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WWDC 2013 keynote roundup: OS X Mavericks, iOS 7, new Mac Pro, refreshed Airs and iTunes Radio
We know, oh boy do we know. With E3 and WWDC happening at the same time, it's easy to get lost in all the news -- we've got you covered for all the delicious Apple bites right here, though. Today the team from Cupertino delighted its keynote crowd with the official announcements of iOS 7, refreshed MacBook Airs and iTunes Radio. Even more exciting, however, was the sneak peak at the much-anticipated -- and cylindrical -- next-gen Mac Pro and the introduction of OS X Sea Lion Mavericks. Whether you're just trying to recap all the announcements or find what you missed, our full roundup is up after the break.
Next-generation Apple Mac Pro eyes-on at WWDC 2013 (video)
Historically, Apple hasn't been one to offer sneak peeks of anything. That changed today with the next-generation Mac Pro -- likely a function of the fact that teasing such a machine couldn't possibly weaken sales of a desktop that hasn't been updated in a technological eternity. Waiting just outside of the concourse walls was one of the prototype cylinders, and it's perhaps the sexiest workstation this world has ever seen. All we know for now is that it'll make its debut "later this year," boasting four USB sockets, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, a full-size HDMI connector, a 3.5mm headphone port and a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports. And yes, it's almost certainly a fingerprint magnet. Have a gander at the eye candy below (plus a vid after the break), and our apologies for the clear case surrounding it. We attempted to remove it, and we're now being forced to type this post with just a single hand. Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub. %Gallery-190917% %Gallery-190929% Myriam Joire contributed to this report.
Apple offers a sneak peek at new Mac Pro during WWDC 2013
The Mac Pro is getting a long-overdue update, and it looks like it is going to be worth the wait. The Mac Pro, available "later this year," is downright small compared to the current tower, but the specs are amazing. The Mac Pro will have Dual Workstation CPU FirePro processors, up to two times faster than the current Mac Pro. There is built-in support for up to three 4K displays, HDMI out, GB Ethernet and internal storage with 1.25 GBps reads and 1 GBps writes. The new Mac Pro features Thunderbolt 2, and it's backwards-compatible with the current-generation Thunderbolt accessories. The announcement also got some applause when Apple said the new Mac Pro will be assembled in the US. No pricing yet, but the new Mac Pro is sure to generate a lot of excitement.
Apple confirms new Mac Pros will be assembled in the USA
Springsteen will be proud. Today, Apple has confirmed that the company's new Mac Pro line of desktops will be assembled in the US before they arrive later this year. While we were promised it a fair while back, Tim Cook was certainly right when he said it would involve an existing line of devices -- even if it arrives with a completely new look. Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub.
WWDC 2013: the rumor roundup
It's that special time for Apple devotees: WWDC 2013 is next week, and that means a customary glimpse of where iOS and the Mac are going next. However, we're getting everything but business as usual this year. The crew at 1 Infinite Loop has shaken up its software strategy, putting much of its emphasis on Jony Ive's design chops and tighter collaboration between teams. Is Apple about to deliver major OS refreshes that some say are long overdue? And what about hints of new hardware introductions at the same time? We've gathered together some of the more notable rumors to help understand what Apple may introduce on June 10th -- and what's likely to remain wishful thinking.
Mac Pro inventory appears low as WWDC approaches
This year's WWDC is just around the corner, so we're all wondering what -- if any -- new products Apple might reveal at the event. If Apple's inventory at a number of different retailers is any hint, we might be looking at a new Mac Pro sometime in the near future. J. Glenn Künzler over at MacTrast did a little bit of sleuthing and checked the stocks of a dozen major Apple sellers, from Apple's website and retail stores to major websites like Amazon. His search discovered a majority of the stores he examined were either out of stock of the 2012 Mac Pro or were running low on inventory. Apple officially stopped selling the Mac Pro in Europe on March 1 of this year due to new regulations that impacted its power supply, but had already begun to pull the units from stores by mid-February. Apple confirmed last year to Forbes that there would be a new Pro model in 2013. Whether this lack of stock leading up to WWDC is a sign of new hardware on the horizon or not will be confirmed in a few short weeks. If you're thinking about buying a Mac Pro, you should consider waiting until after WWDC. If the new hardware doesn't knock your socks off, you might be able to find a deal on a current-generation model.
