WWDC 2023 Thread

[leman]

$3495

Still first in line?

 

[dada_dave]

$3,500 is also impressive. But I bet they'll sell more than a handful, even at that price.

If they can deliver on the experience they’re claiming and get developers to create some cool/useful/immersive experiences, yes they will. As I said before, it won’t sell like hotcakes, too expensive for that, but as an introduction to the field, potentially a hit.

 

[Citysnaps]

Wondering how it will handle my lazy eye

Apple Vitamins!

 

[Citysnaps]

If I was an architect, interior designer, landscape designer, etc., I'd be all over that so clients could experience walkthroughs, make/suggest revisions, etc., in near real time.

 

[Alli]

Some great things announced today. The whole VisionPro thing leaves me cold. It’s great if you are the only one who needs to use it and work in a completely closed/quiet environment.

Smart stacks on the watch means I no longer need new watch faces. I can use any photo and flip through my stacks. It’s making complications obsolete.

AirPlay at a hotel? Some day.

Family passwords - omg yes. I’m so tired of my mother and my kids losing the passwords I’ve given them a dozen times, or forgetting to let them know when I’ve changed a password.

I cannot love the idea of Presenter Overlay more. It will make FaceTime so much more professional and productive.

Jury’s still out on updates to Stage Manager. I’ll let you know.

Integrated PDF support? Yes please! I’m tied of going to my Mac at my desk just to fill out a PDF.

Standby on iPhone should pretty much render my Echo Show obsolete. Of course, now I’ll have to buy a phone stand….

I like Name Drop and Contact Posters. This will simplify my professional life.

Stickers? Meh. Live voicemail transcriptions? Also meh.

 

[Eric]

Still first in line?

Definitely, IMO this is the next iPhone and it takes a company like Apple to pull it off. First generation is always expensive but we can bet that Samsung and all the others will follow suit after Apple brings it to the mainstream.

 

[Citysnaps]

Definitely, IMO this is the next iPhone and it takes a company like Apple to pull it off. First generation is always expensive but we can bet that Samsung and all the others will follow suit after Apple brings it to the mainstream.

Hopefully Apple's 5,000 patents on the device and related features provides some protection. And slows them down.

 

[Eric]

If they can deliver on the experience they’re claiming and get developers to create some cool/useful/immersive experiences, yes they will. As I said before, it won’t sell like hotcakes, too expensive for that, but as an introduction to the field, potentially a hit.

Agreed, look at how much we spend on big screen TVs or high end monitors, I envision throwing a mouse and a keyboard on a table (or even using gestures) to control it while having a fully immersive experience rivaling any big screen on a wall.

 

[Joelist]

Really they needed to come in about $1000 cheaper on Vision Pro to build up market share.

 

[dada_dave]

Really they needed to come in about $1000 cheaper on Vision Pro to build up market share.

Maybe next generation there will be a non pro model. They started with the pro moniker to let people know this is the high end device. There will one day be a product stack I imagine: pro, air, unlabeled.

 

[dada_dave]

One thing, the Mac Pro Ultra is badly priced. It’s an extra $3000 over the Studio for the same paper specs. Of course it has other capabilities as a result of internal PCIe expansion which is important for those who need it but that’s still a big price increase for, as far as I can tell, that feature alone. Maybe I’m wrong and @Citysnaps can tell me it’s worth it, but my impression is that it’s a bit pricey.

I’m also noticing that tech specs and the store in general have scrubbed any mention of clock speed, which I could’ve sworn was there earlier. Obviously it wasn’t top level description but I’m pretty it did use to say somewhere what the clock speed was for various chips on Apple’s own website. Maybe I’m misremembering?

 

[Colstan]

Colstan's buying drinks!

I don't drink alcohol, but I'll cover a round for everyone else.

For me personally, this went from being the first WWDC that I was planning on skipping since I switched to the Mac back in 2005, to instead getting everything I wanted from Apple's engineers as they toiled away in secrecy. They finished the transition to Apple Silicon, macOS Sonoma looks to be a stability release, and as a delightful bonus the announcement of new features and tools for Mac game developers. I couldn't have fantasy booked a better WWDC.

 

[Joelist]

Apple Silicon has never emphasized clock speed for the simple reason that the microarchitecture makes clock speed far less meaningful.

 

[dada_dave]

Apple Silicon has never emphasized clock speed for the simple reason that the microarchitecture makes clock speed far less meaningful.

I know that they never emphasized it but I remember they still did tell you what it was if you went looking for it. I was just trying to figure out Apple had continued increase clocks up the product stack or if it maxed out. And now I can’t find clock speed on any of the devices anywhere on Apple’s website. I’m not angry about that just annoyed because I’m trying to read tea leaves about Apple’s products.

