Apple updates: iTunes ends, more privacy and the S$16,000 Mac
Apple tree took aim at Facebook and Google with new privacy tools, and at Netflix with a new personalised Idiot box app, in a wide-ranging keynote address on Mon (Jun 3) at its annual programmer conference which besides brought the demise of iTunes.
The iPhone maker's annual effect in San Jose offered a fresh glimpse at Apple'due south ambitions in healthcare, augmented reality, wearable devices and bogus intelligence, as well every bit its long-running objective to plough the iPad into a more than viable laptop alternative.
"Today nosotros moved all of our software platforms frontwards," principal executive Tim Cook concluded. Updates to Apple's iPhone, iPad, Watch and Mac operating systems will be released to consumers after in the year.
Apple tree also continued its recent push to command ever-higher prices for its products, with a new Mac Pro desktop and screen packet that costs almost United states$12,000 (S$16,300), including US$999 for a monitor stand.
At that place is little doubtfulness the company sees its future anchored around security and privacy as a primal differentiator but the event may be remembered as the mean solar day Apple unveiled a S$xvi,000 Mac.
This year'south WWDC begins at a time when Apple tree's services business has achieved elevated prominence. Investors are looking to apps and media services as a new growth engine while iPhone sales wane, and regulators counterbalance complaints that Apple tree has stifled contest inside its App Store.
"WWDC underlined the importance of Apple'southward services, non just as a new source of revenue growth and diversification, just equally the glue that binds the Apple ecosystem and generates need across product lines," said Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight. "There is piddling incertitude the company sees its hereafter anchored effectually security and privacy as a cardinal differentiator but the event may be remembered as the day Apple tree unveiled a US$12,000 Mac."
Apple's decision to replace iTunes with 3 separate entertainment apps for music, videos and podcasts marks the terminate of an era for i of the tech industry's most transformative products. First introduced xviii years ago as a way to "rip, mix and fire" CDs and load them on to its iPod portable music thespian, iTunes' 99-cent song downloads dragged the entertainment business into the digital era.
Subsequently unveiling a new video streaming service earlier this twelvemonth, Apple is now intensifying its rivalry with Netflix, with more personalised recommendations for goggle box shows and movies for its Apple Boob tube box. The TV accessory will also support the same video games controllers used with Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox, as it prepares for the launch of its new Apple tree Arcade service later this year.
Google and Facebook, who have go a familiar target for broadsides over alleged privacy abuses by Mr Melt, are finding it e'er more difficult to gather data on iPhones – a tendency that is set to go on with the next version of iOS.
Apple tree also said information technology would tighten upwardly location-tracking by apps, allowing users more granular permissions and limiting the power to infer a device location based on nearby wireless networks.
Monday's keynote introduced "Sign in with Apple", enabling users to sign in to various apps without using rival programmes from Facebook and Google. This gives users the selection of hiding their email address and instead be assigned a random email address that will auto-forrad to the user's real e-mail address. "Privacy is a fundamental human right," said Craig Federighi, senior vice-president of software technology.
Apple also introduced HomeKit Secure Video for security cameras used at dwelling. Video footage would be uploaded deeply, "where no one – non even Apple – will be able to run into information technology," said Mr Federighi. The product comes as some other privacy challenge to Google and specifically its Nest cameras.
Simply in one fundamental area – mapping – Apple tree's announcements showed merely how far it has to go to grab up with Google.
An overhauled Apple Maps volition include "significant new detail' from hundreds of cars and planes outfitted with cameras and lidar, which measures the distance to a target by illuminating the target with a pulsed laser light. Information technology will be rolled out beyond the US past the cease of 2019.
The new Maps also includes the ability to view on-the-footing images, and so travel street-by-street smoothly, equally if post-obit a parade – something Google Maps' Street View has offered for more than than a decade.
WATCH AND IPAD CHANGES
The conference saw a series of additions to the Apple Lookout man, including a standalone App Store for the article of clothing device and menstrual bicycle tracking software, demonstrated by WatchOS program pb Haley Allen. Apple was criticised when information technology first launched the health app without cycle tracking, but the release also drew out sensitivities over the brandish of the information.
Watch users will also exist shown their personal "activity trends" and sent a alarm if their surroundings is so loud that it might damage their hearing, every bit part of Apple's broader push into health and fitness tracking.
A series of changes to the look, layout and controls of the iPad'due south operating system took it several steps closer to what many analysts see as its inevitable merger with the venerable MacOS used on desktops and laptops.
The new iPadOS marks the first time that Apple's tablet software has diverged substantially from the iPhone'southward operating organization.
Mac users tin now use their iPad as a second screen for their desktop or laptop, using a new app called Sidecar. Users could already practise this with 3rd-party apps such as Duet Brandish – some other example of how Apple is increasingly finding itself in competition with fifty-fifty minor, independent developers on its App Store.
MAC PRO UPGRADE
Hardware updates for the Mac Pro earned the applause of developers but deliver a minimal touch on Apple's business organisation. Video editing and processing capacity were among the upgrades, for what was described as "the nigh powerful Mac Pro ever made", also as a cooling system for the hard bulldoze.
The starting price for the new Mac Pro will be Us$5999, with the display cost at US$4999, and the cost of the stand at US$999 – tipping the total new hardware costs easily into the five-figure subclass. The announcement of the price of the stand drew more murmurs than cheers from the audition of devotees.
SECURITY: FIND MY AND LOCK
A new version of Apple's software for locating lost devices, now called "Discover My", uses other people's iPhones to pinpoint the location of a MacBook, fifty-fifty if it is not continued to WiFi.
The novel system works using a network of Bluetooth wireless beacons meshed across hundreds of millions of iPhones, which Apple tree said is "encrypted and bearding".
Apple too brought the iPhone'south 'activation lock' security feature to Macs. "Nosotros are making your Mac less attractive to thieves... If your Mac is stolen, the thief will find it useless," said software main Craig Federighi.
AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)
Apple expanded its toolkit for developers making augmented-reality apps with a new platform called RealityKit. The software will let app makers create photograph-realistic digital objects that tin then exist positioned in the real world, as viewed through an iPhone's camera viewfinder. The system could help to pave the way for Apple tree's widely expected AR smart spectacles.
Apple unveiled 3 AR apps: RealityKit, RealityComposer and ARkit. Developers can edit, test and melody on the Mac, iPad and iPhone.
To showcase the new tools, Microsoft-endemic games developer Mojang showed off its forthcoming AR game, Minecraft Earth, on stage at the issue.
"It's a huge year for AR," said Mr Federighi.
By Patrick McGee and Tim Bradshaw © 2022 The Fiscal Times
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/entertainment/apple-s-wwdc-conference-itunes-ends-more-privacy-and-the-12-000-226556
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