I get it. You’re excited and/or angry about the $3,500 headset Apple might sell you next year if you’re in the right country. It’s worth getting excited about. But in terms of real-world, right-now impact, the surprise winner of the WWDC 2023 keynote is… wait for it… the Mac!

I would never have imagined it beforehand, but it’s true: Apple’s Mac announcements on Monday were huge news, despite being overshadowed by shiny future products and platforms that won’t let anyone do anything until 2024.

MacBook Air +2

While I’m acting all contrarian-like, let me double down. The most important Mac announcement on Monday wasn’t the upgraded Mac Studio or the Mac Pro, the final piece of the Apple silicon puzzle. It was the humble MacBook Air.

As Apple enjoys pointing out, the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air is a hit. Apple says it’s the best-selling laptop around, and even if you accept that Apple’s competitors are selling 30 different models while Apple sells only a handful, it’s still a real accomplishment. The MacBook Air’s combination of power and affordability is pretty much unmatched.

This leads us to Apple’s biggest laptop weakness, at least until this week: If you wanted a larger screen than that 13-inch display, you’d have to pay $800 more for the 14-inch MacBook Pro. And if you wanted an appreciably larger display, you’d be paying $1,300 more for the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is an incredibly powerful computer with a best-in-the-world display, but even its dedicated fans would probably admit that buying one is overkill if all you really want is a little bit bigger display.

Foundry

Now here comes the new 15-inch MacBook Air, bringing more pixels to the party for a mere $200 premium over the 13-inch model. (And let’s not forget the 16-inch MacBook Pro also weighs 1.4 pounds more than the 15-inch Air, so not only will your credit card feel better, but so will your back.) I guess you could argue that by offering the 15-inch Air, Apple is going to lose some sales from people so desperate for more screen real estate that they were willing to buy a MacBook Pro, but I think it’s far more likely that Apple was losing sales to 15-inch PC laptops, or selling 13-inch MacBook Airs to people who were unhappy about having to compromise on the size of the screen.

If you read closely between the lines of Apple’s announcement on Monday, you can see that Apple is positively salivating about the prospect of entering a large 15-inch laptop market currently occupied by a lot of Windows PCs. Apple is suddenly relevant in that category, and it would like to kindly point out that macOS works really well with that iPhone in your pocket. I’d imagine that Apple will soon be trumpeting how many PC switchers it captured via the 15-inch MacBook Air.

But that’s not all the MacBook Air goodness! In what might be the surprise move of the year, Apple cut the price of the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air from $1,199 to $1,099. Last year, I think we were all a bit disappointed that Apple couldn’t manage to release the M2 Air at the same price as the previous M1 model. This year, things look a lot better. (And the M2 13-inch model is now $999 in education, a key price point.)

Let’s reflect on this move for a moment. In an era of inflation, Apple took its most popular Mac and cut its price by $100. I sure didn’t have that on my bingo card.

A new era of pro Macs

Rather than dropping a load of confetti and celebrating the end of the Intel Mac era with the announcement of the M2 Mac Pro, I’m going to be a lil’ stinker again: I’m more excited by the announcement of the M2 Mac Studio.

First off, after the iMac Pro came and went as a single model, I admit to being skittish about the potential future of the Mac Studio. It hadn’t yet received an M2 update, so was it going to, ever? And would Apple perceive it as standing in the way of the Mac Pro, leading the company to hold it back in order to keep the Mac Pro firmly established as the top of the Mac product line?

None of that happened. The new Mac Studio doesn’t just come in an M2 Max base model that, for my money, might be the best balance of power and price in the entire Mac product line. It also comes in an M2 Ultra model–the very same chip that powers the new Mac Pro.

Apple

To be clear, the new Mac Pro shares the title of Fastest Mac Around with the M2 Ultra Mac Studio. They are joint champions. There is nothing about the Mac Studio that’s compromised to allow the Mac Pro to eke out a victory. Both Macs have enough cooling to let them run at full speed, unthrottled, all of the time. The king isn’t dead, but the crown has to be shared from now on.

