Apple’s WWDC 2022 keynote concluded with a sneak peek of iOS 16, macOS 13 Ventura, iPad OS 16, as well as new edit and unsend tools in Messages and more. Apple also unveiled a revamped MacBook Air and a new M2 processor for the MacBook Pro. Here’s a rundown of all the major stories.
WWDC 2022 in 10 minutes
Alright WWDC 2022, here is what Apple had to say. And here are the stuff I’m excited about
Now Apple, being Apple showed off insane camera works with some visual effects, drone shots, and camera transitions which are both interesting and a bit cliché in a few. A mean with the first part of Greg’s intro, we start on him, then he likes, before that, let’s head downstairs. You couldn’t take downstairs to begin with?
Anyway, I believe the biggest announcement to the iPhone is the launch of iOS 16. And the customization features on the lock screen. With iOS 16, you just tap and hold on to the lock screen. And with that, you can change the font, and font color and even add widgets. If that wasn’t enough, you can add quite a number of different lock screens as well. So now, you can have a lock screen for do not disturb mode, one for your morning, another for when you’re working out, etc, etc. You just have to swipe to change the wallpaper on the lock screen. One thing I did notice was, that you’ll always have to hold the lock screen to change them to a different one. I could be wrong but I critically looked at this for quite a while, and even went back to re-watch that part of the video, but yeah, you can’t just swipe to switch the lock screen, you would have to tab and hold first all the time. Oh yeah, the notifications will also show at the bottom, which is actually cool and match better for bigger phones. Still on the lock screen is LIVE ACTIVITIES. This basically means that apps that support it will show live updates on what’s going on in the app. That way, you don’t get every single notification and update from a single app.
Also, there’s an update to LIVE TEXT. So, you know you can scan text in a photo and get more information on it, right? Well now, with these new features, you can scan text in videos. Imagine I pop something like this on the screen. You may or may not have any idea what on earth is it, right? This is where the LIVE TEXT IN VIDEO comes in. you just pause the video, scan the text and get direct information about what the text was about. Neat.
The 3D look of the Apple Maps is great. Incredibly impressive. I hope Google’s amazing Maps will learn a thing or two from this. I mean, I’m just saying.
Nothing scared me the most than APPLE CAR PLAY. I mean, they’ve already taken over our homes with all their smart home app and devices. Now, they want to take over your car too. Some car manufacturers like Porsche, Ford, Toyota and most especially Tesla who have been developing electric cars and have spent so much time dialing in the right settings and all, just to make the infotainment part of the car feel futuristic and generally, more comfortable. I’m guessing most of you guys out there who use CAR PLAY, mostly use it for navigation, phone calls, and listening to music. I know cos I Googled it. But, with the new features of Apple Car Play, Apple is taking over everything in your car. And I don’t me that figuratively. It’s taken over all the screens in the car, controlling the speakers, and temperature, providing interfaces for the fuel gauge, the speedometer, and basically everything on the screen. Now, if you pair that with CAR KEYS, where you can just unlock and start your car with iPhone, these car manufacturers, should be wary. If CAR PLAY is available in over 98% of cars in the US, and if close to 80% of US buyers only consider CAR PLAY capable cars, you can imagine how huge this is. I believe Tesla will probably decline this feature for starters, cos they’re rich enough to do what they want. The more the reason why they don’t show up in the presentation. And in case you’re wondering how this is also going to affect us Ghanaian too. Well, the fact that we mostly purchase accident cars from the US is reason enough.
On the hardware side, the Apple Silicon got a new refresh, the M2. Like M1 wasn’t great already. I have been an intel processor user for a long time. I think, ever since I got my first PC, with these specs… And since then, I have come to understand what clock speed is and what the whole Dual-Core, Quadcore, i3, i5 to i9, and generation was all about. Recently, I switch to an AMD processor and realized that with a similar clock speed as Intel, AMD was faster and more energy-efficient. Whiles my Core i5 4th gen CPU at 3.2GHz used 84W of power, AMD A8 CPU at 3.1GHz was using 65W. Now with that in mind, think of this, here is Intel, then comes AMD, and then the M1 chip. I remember playing back a 4K video shot on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, in Premiere Pro on Paul Duse’s MacBook Pro with M1 chip, and the video just played through, smooth. Like margarine in hot bread. I brought the same clip home and I couldn’t play it. I mean, I could hear the sound, but the video was stuck. I had to convert it to 1080p before I could edit it on my computer. And the funny thing is, I had installed a new graphics card too. With that in mind, think of what the M2 chip will provide. With 20 billion transistors, 25% more than M1, 100GB/s unified memory bandwidth, which is 50% more than M1. I don’t want to go through the graphs that Apple provides in their presentations cos I don’t get it. I mean, I should, I already have 2 degrees in Mathematics, but I don’t. The M2 chip is compared to “Industry Standard” computers. But if you look closely at the bottom right, the 10 Core PC was the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 360 with the 12th Gen Core i7 processor whiles the 12 Core PC was the MSI Prestige 14Evo Laptop with the 12th Gen Core i7 processor. Why not an i9 processor? I’m just saying.
Even though the iMac hasn’t transitioned yet to Apple silicon, there are new macs getting the M2 chip, already. Next month, you will be able to purchase the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with an M2 chip. I can only imagine how light (2.7 pounds) the MacBook Air will weigh with all these leather animations next to the laptop. It now comes with a 13.6” screen at 500 nits of brightness, a 1080p webcam, an integrated speaker within the keyboard and screen also, with support for Spatial Audio. It comes with matching colours for MagSafe, a whopping 18 hours of video playback, and a fast charge with an available 67W adapter. Whew! For the Pros out there, expect all the nice things with the older MacBook Pro, but now with 24GB of unified memory, 8 and 10 core CPU and GPU, respectively, and up to 20 hours of video playback. Unfortunately, we’re still stuck with the previous design, which I don’t mind. Same design, but better computer. So, if you want one of these, expect to pay $1200 for the MacBook Air and $1300 for the MacBook Pro. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they’ll be running on the new macOS, Ventura. This comes with what they call, Stage Manager. It’s basically a Windows manager.
Gaming! Yeah, finally. Gaming on Mac. Not that I agree with playing games on a laptop as compared to a PC with a graphics card. There’s definitely some frames drop if you watch closely though. Even if that’s actually true or I’m just seeing things.
With a continuity camera, you can use your iPhone as a webcam. And with that, you can apply studio mode, portrait mode, and something interesting they call, the DESK VIEW. As to how the fix the distortion of the ultrawide camera to produce those effects, I have no idea.
Finally, ipadOS with some new features as well. Also, with Stage Manager, Shared Photo Library, Shared tab groups, and the Weather apps from iOS and macOS.
Of course, these aren’t all the stuff they spoke about in the hour and 48 mins video. Other things I found interesting but can’t really talk about them cos this has to be a short video included,
Some new dictation features | Updates to Spatial audio to the Airpods | Updates to WatchOS on the Apple Watch
Apple PAY updates which make you pay in installments. Here in Ghana, we hardly even use the MTN momo app to scan and pay for services. You didn’t even know about that, right? My point exactly.
So yeah, definitely worth staying tuned to see how these new devices and features work on some of the older Apple devices. Anyway, this is my first time doing something like this, lemme me know how I did in the comments sessions below.
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