Sapphire graphics card updates your Mac Pro when Apple won't
Those of you waiting for an updated Mac Pro might want to consider the new Sapphire graphics card to hold you over. Sapphire Technology has just announced the launch of its new Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition graphics card. The card will work in Mac Pro models from 2010 and later that have an available PCI-Express card slot. Features of the new graphics card include AMD's latest Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, which Sapphire says increases gaming frame rates by 200 percent, general benchmark performance by 30 percent and graphic intensive benchmarks by as much as 300 percent compared with the NV 8800GT graphics card commonly found in these Mac Pros. The card also sports 3 GB of GDDR5 memory, two mini DisplayPort outputs with a maximum resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 per display and a dual-link DVI port with HDCP, which supports a maximum resolution of 2,560 x 1,600. Finally, the card offers dual firmware support via a simple firmware (dual BIOS) switch, according to the company. This allows it to be used in a Mac Pro or a Windows-based machine. The Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition graphics card costs US$479.99.
Mac Pro no longer available from European Apple online stores
Time is quickly running out for European shoppers who hope to grab a Mac Pro from Apple. Back in January Apple announced that it would stop selling the Mac Pro on March 1st in Europe due to new regulations regarding the unit's power supply. It looks like Apple has now started the withdrawal of sales of the Mac Pro early. Virtually every European Apple online store now shows the product as "currently unavailable." The "currently unavailable" status can mean a few things. Perhaps Apple has chosen to move up the date of eliminating the current Mac Pro from its European stores, or maybe Mac Pro buyers have snapped up the remaining units and Apple has no more to sell. Either way, consumers who still want Mac Pros in Europe should call around to their local Apple stores or Apple Authorized Resellers and grab the remaining units before they become illegal to sell on March 1st.
EU Apple Online Stores list Mac Pro as unavailable prior to March 1st cutoff
We already knew the current line of Mac Pros would be discontinued in Europe due to new regulatory standards come March 1st, but we didn't think Apple would pull the plug on its tower desktop this early. According to 9to5Mac, several European Apple Online Stores now show its Mac Pros as "currently unavailable" a couple of weeks before the computers are to be sunsetted. We're not sure if this is the case with machines in brick-and-mortar locales, but Europeans keen on the existing Mac Pro should get to their nearest reseller before it's completely out of stock. Either that or you can choose to sit tight and wait for that impending Mac Pro refresh, whenever the folks in Cupertino get around to it.
European customers lose the Mac Pro on March 1, maybe earlier
Product safety regulations, how do they work? European regulators are requiring adherence to UL's 60950-1 second edition standards, which originally came into effect in late 2010. The rules cover power supply design and other technical specifications. As reported in Macworld, the Mac Pro's 2010-era design doesn't meet the new spec, and Apple is ceasing sales of the tower machine in Europe as of March 1 to comply with the regulatory cutoff. Tim Cook has previously said that 2013 will see a revamp of the heavy-duty Mac form factor, which currently offers expandability at the cost of modern I/O like Thunderbolt. Even though the Mac Pro could technically be sold for one more month, UK reader Terry Hall in Devon reports that his local retailer had already sent back all the Mac Pro inventory in stock. While it would be nice to think that we'll see an all-new Mac Pro before the end of Q1 2013, more likely that it will debut at WWDC this summer instead.
Apple halting Mac Pro sales in Europe on March 1st in the wake of new standards
Apple has hinted that it will give Mac Pro aficionados some love with a professional Mac follow-up sometime this year. For Europeans, though, it might not come soon enough: the company has confirmed that it's officially stopping sales of the current Mac Pro in European Union-affiliated countries as of March 1st. Why? Soon-to-be-implemented tougher standards require that companies shield their fans and electrical ports more thoroughly than we see in the existing system, Apple says. While there's no immediate sign of a replacement, prospective customers who want the tower for projects won't be completely left out -- resellers will be free to sell what stock they have after the cutoff date. That might still be small consolation to European pros who need heavier iron for their tasks than an iMac.