This is not to say that the Mac Pro won’t have its adherents. If you’re someone who needs more ports, more internal storage, PCI cards, and the like–and there are a lot of people in pro audio and video who do–then the Mac Pro will be a better (albeit more expensive) choice. But the Mac Pro audience keeps getting increasingly esoteric, and all the other factors that affect computer performance–memory, CPU, and GPU–are identical in both systems.

So all hail the mighty Mac Studio, sharing the throne with that new Mac Pro. And three cheers for the new 15-inch MacBook Air and its now-more-affordable 13-inch sibling. Everyone else in the world is talking about the Apple Vision Pro and the promise of 2024, but all these new Macs will be here next week. I can’t wait.

Apple 15-inch MacBook Air (M2, 2023)

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Mac

You probably haven’t heard, but on Monday Apple is holding its first event of 2023 on Monday. We’re kidding—we know you know it’s time for WWDC 2023, and we’re here to give you the lowdown on the event’s announcements.

That’s right. Just like last year’s iPhone event, by an amazing coincidence, we’ve again stumbled across Tim Cook’s video script for Monday morning’s keynote presentation and of course, we’re going to share it all with you. It’s a doozy: from iOS 17 and new Macs to macOS and the mixed-reality headset, we’ve got the scoop on everything you’re going to hear from Apple on Monday—before Apple is ready to show it all to us. (Editor’s note: For anyone thinking this is real, if David had the actual script, we would definitely send it back to Apple.)

So here’s your spoiler alert: If you want to be surprised, stop reading now and watch the WWDC keynote live at 10 am.

Introduction

09:57: The pre-stream starts, complete with achingly hip musical accompaniment. The opening track is called “Friday Night Baseball” by MLS Season Pass. Wait that’s the wrong Apple document—it’s actually “Eyes Closed” by Ed Sheeran from the Apple Music WWDC playlist. Is that a hint??
10:00: The video stream starts. It’s another pre-recorded video, rather than a live presentation.
10:01: Tim Cook says good morning, and welcomes us to WWDC 2023. “Today,” he says, “we’re going to push our platforms into an exciting future where technology makes the world a better place.” He talks a bit about how much he loves developers and says there are lots of great announcements on their way, but for now, he wants to talk about…
10:03: …the App Store. He says the official store prevented more than $2 billion in fraudulent transactions last year, while small developers grew their revenue by 64 percent. It sounds a bit like sideloading is coming, and Apple realizes it now needs to sell the benefits of the App Store instead of forcing people to use it.

iOS 17 and iPadOS 17

10:05: Well, we’re about to find out if that’s the case, because here comes avuncular gigolo Craig Federighi, accompanied by ludicrous James Bond music, to talk about the iPhone and iOS.
10:06: Craig is doing his usual joke about picking a name for the update. Is it going to have macOS-style branding? iOS Death Valley, perhaps? No, it’s iOS 17. Very funny, Craig.
10:07: Craig is into the proper action now. He’s talking about the iPhone’s Lock Screen and all the customization options that were added last year. Apparently, he’s seen some of the layouts people have come with and thinks they’re “magical.” Cheers mate.
10:08: It’s about to become more magical because Apple is adding new font options. And you’ll be able to create a Lock Screen setup and share it with other users. That’s a nice idea.
10:09: And as expected, the Lock Screen will be able to serve as a sort of smart display. When the iPhone is locked and laid horizontally it will switch to an alternative interface and set of widgets showing essential data. This could be handy when you’re working on your Mac and have the iPhone charging on your desk or charging it next to your bed.
10:10: We’re on to the Dynamic Island now. It’s getting new features in time for the expected expansion to the entire iPhone 15 family. Both incoming notifications and Siri are moving to the island, and there’s a slick new interface that lets graphical elements flow from the island into the main screen area.
10:13: Control Center is changing. There’s a completely new design and it looks stunning. Will take some time to get used to, though. Apple says you now have complete, well, control over the toggles that appear here, including third-party settings!
10:15: Now we’re talking Focus Mode. There are two new filters, called Movies and Fanzone respectively, aimed at people watching either a movie, TV show, or a sports event on their iPhone. (Federighi says these will work great on iPad too.) The two come with subtly different presets, the one helping to avoid spoilers and distraction, the other allowing for related social media and commentary from secondary sources.
10:17: Federighi gets some laughs by pretending he’s about to unveil a super-important new feature and then revealing it’s the infinitely adjustable flashlight. A nod to the leakers there, I think.
10:18: Robby Walker, Apple’s information intelligence boss, is here to talk about the new and improved Siri. And not a moment too soon.
10:19: Siri is now based on a completely remodeled artificial intelligence which Walker refers to as Project Bobcat. It’s far more accurate and versatile than any other smart assistant on the market, he boasts. No word on the expected (and widely vilified) change to the trigger phrase, thankfully.
10:21: Emily Schubert is here to talk about the redesigned version of CarPlay. We saw a lot of this at WWDC last year, but Apple now has a firm launch date: the first cars with CarPlay 2.0 will go on sale in September 2023.
10:24: Federighi is back to talk about compatibility. iOS 17 will be available for the iPhone X and later. Bad news for iPhone 8 owners.
10:26: Federighi is now talking about iPadOS 17. The iPad is getting the Lock Screen customization it missed out on last year, including the new fonts and sharing options added in iOS 17 this year. Plus the new Focus Mode filters.
10:30: Thin gruel for iPad owners, it seems, because that’s all for now. Federighi is back to sum up the main points of the iOS 17/iPadOS 17 update. Interesting that they were rolled in together: a quiet year for iDevices. And no mention of sideloading. Then again, this is precisely the kind of thing Apple would keep quiet.

