Volitans Software

Thoughts on WWDC 2013

WWDC 2013 was yesterday, and it was action packed. Apple has been unusually quiet the past couple months- usually they have an event for either OSX or iOS. But they have had nothing at all. It seemed to me that they were saving it all for yesterday. They announced iOS 7, Mac OS X Mavericks, the new Mac Pro, the new MacBook Air, and iWork for iCloud. (Here’s a good summary.) That is a heck of a lot for one event. A quick hit though on each one:

iOS 7

This is a complete UI overall by Jonathan Ive. I’m not sure if I like it yet- the icons look a little to playful for me. But I like the overall concept. The Control Center looks awesome. Multitasking looks vastly improved.  I’d really like to get my hands on it- but I’ll probably wait for Beta 2 to install in on my iPhone.

Mac OS X Mavericks

Yes, I keep the Mac in there. Not a huge fan of the new name- most people will drop the trailing ‘s’ because its so hard to pronounce. I don’t mind the convention, but they shouldn’t limit it to California. They didn’t release too much information about it but the power user features are nice. I love tabs, so having them in the Finder to reduce windows is great. I’m hoping to be able to test out SMART Utility on 10.9 shortly.

The New Mac Pro

Tim Cook said we’d be surprised at the Mac Pro, and he wasn’t wrong. Its a totally different beast than the previous one. Its now a black cylinder instead of a silver box- a form factor that actually went back to the PowerMac G3. It look really cool, and very powerful. The thermal core is a very interesting way of cooling it. I’m not all that happy about how the drives are set up- no drive bays.

Misc

Craig Federighi was brilliant presenting iOS and OS X. He had a great on stage presence, and he was very funny at times. Phil Schiller had the line of the presentation “Can’t innovate my ass”.

Overall a great event- and reminds me of the Apple of old, but still different. They certainly aren’t going away any time soon.