do you think the wait is due to the need for an M3, or some kind of Extreme chip (aka dual Ultra)?

 

[Cmaier]

Do you think the wait is due to the need for an M3, or some kind of Extreme chip (aka dual Ultra)?

I don’t believe M2 supports an extreme configuration.

I believe the Mac Pro needs M3’s.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I don’t believe M2 supports an extreme configuration.

I believe the Mac Pro needs M3’s.

Interesting thanks.

 

[dada_dave]

I don’t believe M2 supports an extreme configuration.

I believe the Mac Pro needs M3’s.

Aye currently no known M2 chip supports an extreme configuration. While it’s possible that they’ll create a special M2 chip just for that, I’m also guessing it’ll be an M3 family.

 

[B01L]

M2 Ultra Mac Pro, at this point, would be "too little, too late"...?

IMHO, M3 Ultra & M3 Extreme (with hardware ray-tracing) is what the first generation ASi Mac Pro needs to launch with...

And some ASi (GP)GPUs would be nice as well; if they cannot be part of the overall GPU core-count pool, they can at least provide background compute/render job off-loading...?

 

[leman]

As far as the quote about e/dGPUs and RAM I think that’s a @leman quote? I would push back slightly that the programming model precludes using e/dGPUs, after all Metal still works fine on AMD e/dGPUs, but it’s clearly not the direction Apple are moving in. Is it possible that Apple might allow e/dGPUs especially on the Mac Pro? Yes but it’s unlikely and if so probably with the caveat that either AMD/Nvidia would have to do it on their own (so in practical terms: technically feasible but DOA as neither are likely to go to the bother of writing drivers which Apple has also made harder to deploy) or official AMD support being very limited with obvious implication that this is just to ease professionals transitioning and not something that would continue. Given that Apple will want everyone on their unified memory model and Apple GPUs have been around long enough that a lot of software has or will be soon transitioning to support, this last option of official AMD GPUs for the Mac Pro would be … surprising - not impossible, but very, very unlikely. If it does happen again it would primarily to ease the transition of professionals off of their current tools but I’m guessing Apple is just going to rip the bandaid off here. I’m not sure how much of a bandaid is actually left to rip to be honest? (Beyond the holdouts in the Macrumors forums)

Yeah, that's also what I meant. Apple want's you to design and optimise your software for Apple Silicon going forward. There are some rather strong guarantees offered by their M1/M2 GPU programming model, so it would be very odd if they went back on them by supporting third-party hardware. You don't want feature fragmentation (unless it's fragmentation due to newer hardware supporting new stuff — you do want that because that's why people upgrade).

 

[theorist9]

Macworld has an article entitled "With another boring update on the way, does Apple care about macOS anymore?". What this dunderhead doesn't realize is that this is exactly what Mac users have been asking for. We want another Snow Leopard release to fix the bugs. Stop adding features that don't significantly improve the core experience. macOS is a mature product, it should behave like one.

A "boring" iteration of macOS is bad for bloggers, rumor merchants, and hokum peddlers. It's good for users, macOS could use a breather, which is what I hope Apple provides. "No New Features" is the headline I'd most like to see.

The "stability" releases, like Snow Leopard and High Sierra, have always been my favorites.

Plus why only use the fancy CA places for names? Here are some CA towns that I'm sure would like some of that MacOS love:
Encino
Palmdale
Barstow
Rancho Cucamonga
Amboy
Lone Pine
City of Industry

 

[B01L]

When do we get macOS Cupertino...?

 

[Cmaier]

Tune in tomorrow morning at 10am PT and join us here for live discussion and the traditional “updating of the wiki!”