Apple

Macs and macOS 14

10:35: Will there be any new hardware today? It looks like there will be because John Ternus is here. And it’s official: Apple is launching a 15-inch MacBook Air!
10:37: We’re watching a marketing video for the new Air, and it looks stunning. Three immediate questions to ask: how much does it weigh, how much does it cost, and how powerful will it be?
10:39: The answer to the first question is 3 pounds or just under 1.4kg. That’s pretty impressive for the size. It’s just 12mm thick (or “thin” in Apple’s terminology), which is only 0.7mm thicker than the 13-inch model.
10:41: It’s got a 15.2-inch screen, to be exact, at a resolution of 2880 x 1800 (compared to 2560 x 1664 on the 13-inch model).
10:43: As expected, Apple is sticking with the M2 chip. No sign of the M3 generation just yet (unless there’s a surprise waiting for later in the presentation). And it seems to be the plain M2 chip, with no mention of an M2 Pro option. That’s fast enough, though.
10:45: Apple is boasting that the new Air is “whisper-quiet” which presumably means no fan, and is another way of saying the company hasn’t included the sort of higher-power processor that would require cooling.
10:47: The choice of a slightly lower-power chip may be important for other reasons. Apple says the new MacBook Air has the longest battery life of any laptop it’s made. That’s quite a boast. We’re looking at graphs and Apple is throwing some serious shade at “the leading Windows laptops.”
10:49: It starts at 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM.
10:51: More marketing videos. Getting a bit tired of looking at the Air, as nice as it is.
10:52: STOP THE PRESSES IT COMES IN GREEN.
10:54: The new 15-inch MacBook Air will start at $1,599/£1,699, and goes on sale next month. And that’s it from John Ternus.
10:58: Federighi is back to talk about macOS 14!
10:59: He’s doing the naming joke again. Lots of footage of beautiful California scenery, leading to the revelation that…
11:00: …the next version of macOS is called Grizzly. Wow, that’s surprising.
11:01: Hang on, Federighi was joking again. It’s actually called Skyline. Good one, Craig.
11:02: He’s now talking about system reliability, and claiming macOS Skyline is the fastest and most energy-efficient operating system in the world. That’s shorthand for “not many new features this year, lads.”
11:03: Ah, but Wallet is coming to the Mac! That’s a neat idea.
11:04: macOS Skyline is coming in the fall. That was all very quick. And there’s no sign of the M2 Ultra chip or the Mac Pro.