Daily Update for December 10, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Fortune: Apple's American-made computer will be 2013 Mac Pro
Do you have money riding on a bet that the line of computers Apple's planning to manufacture in the US next year is the Mac Pro? Well, Fortune believes there's a good chance you're right. According to an article by the business publication, there are a few factors that add up to suggest the new Mac Pro will be the domestically produced product. First off, the publication cites an economist who states that a US$100 million factory should be capable of turning out about 1 million computers per year, a number that lines up with how many Mac Pros were sold by Apple in 2011. Then there's the issue of shipping costs. Fortune contends that it makes much more sense to build the heaviest Mac in the US to save on shipping costs, while its premium sticker price can offset higher manufacturing expenses. Finally, there's the fact that Tim Cook himself has already indicated that a Mac Pro refresh is due in 2013. So, what's your bet? We'd love to hear it in the comments.
Radeon HD 7000 series support in 10.8.3 beta points to new Mac Pro
Here's another possible piece in the puzzle that is the long-hoped-for Mac Pro refresh. When digging around in the recently posted OS X 10.8.3 beta, a user on Netkas.org found that Apple had included video card drivers for AMD's top-end Radeon HD 7000 series, pointing to its possible inclusion in the expected 2013 update of the tower computer. For those not familiar with the Radeon HD 7000 series, it features the first 28-nanometer GPU and tops out at a whopping 3 GB of RAM in the Radeon HD 7970. By comparison, the current Mac Pro is available with the older Radeon 5870, a 1 GB card introduced in 2009 as the first DirectX 11-compatible GPU. Of course, Apple's inclusion of HD 7000 series drivers could simply mean that the next OS X will support the cards for current Pro owners. Outfitting its next top-of-the-line machine with one of these powerful GPUs out of the box would certainly go a long way towards justifying the "Pro" in its name, though. [Via Apple Insider]
Mac Pro owner crafts an example Fusion Drive, shows the fearless how it's done
Mac fans not keen on picking up a new iMac to get that best-of-all-worlds Fusion Drive might not have to consider a full-on system swap if they're brave enough. Knowing how Apple's approach unites an SSD and a spinning hard drive in a single logical volume, developer Patrick Stein has used command line code to do just that inside his Mac Pro and prove that it works. His series of experiments with organized data shows the effect on storage speeds and that the pseudo-Fusion should even work with less common ZFS formatting. The publicly available instructions could well be tempting to Mac fans who want speed and storage all at once, although we might personally take a pass -- there's more than a fair share of risk in using an unofficial hack to recreate a storage technique that Apple hasn't even shipped.
Schiller says not to expect Blu-ray from Apple
In Time's interview with Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, he addresses the long-standing question of whether or not Apple will ever jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon. It seems that barring any unforeseen circumstances, you'll likely never see a Blu-ray option from Apple on any machine. "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology," Schiller explains. "So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks." Of course, with the new, ultra-slim iMac and Retina-equipped MacBooks completely abandoning optical drives, it's clear that the company isn't really a fan of discs in any form. You still have the option of using a third party external Blu-ray drive and software, should you desire, but you'll likely never actually see it as an option from Apple when building your own Mac online.
Mac mini catches 2010 Mac Pro in benchmark tests
As if we needed further confirmation of the rapidly closing gap between the Mac mini and what is supposed to be Apple's top-of-the-line offering -- the Mac Pro -- it looks like the latest mini refresh has brought the pint-sized PC's performance nearly in line with the previous generation of Apple's tower. According to benchmark tests by Macminiloco, the brand new minis are rapidly approaching the standards set by the 2010 Mac Pro. Apple gave the Pro an extremely modest update in June 2012, adding just a small processor and RAM upgrade. The current Mac Pro is still without features like Thunderbolt or even USB 3.0 support. Meanwhile, the Mac mini -- which starts at $599 -- now comes with 4GB of 1600MHz RAM standard (with the option of 16GB right from Apple), Thunderbolt, four USB 3.0 ports and an optional 2.6GHz quad-core i7 Ivy Bridge processor. The Mac Pro should be getting a full update in 2013, but until then the much pricier Pro will remain a difficult value proposition for many would-be buyers.
