Apple’s widely rumored AR headset is likely to be announced in an hour at their WWDC keynote.
I expect this to be a complete flop for apple. All the prerelease rumors and such say it’s half-baked. Be sure to bookmark this post to laugh at me once it takes over the world and we’re all wearing Apple goggles 24/7. (Note, if that takes 5 years it doesn’t count.)
Pretty boring WWDC, rumor-wise. Sideloading iOS is hugely exciting but that will only be in EU. Maybe we’ll see an iPhone with USB-C, whoop-dee-doo.
iPhones won’t be announced until later this year. But for sure they’ll have USB-C.
Yeah, that’ll be nice. I’d love to throw out all my lightning cables.
Yea, the big gambling point is USB-C phones for the EU market, or portless phones that must be charged wireless to give the finger to the EU market.
I feel like the rumor mill has all but confirmed USB-C for everyone. It wouldn’t make sense for Apple to try to manage two different versions, given how many SKUs they already have. At this point the surprise would be if there isn’t USB-C.
Big question is if they give the finger to the EU by requiring Apple-branded USB-C cables to get the fastest charging.
But again, iPhone announcements won’t come until September-ish.
Oh that’s right, forgot phones were a separate event.
I would be highly surprised if they made USB-C phones. I think they follow the letter of the law and make the new phones wireless only with no external port at all. The wireless charger would double as a data port through the charging connection.
I’m hoping that’s what they do, because it would be so funny. But I reckon it’s 50/50 whether they actually do.
If there is a Mac Studio upgrade, I might be interested. My 512 M2 Pro Mini works great but I can use more SSD storage. If no upgrade, may just have to get a larger SSD M2 Pro when they hit the outlet store. Although I do have an external SSD enclosure, I am too skittish to store and run programs on it.
That was the original rumor but newer ones say they’ll support USB-C. We shall see. Not a big deal for me as I charge wirelessly, I can’t remember the last time I plugged in my phone.
What I really want is sideloading and Apple is going to screw all non-EU regions on that.
Re storage, it’s wasteful to pay Apple’s prices there on a desktop computer. USB or thunderbolt storage is extremely fast and works great.
I think the headset reveal will be interesting. Apple’s strength is in processors, so I imagine the graphics and framerate will be quite good. But it has to be more than tech demo’s. If they demo a combat game you can play on your dining room table again, that’s an insta-fail. It needs a few industry-disrupting, killer apps, and not just games and definitely not a chat room.
If it’s priced at $2000 or above, I have a feeling it will be geared towards certain industries, maybe healthcare or science. Nobody will pay $2k to play No Man’s Sky.
I’m kinda/sorta excited about a 15" MBA, but I already know the standard model will be 8/256 and bringing it to a more reasonable 16/512 machine will encroach into MBP pricing and I’ll just put my wallet away.
I can see it both ways. The problem for Apple is that the hardware for such a wireless connection will be expensive, and if they don’t raise the price of phones to do this, they’re going to eat that. And the whole move against e-waste suddenly seems pretty BS when the next gen phone has an even more expensive and proprietary cable in each box, clearly meant to screw consumers AND hardware makers and lock consumers in.
But all that said the real bottleneck might be Chinese companies just can’t make that many high quality wireless, magnetic data cables, so the whole idea is DOA anyway.
You’re spot-on, Gordon. It needs a killer app. Like, for example, walking around a city with an Apple Maps heads-up overlay, or driving a car while dictating to Siri and iMessages in the HUD.
Qi charging coils are cheap as dirt, and iPhones already have wireless connectivity through wifi, bluetooth, and NFT. No extra cost there.
I like that Kate dresses like Phil Schiller.
You’ve got it! Dunno the pricing yet, though.
I’m posting this before they post the price and my prediction is it won’t make sense, when compared to a 16" MBP for a few dollars more.
If I were CEO of Apple I’d make a MacBook line, call it “MacBook Star”, and have nothing but women working in the ergonomics, engineering, and customized software for it, market it as made for and by women.
But I’m not! Anyway 15”
The 15" MacBook Air has been described as “astonishing” twice. Need a content designer pass on the scripts.
Love the percentages comparison to “the PC.” Like the the PC laptop is a singular entity.
$1299 starting price is not bad.