Foundry

watchOS 10

11:05: It’s time to talk about the Apple Watch. Here comes Kevin Lynch to talk about watchOS 10!
11:07: Lynch is talking about the famous Grid View, which he calls “the most viewed screen on any smartwatch in history.” But he admits it can be intimidating to use. (Or as we put it, “all wrong.”)
11:08: We’re looking at what he calls “a reimagining” of Grid View. It’s a simpler layout, with larger icons in neat rows, rather than tessellating in a honeycomb; you scroll up and down, not freely in two dimensions. It looks a bit more like iOS, and far easier to use, even though there will be fewer icons on screen at once.
11:10: There are now app folders in watchOS! Lynch makes these look easy to use, although they could be fiddly on the smaller Apple Watch sizes.
11:11: And widgets too! In terms of complexity, these sit somewhere between the old Glances in early versions of watchOS and full apps.
11:12: Apple Watches can now sync with multiple Apple devices: Macs and iPads as well as more than one iPhone. This is a huge change.
11:14: Lynch is now boasting about improvements to sleep tracking in watchOS, which he says features “the most accurate metrics in the industry.” Has Apple really caught up with Fitbit?
11:16: There’s a new feature where you can create your own types of workout. Note that this was already possible to an extent, by using the Other workout type, but now you can answer a series of questions about the exercise you’ll be doing and watchOS will more intelligently assess your progress, calorific consumption, and so on. This is great news for kabaddi practitioners.
11:18: Which Apple Watches will be able to run watchOS 10? The Series 4 and later. That’s the same list as last year, so Apple has refrained from swinging the axe.

Mixed-reality headset

11:19: Tim Cook is back to talk about Apple’s history, a little about Steve Jobs, and the many achievements and products Apple has made over the years. It’s all very important-sounding and after years of rumors, it’s finally time for the Apple headset!
11:22: Marketing video time. Lots of moody low-lit shots of abstract shapes against a backdrop of ominous music.
11:23: The buildup is palpable. And here it comes…
11:24: We’re getting our first view of the headset. It’s gorgeous, frankly. Apple does these videos so well. But what about battery life? What about price? What about content?
11:26: The video is over and Cook talks a bit about what it means and introduces an exec we’ve never seen before: Mike Rockwell. Rockwell starts talking about how VR and AR are “the most important technologies in the world right now, bar none.” He says Apple has been exploring these technologies in its software releases for years now but has been waiting to create hardware until it felt it could create something to match its high standards. Tell that to the designers, Mike.
11:28: Rockwell is ready to tell us the name of the thing. Please, no jokes.
11:29: It’s called… Reality Pro. As we expected. Leaks really have killed the fun of Apple events.
11:30: Rockwell is talking about all the things we can do with the headset. Games, movies, product design, “next-gen social” which looks suspiciously like the metaverse, training, art…
11:33: A nervous-looking developer called John Caramel is talking us through the delights of VR gaming. It looks a bit boring. The problem with these kinds of presentations is you can’t really appreciate what it’s like unless you’re using the hardware.
11:37: A Hollywood mogul named Ron Waffle pretends to be excited about watching movies in VR. We’re looking at a mocked-up Marvel short that clearly makes no sense unless you’re wearing a headset. The short is called “Ant-Man Pays Off A Parking Ticket.”
11:41: Rockwell is back to talk about the hardware. He says the screens are the “highest-resolution displays on any VR hardware in the world,” and that the viewing experience is “buttery smooth.” Shades of Federighi there.
11:43: Ah, the all-important question of battery life. Rockwell says Reality Pro lasts for four hours between charges and claims this is better than any rival hardware.
11:44: …but that’s only possible because there’s a separate battery pack you have to carry with you. That could reduce the number of customers, I suspect.
11:45: Rockwell is now talking about how the device works. As expected there’s an Apple Watch-style dial (which Apple is calling the “Reality Switch”) to move smoothly from augmented reality to virtual reality and vice versa.
11:47: We’re now talking about augmented reality, and the way the headset will be able to overlay information about your surroundings. The headset uses both short- and long-range LiDAR to develop a 3D map of the world around you.
11:49: We’re looking at some of the device’s pre-installed apps. There are xrOS (yes, that name has now been confirmed) versions of FaceTime, Fitness, Camera, Calendar, Maps, Mail, Numbers, News, and a whole lot more. Pretty much every preinstalled iOS app has an xrOS equivalent ready to go. Third-party content might be sparse to begin with, but Apple has made plenty of in-house apps for early adopters.
11:51: Here come the two key facts: price and launch date. The Reality Pro will cost $2,899/£2,999, so Apple has managed to come in under the all-important three thousand. That’s still a heck of a price to ask for something that feels niche at this point. It’s not clear if the headset will be available to just everyone, or only through the developer channel as was hinted ahead of the launch.
11:53: Either way, it will go on sale “this fall.”
11:54: And that’s your lot. Tim Cook has returned to the stage and appears to be summing everything up. Lots in store for iPhone and Apple Watch owners, a little less for iPad and Mac owners, but the latter gets new hardware at least. And what an exciting prospect Reality Pro is!

