WWDC 2024

[theorist9]

Apple continues to support Intel Macs. Further, they did very little pruning—the support is nearly unchanged vs. Sonoma. It appears the only models dropped were the 2018–19 MBA's:

MacOS Sequoia hardware requirements, according to Wikipedia:

• iMac (2019 or later)
• iMac Pro (2017)
• MacBook Air (2020 or later)
• MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
• Mac Mini (2018 or later)
• Mac Pro (2019 or later)
• Mac Studio (all models)

macOS Sequoia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

MacOS Sonoma hardware requirements, for comparison:

• iMac (2019 or later)
• iMac Pro (2017)
• MacBook Air (2018 or later)
• MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
• Mac Mini (2018 or later)
• Mac Pro (2019 or later)
• Mac Studio (all models)

macOS Sonoma - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Time to break out @Colstan's prediction thread! My prediction was that next year's MacOS (#16) will be the last to support Intel. We shall see....

End of days: Intel Macs - for whom the bell tolls.

With the release of the Apple Silicon Mac Pro at WWDC 2023, the transition from x86 to Arm is complete, and the clock is now ticking on macOS support for Intel Macs. I decided to run a poll to see how long our members here at TechBoards expect Apple to continue to support Intel with macOS...

techboards.net

 

[Cmaier]

OMG I love math notes. Playing with it now. Very nice. Sometimes it gets confused by my writing, but i suspect it will improve.

 

[Citysnaps]

I came away impressed with the presentation's breadth of new features.

Standalone passwords app, Notes features, Apple Intelligence writing features (particularly taking some lazy/clumsy writing (I struggle) and cleaning it up making it better) and being able to select a writing tone/style, notification prioritization, access to ChatGPT (when needed and with permission), some drawing features, iPad calculator, equation solving via MathNotes, and more. If I were into AVP, visionOS 2 looks pretty sweet (and could encourage me to get a 2nd gen AVP in the future).

Major Siri improvements too!

There's more that's not coming to mind right at the moment.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I enjoyed the keynote and thought there was a lot of good stuff there. Often more interesting technical nuggets present themself during the dev sessions anyway.

 

[Citysnaps]

Automatic satellite transmission of iOS messages where there's no cellular service sounds pretty neat. Previously that was only used during SOS emergencies.

 

[MEJHarrison]

I was working and just watching a live recap from time to time. But I saw plenty to like. The standalone password app. Locking apps. I think the AI stuff combined with photos looks interesting. Plenty more.

I don't go into these anymore expecting to have my mind blown. That used to be the case, but things are more mature now. So I expected little and was happy with the little we got.

 

[Alli]

OMG I love math notes. Playing with it now. Very nice. Sometimes it gets confused by my writing, but i suspect it will improve.

I mostly came in to find out who else installed the beta. I have it downloading on my phone now. If it works well, I'll install on my iPad.

Math notes looks great, but I rarely use a calculator.

Otherwise, a lot of really lackluster features. The only one I got excited about at all was finally being able to use a backdrop in FaceTime, like I can with all my work apps like Zoom and Teams,

 

[Alli]

Now that I've watched the last half of the Keynote, I'm a little excited about Image Playground. I take it this is something we're going to have to wait on?

 

[jbailey]

Time to break out @Colstan's prediction thread! My prediction was that next year's MacOS (#16) will be the last to support Intel. We shall see....

It looks like you chose Sonoma + 2. Wouldn't that mean that you thought macOS 17 was going to be the last one to support Intel Macs?

 

[MEJHarrison]

I mostly came in to find out who else installed the beta.

I'll put it on my old iPhone 12. I keep that as a test/backup device. But I believe it's too old to get to play with the AI stuff. So is my iPhone 14. I'm sure my iPad is too old. My laptop is still Intel. My Mac Studio is the only thing where I could play with the new AI stuff. But it's my main computer, so that's not happening. I don't need to explain to my boss why I can't hop on calls.

I'll check out whatever my 12 can do. I might be willing to hop on the beta cycle a little further down the road on some other devices, but not right now.

 

[theorist9]

It looks like you chose Sonoma + 2. Wouldn't that mean that you thought macOS 17 was going to be the last one to support Intel Macs?

Sonoma is MacOS 14, so Sonoma +2 would be MacOS 16.

 

[Yoused]

The next macOS will cut off from November of '19, leaving only a MBP, the Pro and a 5K iMac as supported Intel models. It will be the last one with any x86 code. But there will be some variety of inexpensive Nuvia PCs, so the door to Hackinosh will still be slightly ajar for subsequent AS-only systems.

 

[Citysnaps]

Seems Musk is a little steamed about Apple's AI plans:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-he-will-ban-apple-devices-if-it-integrates-os-with-openai-2024-06-10/

 

[Cmaier]

Seems Musk is a little steamed about Apple's AI plans:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-he-will-ban-apple-devices-if-it-integrates-os-with-openai-2024-06-10/

he’s an idiot.

 

[MEJHarrison]

I'll put it on my old iPhone 12.

That's done. I like the Password app. I like the ability to lock things. Not that I even hand my phone to anyone else. The Photos app is quite different. Not sure if that's good or bad yet, it's just different. I'll play with it more in the coming days. So far, so good.

 

[Andropov]

The Photos app is quite different. Not sure if that's good or bad yet, it's just different.

I think it's worse. It's not just that the new layout is more confusing, but also that now when you navigate into a deeper screen in the navigation stack you can no longer use the swipe gesture to go back to the previous screen. That's objectively worse, IMHO.

 

[thenewperson]

I think it's worse. It's not just that the new layout is more confusing, but also that now when you navigate into a deeper screen in the navigation stack you can no longer use the swipe gesture to go back to the previous screen. That's objectively worse, IMHO.

They better fix that. I hate every app that does this and especially hate the Apple apps that do because they of all devs should know better.

 

[Eric]

Seems Musk is a little steamed about Apple's AI plans:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-he-will-ban-apple-devices-if-it-integrates-os-with-openai-2024-06-10/

"Musk warns that he will ban Apple devices if OpenAI is integrated at operating system level". From what exactly... his car that already doesn't have it? Twitter, a company that he's essentially killed anyway? It's like how he caters to a all the right wing nutjobs who will never buy one of his cars, he is his own worst enemy.

 

[Citysnaps]

"Musk warns that he will ban Apple devices if OpenAI is integrated at operating system level". From what exactly... his car that already doesn't have it? Twitter, a company that he's essentially killed anyway? It's like how he caters to a all the right wing nutjobs who will never buy one of his cars, he is his own worst enemy.

Hah! Delusions of grandeur. I stopped using twitter a dozen or so years ago.

AAPL is up 2.7% this morning.

 

[leman]

I liked the WWDC overall. Their approach to ML sounds very reasonable: specialize, optimize, and don't overdo it. It's very Apple-like, and I can see it delivering practical value. I am particularly impressed by the cloud architecture they have presented, which seems like a great way forward for private computing. I also liked image generation. It's very basic yet practical for the use cases they presented it for. They can achieve good performance and acceptable quality by limiting the diffusion model. I can definitely see using it for my presentations and in chats. Overall, I really like their ML design with semantic index and app-provided info. It is much more scalable than Microsoft's "let's record the video of the screen and do a search on that" stuff.

The software updates were mostly meh. For me, the winners are the new Notes capabilities and the Passwords app. New ML-enabled Safari functionality also sounds interesting, but I'd like to play with it first.

I also expected large updates to Metal this year, which did not arrive. There are some quality-of-life improvements for resource management that fix some friction points with other APIs. They also have this new device memory coherency feature, but I am not quite sure yet how it works.