Apple goes wild, releases tons of new gear and moves on AR/VR

The new iMac packs a punch, but it doesn't come cheap. Photo / Juha Saarinen

After turning a deaf ear for too long, Apple has heard power users who want computers that can keep up with new applications, and released new iMacs, MacBooks and iPad Pros.

It's quite the ketchup bottle effect: with nothing arriving for a long while, the amount of new hardware suddenly released in front of 5300 conference goers at Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose was a surprise.

Then again, Apple could hardly sit idle while other vendors released gear that's powerful enough to for professionals to work with virtual and augmented reality applications, so there was definitely a sense of urgency around the new hardware.

iMacs, which hadn't been updated for two years, leading people to think the desktop computer is dead for Apple, were refreshed with better displays (10-bit colour), the latest Intel processors and the ability to take larger amounts of memory: up to 32 gigabytes for the 21.5-inch model, and 64 gigabytes for the 27-inch ones.

Faster AMD Radeon Pro graphics cards are also available for the iMacs, and the hybrid solid-state/spinning disk Fusion drives are now standard.

It looks like the new iMacs will provide decent performance, but won't come cheap. A 27-inch Retina 5K iMac specced up with 32GB of 2400MHz DDR4 and a 2TB Fusion drive memory costs $4709 for instance.

Apple also put faster components into the MacBook Pro laptops. Now there are Kaby Lake processors from Intel, better AMD Radeon Pro graphics, faster solid state storage but oddly enough, you still can't go higher than 16GB of system memory.

Intel's 7th-gen processors are now also in the lightweight MacBook, ditto quicker SSD storage, making them up to a fifth faster. The 12-inch MacBook is a great portable, but I had hoped the new processors would make it last longer than the specified 10 hours on battery.

As expected, the A10 Fusion chip set from the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus found its way into new iPad Pros, in the A10X guise. There's now a 10.5-inch screen model, with the 9.7-inch one being discontinued.

Why the slightly larger screen? Well, Apple said the bigger screen makes a full-sized onscreen keyboard fit. The Smart Keyboard accessory for the 10.5-inch is also full size, making it more comfortable to type on with large hands.

The 120 Hertz refresh rate for the screen promises better responsiveness with the Apple Pencil. Not that it felt laggy before. Also, the screens are brighter at 600 nits, and use the P3 wide-colour gamut and are even less reflective than before.

Both the 10.5-inch and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro have USB 3 circuits for quicker file transfers, whereas the 9.7-incher anomalously had the slower and older USB 2 in a device aimed at graphics, photo and video work.

You can order the iPad Pros with up to 512GB of storage, and they should be plenty fast: Alasdair Coull, the creative director from Peter Jackson's Wingnut AR offshoot, demoed an augmented reality game on stage at WWDC 2017 that ran very smoothly despite requiring the sort of processing power that meant having a large desktop tower not so long ago.

Apple hops aboard the VR and AR bandwagons

Speaking of virtual and augmented realities, WWDC 2017 provided yet another opportunity for yours truly to don a pair of VR goggles to look silly in.

Here I am, checking out a Final Cut Pro setup with an external Thunderbolt 3 storage array, running on one of the new Macs:

The scenery that I saw was a walkthrough of Hawaii, and it was fairly realistic with positional audio enhancing the effect. I didn't dare to move around much, and was disappointed that there was no Apple VR gear... the goggles work, but I'd prefer lighter ones with nicer design, and higher resolution display and some sort of warning system for when you're about to bump into people and things.

That's me being a bit claustro, so maybe I'll just stick to AR games for now.

Not ready yet: the iMac Pro and Siri Speak... sorry, HomePod

The iMacs above will no doubt be really quick and perfectly usable computers, but Apple teased the new Pro version which makes them seem a bit meh, really.

I mean, who wouldn't want an iMac that can have up to 18 cores of Intel Xeon processor goodness, and 128GB of memory, not to mention AMD Pro Vega graphics?

If that doesn't make you drool, you can stop reading this bit now, but the long and short of it is that the iMac Pro looks set to be an extremely quick machine, and work great for demanding graphics, video, yes VR/AR, and that somewhat scary application, machine learning.

We'll see how the iMac Pro performs (and how much it'll cost in New Zealand) by December, which is a long time to wait. Also, I imagine this means that's that for an updated Mac Pro.

The iMac Pro will be a niche machine, but the HomePod (shouldn't it have been Siri Speaker?) is definitely mass-market and should've been ready by now and not December.

Apart from being able to go "Hey Siri" to the HomePod, which will be aimed at devices like Amazon's Echo when it comes out and have the speaker look things up for you - Apple has had to expand Siri's capabilities for this, and work out a way to keep your queries and orders safe for privacy reasons - the thing promises great sound with a 4-inch bass element and separate tweeters, and easy multi-room setup.

There's an Apple A8 chip inside the HomePod to handle all the audio processing and privacy protection that Siri is vaunted for.

Again, we'll see how the US$349 (NZ$489) Mac Pro cylinder-like HomePod works in practice in a few months' time - and if it will scare other vendors into action to come up with something as advanced.

There was a colossal amount of new things announced at the WWDC 2017. This includes the MacOS High Sierra desktop/laptop and iOS 11 operating systems, which will be in beta soon and which deserve separate looks.