Apple

One more thing

11:56: Hold your horses! We’re not done yet. It’s time for One More Thing. It’s… the new Mac Pro! And John Ternus is back to talk us through it.
11:57: Just a second, John, we’re going straight into a marketing video. Has the Mac Pro been redesigned? No. It’s the cheese grater suitcase again. This was expected, to be fair, and it’s what’s inside that counts. Apple has still managed to make the 2019 design look exciting, by the way. The people who make these videos are geniuses.
11:59: Ternus says Apple has been accused of ignoring pro users, but it “never gave up on them for a second.” The new Mac Pro has all the power and upgradeability you could possibly ask for, he says.
12:01: We’re now officially into our third hour of this presentation, by the way. As virtual keynotes go, this is a marathon.
12:02: Apple confirms that the Pro is getting a brand-new chip. Will this be the first sighting of the M3? No, it’s an M2 Ultra. And we’re switching to another presenter: it’s Johny Srouji, who talked us through the M2 last year.
12:04: The M2 Ultra is “the most powerful system on a chip ever seen in a personal computer.” It has 24 CPU cores and 76 graphics cores. RAM goes up to 192GB. Those are the exact numbers Mark Gurman released in December.
12:06: We’re looking at graphs. So many graphs.
12:08: Think the M2 Ultra is powerful? There’s an upgrade option to get the M2 Extreme instead. This has 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores. More graphs.
12:10: Apple is skirting around the issue of expandability, but is implying that significant upgrades will be possible. You can definitely upgrade the SSD, and the media and networking cards, but no mention of RAM or graphics.
12:12: Ternus is back and starting to wrap up on the Mac Pro. Price? Launch date? (And is there going to be an upgrade to the Pro Display XDR?)
12:13: The new Mac Pro will start at $5,999/£6,299. For U.S. customers that’s the same as the 2019 model, which is decent. U.K. customers probably expected that price bump. We’re assuming the M2 Extreme model will push past the $10,000 mark, but Apple isn’t revealing the upgrade pricing just yet.
12:15: The Mac Pro will launch “in the fall of 2023.”
12:17: And now Tim Cook is back to wrap up–for real this time. It’s over. With Lil Durk’s “All My Life” to play us out.

Apple

You probably haven’t heard, but on Monday Apple is holding its first event of 2023 on Monday. We’re kidding—we know you know it’s time for WWDC 2023, and we’re here to give you the lowdown on the event’s announcements.

That’s right. Just like last year’s iPhone event, by an amazing coincidence, we’ve again stumbled across Tim Cook’s video script for Monday morning’s keynote presentation and of course, we’re going to share it all with you. It’s a doozy: from iOS 17 and new Macs to macOS and the mixed-reality headset, we’ve got the scoop on everything you’re going to hear from Apple on Monday—three days before Apple is ready to show it all to us. (Editor’s note: This story could not be verified before publication.)

So here’s your spoiler alert: If you want to be surprised, stop reading now and watch the WWDC keynote live at 10 am.

