As it is with every June, Apple invited its app developers and journalists to its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) to teach developers how to work with its latest offerings and announce the roadmap ahead for the short term future. This year’s conference focused heavily on its updated system software and its new high-resolution laptop, with many small quips and indicators that betray Apple’s long-term plans.
The primary announcement was the MacBook Pro with Retina display, which quietly replaced the 17-inch MacBook Pro previously offered by Apple. The new laptop could be best described as a blend between the aesthetics of the iPad, the small form factor of the MacBook Air, and the utility of the MacBook Pros that preceded it. As expected, the components Apple expects won’t be around much longer are no more: gone are the Ethernet port, the FireWire port and the optical drive. FireWire has been supplanted by another Thunderbolt port, the Ethernet port with a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter, and the optical drive with digital distribution and the USB-attached external drive that the MacBook Air and Mac mini have relied on for the past few years. An odd addition is the HDMI port, which would normally be connected through a Thunderbolt port, but Apple has chosen to add a dedicated spot for HDMI inputs. This allowed them to reduce the frame immensely, making it almost as thin as the MacBook Air.
The title feature, however, is the 15.4-inch, 2880 x 1800 display which spans to near the edges of the frame, giving the laptop a pixel density of 220 ppi, higher than any laptop currently on the market. While some software hasn’t been updated to look as nice on it yet, many of the system applications already had high-resolution versions that look good on the new screen. The other big component that helped reduce size was the complete switch to solid-state drives from hard-disk drives for data storage. The minimum storage option is 256 GB of solid-state storage, which is more than adequate for most people, and which can be upgraded to 768 GB. All this doesn’t come cheap though, and at a base price of $2229, puts this out of most people’s price range. The new Retina display MacBook Pro is added as a high-price tier alongside the old 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros, and the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs, all of which received performance boosts, and will support all the features of OS X Mountain Lion, which comes out in August.
iOS 6 was the final showcase of Apple’s keynote, with a few major features highlighted. It appears that Apple and Facebook have made amends with regards to integration, as iOS 6 will have Facebook integrated in the operating system much like Twitter was in iOS 5. Opening the notification panel now shows “Tap to Tweet” and “Tap to Post” options, so quick social updates can be posted without having to go into the application. Siri learns a bunch of new phrases and commands in iOS 6, particularly in the restaurant, sports and movie categories, and is making the jump to the iPad. Apple has managed to make deals with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, GM, Jaguar, Land Rover, Toyota, Audi, Honda, and Chrysler to integrate a Siri button in the steering wheel of some car models to allow for hands-free and eyes-free Siri usage. A new application, Passbook, will also be included and combines all loyalty cards, boarding passes and movie tickets, among other things. Its near-term use seems questionable, but many have speculated this could be a precursor to a mobile payments system Apple may launch to compete with Google. The biggest change to iOS 6, however, is that Apple will be replacing the Google Maps service used in the Maps app with its own in-house mapping solution, combining data from Yelp and TomTom among others. Apple’s Maps will have turn-by-turn navigation, integrated with Siri, traffic reports, and a 3D mode called Flyover that allows you to see 3D models of cities. This would be another step in Apple reduction of its dependence on Google in its products.
Apple’s rivalry with Google was not unnoticed at the keynote, as from the start of the presentation Siri was delivering one-liners with a few targeting Samsung as a company and Ice Cream Sandwich, the newest version of Android. A few statistics were brought up throughout the presentation directly comparing iOS to Android as well, and more than once, some executives made jabs at “that company making dairy products.” It shows how much Apple is willing to let go of Google in iOS. Maps in iOS 6 have less features than Google Maps does, yet Apple is still willing to remove it for the sake of blocking Google from receiving data. Transit information will likely have to be provided by third-party applications, reducing the convenience of a one-stop check of where you are and how to get to where you want to go. This could be a big downside for students like myself, who rely on the transit information perhaps too eagerly sometimes to get around places. Turn-by-turn directions also only work on the latest iPad or the iPhone 4S, so everyone else with iOS 6 will get Apple’s maps without the directions. Flyover also only works on the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and new iPad. While it’s normal for Apple to not bring all the features of the new OS to earlier devices, it is a little unfair to not only remove the Maps application that’s currently there but replace it with something that doesn’t provide all the functions it had before. Perhaps their Maps solution will come closer in features over the next year, but until then it seems the best solution is for Google to release its own Google Maps app for iOS users to use for the time being.
While Maps may be one of the first severed ties between Google and Apple, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that other such connections will be on their way out soon. The smarter Siri gets, the less she’ll depend on a search engine, driving searches away from Google. That YouTube app that no one ever uses, which Google also never updates, will likely be removed soon in a future software update. As evidenced from the Maps app in iOS 6, the bitterness between these two companies will reach far into the face of users of their products, and the victims of their mobile war are likely only just starting to reveal themselves.
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