Apple’s Keynote is Full of Goodies

Apple kicked off their developer conference this week with a slew of announcements in their keynote. A bunch of the Macs got speed-bumps, the new iMac Pro looks lust-worthy, and iOS 11 has a whole bunch of new features specifically designed for the iPad.

Then there’s the new HomePod speaker. It’s pitched as a great speaker that includes Siri.

Some quick thoughts:

• I’m glad to see Apple dedicated to updating their Mac line-up with new processors and little speed-bumps when available. This gives me faith in the Mac platform going forward.
• While the name of the new macOS, “High Sierra,” is sure to be the butt of a lot of jokes, I like that it signifies a bug-fix and more small improvement release.3
• That iMac Pro with the black accessories burns me at my core with envy. I want one. That price tag puts it outside of my grasp for now though. I’m sure a lot of “pros” will be happy to see these kinds of specs in a new machine.
• The iPad specific updates to iOS 11 look fantastic. They look to be moving the iPad more toward to Mac in terms of what it can do productivity wise. Multi-tasking, file management, and drag and drop are all things we take for granted on a Mac, but I think bringing them to the iPad in a new way is far better than just trying to shoehorn a touch interface onto the Mac. It actually made me want an new iPad with an Apple Pencil. I yearned for something like this in college.4
• The HomePod looks interesting. I think pitching it as a great speaker first is a smart marketing move. It sets expectations. A great speaker that works with Apple Music and does some Siri stuff? That’s enticing to me. I like my Amazon Echo, but the speaker isn’t great and it doesn’t integrate with my Apple Music account — that’s two great selling points for me right there. It’s on the pricey side (no shock there), but this feels like the kind of device I’d love to have in the living room to play music with, and if the multi-device syncing is as good as advertised, I think I’d look to this before a Sonos system. I’m intrigued. The sound quality will be the make or break moment for me.
• The Safari browser will be shipping with the ability to stop auto-play videos. It’s interesting to me how much of Safari and Chrome are having to be devoted to basically “fixing” so much of the gross bullshit websites are being filled up with today. Not a good sign for the web.