What didn't we get from Apple today?
While the hype leading up to today's Apple event was clearly centered around the all-new iPad mini, it quickly became clear that the company had a lot more in store. Not only did we get the new, smaller iPad of our dreams -- as well as the anticipated reveal of a 13-inch MacBook Retina -- but also a fourth-generation iPad, a more capable Mac mini and a completely redesigned iMac. So what didn't Apple announce today? The (literal) elephant in the room is of course the Mac Pro. Apple's silver tower of power is due for a refresh, but the company steered clear of even mentioning the product during the event. An email purportedly sent earlier this year from Tim Cook to a Mac Pro owner suggested that an update to the line wouldn't happen until 2013, which now appears to indeed be the case. Apple also avoided any news on iTunes 11, which was first teased earlier this year alongside the announcement of the iPhone 5. The official iTunes page still has its bright orange "Coming in October" banner in place, so it's a bit perplexing that the company chose to keep quiet on that front. Some of our more pie-in-the-sky wishes also fell by the wayside today, including our dreams of an updated Apple TV and perhaps even a MacBook Air Retina. We also didn't get to swoon at the new iPad mini in a range of wild colors, which is something the kid in us really wanted to see. But all told, today's announcements should please a good number of people, and our credit cards are already cursing our names at the prospect of the five new products that just landed in the Apple Store.
Decoding Apple's naming rules
Apple's naming style for its products may seem silly at times -- the iPhone 5, for example, if it is even called that, will actually only be the second iPhone granted a numerical moniker, after the iPhone 4. Now there's actually a way to put a real, concrete formula on Apple's naming schemes, and blogger Marko Savic has figured it out. Essentially, Apple names its products around three different ideas: Premium vs Regular differentiation, Form Factor naming, and Generational naming. Premium vs Regular differentiation is probably best seen in the MacBook/MacBook Pro names -- Apple's got two similar products for different audiences, and it uses those names to show consumers which one is which. The Mac and the Power Mac (or Mac Pro) is another example. Second, form factor is another big element in Apple's naming conventions -- this is how it delineates the various products in the iPod or iMac line. And then there's generational naming, which has been most confusing so far: The iPhone 3G meant that consumers started expecting the "numbers" to get bigger, which leads us to next week's expected iPhone 5 announcement. Savic suggests that with a brand new product like the rumored iPad mini, Apple will simply just add yet another marker to the existing brand, signifying that this is a completely new product, and spreading the line out. I think, however, that regardless of any "rules" in naming, Apple will just do what it has always done: Pick a name that consumers will most identify with (not to mention desire). No matter the reasons behind Apple's naming schemes, the company always seems to land on something that clearly shows where the product exists in Apple's lineup, and it will no doubt continue to keep trying to pick names along those lines going forward.
NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU for Mac offers significant Premiere Pro performance boost, we go hands-on
NVIDIA just announced that its new Quadro K5000 GPU will be available on Mac Pros, offering 4K display compatibility and support for up to four displays, not to mention 4GB of graphics memory and about 2x faster performance than the Fermi-based Quadro 4000. While the Kepler-powered chip won't actually hit Apple systems till later this year, we got a first look at the K500 on a Mac here at IBC. NVIDIA demoed Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro CS6 on a Mac Pro with dual K5000 GPUs. As you'll see in the video below, with 11 streams of 1080p video at 30 fps in Premiere Pro (and one overlay of the NVIDIA logo), GPU acceleration handles the workload seamlessly, letting us add effects in real time without any processing delay. Switching to software rendering mode in the editing program shows a night-and-day difference: video playback is extremely choppy, and processing moves at a crawl. Even with two K5000 chips in this desktop, Premiere Pro utilizes just one, but After Effects takes advantage of both GPUs. In this program, NVIDIA showed us ray-tracing, a computationally intensive 3D imaging feature, which only became available in After Effects with the release of CS6. Like in Premiere Pro, the program runs smoothly enough to let us edit images in real time. Take a look for yourself by heading past the break.
