June 18, 2012
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by Mark Ollig
The much anticipated 2012 World Wide
Developers Conference (WWDC) took place last week at the Moscone Center in San
Francisco.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook took the stage
for this 23rd WWDC, attended by people from more than 60 countries.
“This is truly a worldwide
conference. We have a great week planned. Over 100 sessions, 100 hands-on labs
[where] you can take in your code, [and] get some help,” Cook said during the
keynote address to the audience, which consisted of many software application (app)
developers who write the code for Apple’s computing devices.
There were 112 informational
sessions and 125 Apple labs set up for the app developers to work on their
code, and to obtain assistance from more than 1,000 Apple engineers available.
Looking out into the audience, Cook
referenced the Apple App Store when he said “. . . and thanks to you, we have
over 650,000 apps in that store.” This was received with much applause.
The Apple CEO also pointed out, to
the delight of the software app developers in the audience that Apple has
written checks for more than $5 billion to the developers who created those apps.
Cook stated 225,000 of those apps
are specifically designed for the iPad, and that customers have downloaded over
more than 30 billion software apps from the Apple App Store.
He said there are now more than 400
million accounts on Apple’s App Store.
The Apple App Store is adding 32
additional countries where it will be selling its software apps. This makes for
155 countries their App Store will be available in.
It was confirmed Apple’s newest
release for its current operating system (OS X) is version 10.8. It is called
Mountain Lion. This latest version will be available from the Mac App Store as
an upgrade next month for $19.99 to Mac desktop computer users.
Mountain Lion will come with more than
200 new features.
Of the now 66 million Mac users, 40
percent are using the current OS X 10.7 version called Lion, which was released
in July 2011.
Apple’s next mobile computing
operating system, called iOS 6, will officially be released for public use this
fall.
This new mobile computing operating
system is being made available to WWDC developers now so they can create new
apps with it for the iPads and the new 3GS, 4, and 4S iPhones, along with the
next iPhone, which is also expected to be available this fall.
The new iOS 6 will incorporate its
own mapping system; replacing Google Maps altogether.
“In iOS 6, we have built an entire
new mapping system from the ground up; and it looks beautiful,” said Apple’s
vice president in charge of mobile systems Scott Forstall. “This is a worldwide
effort. We’re covering the world,” Forstall went on to say.
Apple’s new mapping system (called
Maps), includes turn-by-turn navigation using Siri voice assistance. Apple will
also use its new “Flyover” 3D rendering images recorded from planes and
helicopters. Flyover will provide panoramic views of specific locations from
just about any angle.
Sharing photos to Facebook
seamlessly is another new feature integrated into the iOS 6 mobile platform.
Apple’s popular Siri, a voiced,
digital assistant, is also being improved. It will be more user-intuitive, and
will soon be available on the iPad. Siri also has an improved voice-activated
search, and is now available in China and Canada.
Apple also announced its Facetime
video-telephone communication software app is now useable over a cellular, as
well as a Wi-Fi connection.
After about 20 minutes into the
keynote address, Cook introduced Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president.
Schiller went over a few of the
MacBook Air notebook computer improvements, but saved the best for last.
The audience became excited as
Schiller announced a new MacBook Pro notebook computer.
The audience cheered and applauded
when Schiller revealed the brand new, thinner, next generation, MacBook Pro
with a Retina display using 2,880 x 1,800 pixels (220 pixels per inch) on its
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit screen.
Those 5,184,000 pixels make this
next generation MacBook Pro the world’s highest resolution notebook display
screen.
“The pixels on this display are so
small, that from a normal working distance your retina cannot discern those
individual pixels” Schiller explained.
Apple computers have always been
pricy.
Apple prices the new MacBook Pro
with 15-inch Retina display screen at $2,199. It is equipped with a third
generation 2.3GHz Intel quad-core i7 processor chip (known as Ivy Bridge).
Using Turbo Boost, processing speeds go up to 3.3GHz. This configuration
includes a 256GB flash storage drive.
For fun, I found out what their
highest-priced, 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display would come in at.
I chose every option available,
including the most storage, which was their $2,499 Promise Pegasus 12TB R6 RAID
(Redundant Array of Independent Disks) system.
The grand total for this next
generation, fully-maxed-out, and with all the extras Apple MacBook Pro notebook
computer was $8,746.94 – not including tax.
After giving it some thought, yours
truly will stick with his still-usable Hewlett-Packard Pavilion notebook
computer for a little while longer.