Introduction

09:57: The pre-stream starts, complete with achingly hip musical accompaniment. The opening track is called “Friday Night Baseball” by MLS Season Pass. Wait that’s the wrong Apple document—it’s actually “Eyes Closed” by Ed Sheeran from the Apple Music WWDC playlist. Is that a hint??
10:00: The video stream starts. It’s another pre-recorded video, rather than a live presentation.
10:01: Tim Cook says good morning, and welcomes us to WWDC 2023. “Today,” he says, “we’re going to push our platforms into an exciting future where technology makes the world a better place.” He talks a bit about how much he loves developers and says there are lots of great announcements on their way, but for now, he wants to talk about…
10:03: …the App Store. He says the official store prevented more than $2 billion in fraudulent transactions last year, while small developers grew their revenue by 64 percent. It sounds a bit like sideloading is coming, and Apple realizes it now needs to sell the benefits of the App Store instead of forcing people to use it.

iOS 17 and iPadOS 17

10:05: Well, we’re about to find out if that’s the case, because here comes avuncular gigolo Craig Federighi, accompanied by ludicrous James Bond music, to talk about the iPhone and iOS.
10:06: Craig is doing his usual joke about picking a name for the update. Is it going to have macOS-style branding? iOS Death Valley, perhaps? No, it’s iOS 17. Very funny, Craig.
10:07: Craig is into the proper action now. He’s talking about the iPhone’s Lock Screen and all the customization options that were added last year. Apparently, he’s seen some of the layouts people have come with and thinks they’re “magical.” Cheers mate.
10:08: It’s about to become more magical because Apple is adding new font options. And you’ll be able to create a Lock Screen setup and share it with other users. That’s a nice idea.
10:09: And as expected, the Lock Screen will be able to serve as a sort of smart display. When the iPhone is locked and laid horizontally it will switch to an alternative interface and set of widgets showing essential data. This could be handy when you’re working on your Mac and have the iPhone charging on your desk or charging it next to your bed.
10:10: We’re on to the Dynamic Island now. It’s getting new features in time for the expected expansion to the entire iPhone 15 family. Both incoming notifications and Siri are moving to the island, and there’s a slick new interface that lets graphical elements flow from the island into the main screen area.
10:13: Control Center is changing. There’s a completely new design and it looks stunning. Will take some time to get used to, though. Apple says you now have complete, well, control over the toggles that appear here, including third-party settings!
10:15: Now we’re talking Focus Mode. There are two new filters, called Movies and Fanzone respectively, aimed at people watching either a movie, TV show, or a sports event on their iPhone. (Federighi says these will work great on iPad too.) The two come with subtly different presets, the one helping to avoid spoilers and distraction, the other allowing for related social media and commentary from secondary sources.
10:17: Federighi gets some laughs by pretending he’s about to unveil a super-important new feature and then revealing it’s the infinitely adjustable flashlight. A nod to the leakers there, I think.
10:18: Robby Walker, Apple’s information intelligence boss, is here to talk about the new and improved Siri. And not a moment too soon.
10:19: Siri is now based on a completely remodeled artificial intelligence which Walker refers to as Project Bobcat. It’s far more accurate and versatile than any other smart assistant on the market, he boasts. No word on the expected (and widely vilified) change to the trigger phrase, thankfully.
10:21: Emily Schubert is here to talk about the redesigned version of CarPlay. We saw a lot of this at WWDC last year, but Apple now has a firm launch date: the first cars with CarPlay 2.0 will go on sale in September 2023.
10:24: Federighi is back to talk about compatibility. iOS 17 will be available for the iPhone X and later. Bad news for iPhone 8 owners.
10:26: Federighi is now talking about iPadOS 17. The iPad is getting the Lock Screen customization it missed out on last year, including the new fonts and sharing options added in iOS 17 this year. Plus the new Focus Mode filters.
10:30: Thin gruel for iPad owners, it seems, because that’s all for now. Federighi is back to sum up the main points of the iOS 17/iPadOS 17 update. Interesting that they were rolled in together: a quiet year for iDevices. And no mention of sideloading. Then again, this is precisely the kind of thing Apple would keep quiet.

