I also thought that the demo showing cropping out content from an image was impressive - but it’s the type of “tent-pole” feature Apple uses in stores and advertising to show how powerful their newer devices are - older phones don’t have the AI features. They time it well - guaranteed that with the iPad improvements we’ll see a new iPad to demo them.
Frankly, I’m excited. Apple’s managed to allow me to run 8 apps at the same time on my iPad Pro if I plug in a second monitor. On an M1 chip that could run full macOS if allowed and designed that way. Yep, basically Apple turned iPadOS into Windows 7 Starter Edition for netbooks (which was limited to running three windowed apps at a time, if I recall?).
It’s cool. Give it another year or two and they’ll have figured out how to present more apps on screen - and they’ll sell me an M3 chip to do it, probably.
Speaking of basic iPad functionality, I’m still waiting for the ability to listen to Spotify in the background while watching videos at the same time. No rush, Apple. I know you just got around to marking messages as unread, a feature I think my BlackBerry Pearl could do back when I was waiting for Copy and Paste and an App Store. Let me know when I’ve the AI needed to take screenshots of individual windows on my iPad now that they can overlap, that would be quite useful. Or swipe to scroll when using Sidecar.
Biggest disappointment: the keynote made zero mention of Shortcuts app on macOS. Will I ever be able to set timed automations on my Mac like I can on my iPhone? Will we ever get - not just feature parity - but a really awesome, well-integrated story to tell about automation across all these devices? (I suppose the answer, now, as always, is to write a native cross-platform app, but there’s a no-code story that’s been very slow to develop here…)
I wish they’d just kill FileMaker already, it would be so much better as an abandoned feature of iCloud since I’d get it as part of my Apple One subscription and they wouldn’t up sell me on enterprise features I don’t need in order to, you know, share things with others. Apple’s need to call some products business and other products consumer means it can never fully adopt consumer products like SharePlay and iMessages within their business products like FileMaker or MDM. Slack could have been an Apple product, but Apple can’t figure out how to make and price it’s products for small businesses and freemium. Not to mention I’d pay more if I could add more people to my family plan and help manage the family’s devices, but nobody seems to want to do that either.
What kind of a brain do you have when you can watch a video while listening to music? What's the use-case for this?
Even better if they can use some of their advanced AI on an app-by-app basis to remove noise in videos or remove music tracks from videos automatically and focus on the talking. Then I could put my own music in the background or leave it silent to focus better. I can do this on a computer with Rogue Amoeba’s apps and VST plugins, but I can’t do anything remotely like this on an iPad Pro.
well they have mentioned at least that I will be able to run them from Spotlight. Something I was wanting to do with Services since I came across Quicksilver app back in the days.
Everything I mentioned... is from the update and other stuff from the link.
Seeing the massive amount of updates that actually seem like huge wins for consumers is what triggered the thought I typed out.
We're on HN to talk about interesting angles/takes, and if you've noticed I hid at least two in my post, which is why I thought it was worth posting:
- PMs at Google should really be worried right now
- Apple needs to be broken up
> The best thing is: you're the top comment atm while the features mentioned in other comments (those which acutally mention features) are hilarious: tab weather to get past weather, mark comments as unread and for whatever reason: pair your phone to your laptop camera.
The rest of that is classic HN -- users here are so technical (and usually have long standing grievances/wants) that they are interested in very specific feature sets and less fazed by the rest (especially if unlike me they are already Apple devotees).
> I guess I keep on not watching the presentation and wait how this thread develops. It's a fantastic advertising implosion.
It's advertising, but it's also a shot across the bow (again, why I made my comment). Apple barely needs to advertise intentionally/drum up a buzz storm, and especially here on HN. Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world, WWDC touches the lives of many successful developers (they mentioned 33MM devs in the apple program, that is insane), it is naturally of importance to much of HN.
The company, what it stands for, and it's history are all deeply embedded in the minds of technologists the world over.
Again, I really am not a Apple fanboy (nor some Apple PR sockpuppet account):
- I barely talk about apple on my blog[0]
- I don't write Swift -- (it wasn't very good last time I glanced at it compared to the alternatives)
- I definitely don't like ObjC (weird bad lisp? no thank you)
- I don't develop apps natively (NativeScript for the win), I don't even have an active app developer account
- I use an SE2, but most features stay off and I buy it precisely because I do not plan to change it for the next 10 years if I can get away from it (also, RIP FirefoxOS)
I was just really impressed with their presentation, and my biggest take away were the thoughts I shared here, because they might be interesting (and Google PMs are here).
Seeing a company this dominant is kind of alarming -- you can't do the usual handwave of "oh but their product is bad". The problem is that their product is actually very good, and they seem to be the ones that care most about your privacy and align with your goals.
[EDIT] - Correction, Apple isn't the most valuable company in the world
[0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Avadosware.io+apple
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
In the case of the GP comment I think the point where you crossed the line was "I love how you just keep on sounding like an advertisement just before you repaet again that you are NOT an Apple-Fanboy". That's the sort of flamewar swipe we definitely don't want here. How the other person feels about it in any given case isn't dispositive; the problem is the effect such comments have on the ecosystem as a whole.
You're so focused on specific features that you don't see the total picture. For normal users the significant feature is that it just works better: better integrated, better usability, better support. And through the integration they've replaced entire companies too focussed on a single feature as a product.
Even, or maybe especially, for technologists Apple should not be a joke, but something to admire. They do a lot of impressive technical stuff that should awe techies: just replacing intel by a home made cpu with no impact to users other than hugely improved battery life and speed?
As a person who used to work at Intel a long time ago in a non-design/architecture role... It is unbelievably impressive what they've done. Maybe it was always going to happen so there's nothing Intel would have done, but it must sting.
It's so hard to plan chips 1/2 years in advance and predict what the market will consider impressive, etc. They really nailed it.
They're also about to massively win with NVidia open sourcing their linux drivers, games-on-linux finally becoming a thing with Proton, etc.
Corrected -- you're right I should have said they're one of the biggest companies in the world. Wiki has them @ #6 by revenue.
I'd disagree on HAVING to buy their product long term, but for now it's certainly true that most of the world runs on fossil fuels.
> I love how you just keep on sounding like an advertisement just before you repaet again that you are NOT an Apple-Fanboy :D
Well I'm glad the prose is advertisement quality! I was certainly growing in my praise, but I think they deserve it at least a little bit.
It's funny because I realize full well that they're android-ifying themselves a bit (customizable lock screens), but it's done in the typical apple way where I think most people will never run into a problem with it, and it will feel intuitive/look good.
> PS. in the IT tech world I live in, having an Apple device automatically leads to becoming a target for all kinds of jokes (which is why nobody has one) but maybe I just don't understand what "technologists" actually means.
Yeah we probably just live in different worlds, no problem with that!