 

[MEJHarrison]

As a Quest 2 user, I was super excited for their entry into the VR world. There was a lot to like there, but I'm not giving up my Quest 2 anytime soon. Even if the price was something completely reasonable, it would augment, not replace my Quest. Based on what I saw today of course. I'm not interested in bringing my iPhone into the real world with giant screens. I'm interested in leaving the real world for completely new ones (ex after this post, I'm traveling back to Asgard in fact to train under Loki). That's personal preference of course, but it's what excites me about VR. Don't get me wrong. It looks like a super cool device. I'd love to have one. But I think the upcoming Quest 3 might be the more interesting upgrade path for me and my interests. And at 1/7 the price.

Also, I take issue with their suggestion that they're inventing a new platform. They just re-defining an existing one, not inventing something new.

I will say that the one feature that had me drooling was 3D photos and videos. That would be a lot of fun. I think I'd also enjoy browsing my photo library.

Seeing a person's face through the headset was cool and unexpected. My Quest doesn't do that. What it have on the other hand is the ability to remove the headset from my face in about a second. Then the eye contact thing works just fine. It's not as cool, but it does have that human touch.

Gaming is a mixed bag. Right off the bat, I'm not interested in iPhone apps in AR. Not the games I play on my phone. They've been selected specifically because they work well on the small screen and I have no desire to play them on larger screens or that's what I'd already be doing. I also have no interest at all in flat screen gaming on a headset. If we start seeing full-blown VR games, then I'll be more interested. But as I expected, there seems to be no connectivity with the PCVR world. So it's no different than gaming on a Mac vs a PC. It's getting better, but it has a long way to go.

The software aside from gaming is nifty, but not necessary. Having Safari open on multiple virtual screens and Messages and Notes and Reminders and banking apps and whatever other apps that appear... That would be cool. But after the honeymoon period is over, I don't think I'd reach for the headset to send a text or checkoff a reminder or browse the web.

No controllers is an interesting idea. It has use cases. But when I'm holding a gun in my hands, or a golf club or a sword, I appreciate having some physical object in my hand to actually hold. In most cases, I like the controllers and can't imagine not having them. My Quest does that hand tracking stuff, but I never use that feature.

Finally, I always prefer to go wireless with the battery in the headset. The weight of the battery isn't bad at all. When my wireless setup is being persnickety I just plug it into the PC with a cable. And that's a major pain in the ass. It always feels like it's in the way. Their cable might be super slick, but it's still a damn cable hanging off the device and will be annoying. I even have a backup battery on mine that sits in the back and helps balance the weight. When it's on the charger and not on the head strap, the whole contraption feels wrong. So I'm not sold on the external battery idea.

Well, it seems I had a few thoughts on this one. I'll just stop there or I'll be going all day.

Oops, I should add that I'm still excited about this. They'll push the entire industry in new directions. And there might be some killer feature I've not yet realized. They've surprised my like that in the past. That whole "you don't know you how badly you need it till you've tried it" thing.

 

[dada_dave]

I’m also curious about those PCIe slots and how many lanes they have. My impression was that the Max/Ultra didn’t have a vast amount of free PCIe but maybe that was only true of the M1 not M2? If so then that may be a reason why we never saw a Mac Pro M1 Ultra but we did see it for M2.

Edit: Hector is saying there is a new PCIe controller for the Max, so maybe?

Hector Martin (@marcan@treehouse.systems)

@nicolas17 Haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. It's not like they seem to have any plans to offer drivers for them either. I haven't tested the memory mapping stuff on M2 Max though. They did change the PCIe controller, so maybe.

social.treehouse.systems

As an aside, the original question was about 3rd part graphics cards which looks to be “no” as expected, but if they changed the memory mapping (possible, Hector hasn’t checked) then it would be possible under Asahi Linux to use 3rd party graphics cards, which would be great for my purposes of having one machine for everything and not needing a dedicated Linux box for CUDA. But we’ll see. The price is an ouch.

 

[Cmaier]

So, they did mention Mac Pro. Pricing seems a bit high for the chip upgrade.

Should I buy the vision pro, hmmmm.

Interesting that they made it a computer for your space, and did nothing re: metaverse


Interested in seeing if they talk about AI at the platforms address.

 

[theorist9]

Apple Silicon has never emphasized clock speed for the simple reason that the microarchitecture makes clock speed far less meaningful.

Yes, if you're comparing across architectures that's true. E.g., clock speeds aren't meaningful in comparing performance between AS and Intel or AMD CPU's (unless you're talking about power consumption).

But clock speed is meaningful when comparing within the same architecture--barring other bottlenecks, performance should increase linearly with clock speed. And there's been speculation that they would allow higher clocks for the M2 in the Studio and MacPro. So they question at hand is whether or not they did that.

 

[dada_dave]

So, they did mention Mac Pro. Pricing seems a bit high for the chip upgrade.

Not even a chip upgrade, the Studio is $3000 less for the same specs. I don’t begrudge them increasing the price for internal expansion and the case and so forth … but $3K? That’s steep unless I’m missing something fundamental.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Not even a chip upgrade, the Studio is $3000 less for the same specs. I don’t begrudge them increasing the price for internal expansion and the case and so forth … but $3K? That’s steep unless I’m missing something fundamental.

This might be unfair, but it seems like the lowest possible effort possible for the Mac Pro.