Apple’s WWDC kick-off keynote on Monday had something for everyone.  As expected, a new MacBook Air was announced, this one for $200 less than the previous generation and available right away. 

The professional market finally had some relief when Apple gave a sneak peek of the new Mac Pro!  It is completely redesigned in form, factor and to a large degree, function.  More details and our comments are below.
The new OS X Mavericks adds some much-needed functionality for organizing, searching and overall efficiency.  The iCustomer base had a bunch of fun news to enjoy, with a completely redesigned iOS 7 and the new iWork for iCloud.

Read on for more details.

A New MacBook Air – Available Now!

Apple unveiled an updated MacBook Air for $200 less than the previous gen!  

  • 40% faster graphics with Intel HD Graphics 5000
  • Flash storage up to 45% faster
  • Up to 12 hours of battery life!
  • Available NOW!

Drop by MelroseMAC, give us a call (323.937.4600) or shoot us an email to get yours.

Sneak Peek of the new Mac Pro…YES!

Apple did something unprecedented on Monday (for them, anyway): they gave us all a sneak peek at the new Mac Pro.

The new 9.9” by 6.6” Mac Pro blows us away with a sleek, futuristic look and packed-in features.  The new Mac Pro has a black, machined aluminum enclosure. Beautiful!

Need for Speed
  • 40GB/s PCIe bandwidth
  • Two times faster than the previous gen Mac Pro
Connectivity
  • 6 x Thunderbolt 2 – up to 20GB/s backwards compatible with Thunderbolt
  • 4 x USB3 slots
  • 2 x Gigabit Ethernet
  • HDMI 1.4 802.11ac WiFi and Blutooth 4.0
The Power Within
  • New Xeon Processors
  • 4 channel memory controller at 1866 MHz – fastest memory available!
  • 60GB/s bandwidth – that’s two and a half times the bandwidth of the previous gen Mac Pro!
  • Flash based storage, which is again two and a half times faster than SATA  -- - Solid State Drives
  • 500MB/s v. 1250MB/s
  • 7 teraflops of computing power – previous gen Mac Pro had only 2.7 teraflops of computing power
  • AMD FirePro Workstation class GPU with 6GB of VRAM – includes two of these!
Heating and Cooling
  • Unified Thermal Core moves heat away from CPUs and GPUs, conducting the heat uniformly across the core.
  • A single large fan pulls air upward through a bottom vent, making it less noisy
All the Parts Working Together
  • Daisy chain up to 36 devices
  • Connect up to three 4K displays
  • Connect Ultra HD TVs through the HDMI 1.4 port

Sandy Nasseri, President and Founder of MelroseMAC, had some comments on the new Mac Pro:

“Apple established two new firsts today: the inclusion of information about a product that wasn’t yet available in a keynote speech; and establishing U.S.-based production facilities. Apple is breaking tradition by giving a “sneak peek” at the Mac Pro – the first “Pro” model to be issued in 5 years.
“Apple is making a point to tell the professional market, ‘We haven’t forgotten about you. The Mac Pro isn’t just a rumor, it’s really happening.  This is about Apple finally trying to draw back professionals and Final Cut Pro users and regain the trust from the entertainment market.”

Jump in line for the new Mac Pro and be one of the first to put it to use when it ships!

New Airports – in form and function

Next, we saw the new Airport Extreme and Airport Time Capsule.

Both feature:

  • 802.11ac WiFi
  • 3 times faster than the previous generations
  • Have dual band frequencies (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz)
  • Securely share a hard drive or a printer over a wireless network.

In addition, the Airport Time Capsule has up to 3TB of storage.

iWork for iCloud

Apple is driving forward and re-invigorating cloud based creation and sharing with iWork for iCloud.  Take what you know about Google Drive and then put a classic Apple skin on it and you have iWork for iCloud.  Now in the cloud, you can use iWork on Mac and PC.  It works just like an app on a Mac.  Very cool.  – move to the end.

iOS 7 – new look, new feel, better features

 

iOS 7 was a big, huge, massive redo for Apple!  Talk about a complete overhaul, the new iOS 7 is different from what we Apple fans Specialists are used to, but that’s not a bad thing.  – move to the end.

Here is the giant list of changes and new features you’ll see when iOS 7 is available for download later this year:

  • Redesigned home page
  • Redesigned app icons and the apps themselves
  • Notification center now broken up into categories (e.g., “Today”. “All” and “Missed”)
  • Better multi-tasking – apps auto update, and the iOS keeps track of apps you most commonly use, so they are updated faster
  • Will be able to see preview screens of all open apps – not just the icon!
  • New features for the camera, including a variety of filters, capture still, video, panorama and square
  • Photos can now be organized by geo or date, and you can see shared photos or albums
  • Airdrop – this Mac OS X feature will be available in iOS 7, allowing you to share files between devices via WiFi and Bluetooth
  • Safari makeover! Unified search field, buttons are hidden until you scroll to reveal them, swipe back and forth between pages, see your bookmarks, shared links and reading list on separate menu
  • iCloud Keychain remembers passwords, credit card numbers and more across all your devices – 256-bit AES encryption
  • iTunes Radio: move over Pandora, Spotify and Google Music! iTunes Radio sweeps in with ad-free listening across all devices, with a subscription to iTunes Match.
  • Siri got a makeover – and a macho-over! Siri’s voice will be available in female and male version
  • Find my iPhone now requires your Apple ID to turn off the feature or erase the data on the device. Take that, would-be iPhone jackers!
  • iOS 7 in the car – numerous car manufactures will fully integrate with iOS 7 in 2014

OS X Mavericks

Moving now from mobile to desktop, Apple has a new OS X coming out later this year, dubbed “Mavericks”.  OS X Mavericks has a lot of neat new features, too, though not the complete overhaul of iOS 7.
Here are the highlights coming in OS X Mavericks:

  • Timer Coalescing: when the computer is idle, CPU utilization is reduced by 72%, significantly conserving the battery life on a laptop
  • New compressed memory improves access to the memory, so you can access the RAM
  • Tabs in Finder – no more multiple finder windows open. Yay!
  • Add tags to documents for super easy search
  • Multiple displays – use your menus and dock across multiple displays
  • Safari: improved Java Script, access to all your feeds through bookmarks, and a new side bar
  • Push notifications are now just like the notifications in iOS, previewing the content before you click
  • Calendar now has Facebook integration, includes a location map, distance and drive time
  • iBook now available on the Mac!  Add notes, highlights and more

Team MelroseMAC are pretty excited about these announcements – but what do you think?  What is your favorite new release?  Were you disappointed in anything Apple announced?  Tell us in the comments.