Apple

Macs and macOS 14

10:35: Will there be any new hardware today? It looks like there will be because John Ternus is here. And it’s official: Apple is launching a 15-inch MacBook Air!
10:37: We’re watching a marketing video for the new Air, and it looks stunning. Three immediate questions to ask: how much does it weigh, how much does it cost, and how powerful will it be?
10:39: The answer to the first question is 3 pounds or just under 1.4kg. That’s pretty impressive for the size. It’s just 12mm thick (or “thin” in Apple’s terminology), which is only 0.7mm thicker than the 13-inch model.
10:41: It’s got a 15.2-inch screen, to be exact, at a resolution of 2880 x 1800 (compared to 2560 x 1664 on the 13-inch model).
10:43: As expected, Apple is sticking with the M2 chip. No sign of the M3 generation just yet (unless there’s a surprise waiting for later in the presentation). And it seems to be the plain M2 chip, with no mention of an M2 Pro option. That’s fast enough, though.
10:45: Apple is boasting that the new Air is “whisper-quiet” which presumably means no fan, and is another way of saying the company hasn’t included the sort of higher-power processor that would require cooling.
10:47: The choice of a slightly lower-power chip may be important for other reasons. Apple says the new MacBook Air has the longest battery life of any laptop it’s made. That’s quite a boast. We’re looking at graphs and Apple is throwing some serious shade at “the leading Windows laptops.”
10:49: It starts at 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM.
10:51: More marketing videos. Getting a bit tired of looking at the Air, as nice as it is.
10:52: STOP THE PRESSES IT COMES IN GREEN.
10:54: The new 15-inch MacBook Air will start at $1,599/£1,699, and goes on sale next month. And that’s it from John Ternus.
10:58: Federighi is back to talk about macOS 14!
10:59: He’s doing the naming joke again. Lots of footage of beautiful California scenery, leading to the revelation that…
11:00: …the next version of macOS is called Grizzly. Wow, that’s surprising.
11:01: Hang on, Federighi was joking again. It’s actually called Skyline. Good one, Craig.
11:02: He’s now talking about system reliability, and claiming macOS Skyline is the fastest and most energy-efficient operating system in the world. That’s shorthand for “not many new features this year, lads.”
11:03: Ah, but Wallet is coming to the Mac! That’s a neat idea.
11:04: macOS Skyline is coming in the fall. That was all very quick. And there’s no sign of the M2 Ultra chip or the Mac Pro.

Foundry

watchOS 10

11:05: It’s time to talk about the Apple Watch. Here comes Kevin Lynch to talk about watchOS 10!
11:07: Lynch is talking about the famous Grid View, which he calls “the most viewed screen on any smartwatch in history.” But he admits it can be intimidating to use. (Or as we put it, “all wrong.”)
11:08: We’re looking at what he calls “a reimagining” of Grid View. It’s a simpler layout, with larger icons in neat rows, rather than tessellating in a honeycomb; you scroll up and down, not freely in two dimensions. It looks a bit more like iOS, and far easier to use, even though there will be fewer icons on screen at once.
11:10: There are now app folders in watchOS! Lynch makes these look easy to use, although they could be fiddly on the smaller Apple Watch sizes.
11:11: And widgets too! In terms of complexity, these sit somewhere between the old Glances in early versions of watchOS and full apps.
11:12: Apple Watches can now sync with multiple Apple devices: Macs and iPads as well as more than one iPhone. This is a huge change.
11:14: Lynch is now boasting about improvements to sleep tracking in watchOS, which he says features “the most accurate metrics in the industry.” Has Apple really caught up with Fitbit?
11:16: There’s a new feature where you can create your own types of workout. Note that this was already possible to an extent, by using the Other workout type, but now you can answer a series of questions about the exercise you’ll be doing and watchOS will more intelligently assess your progress, calorific consumption, and so on. This is great news for kabaddi practitioners.
11:18: Which Apple Watches will be able to run watchOS 10? The Series 4 and later. That’s the same list as last year, so Apple has refrained from swinging the axe.

Mixed-reality headset

11:19: Tim Cook is back to talk about Apple’s history, a little about Steve Jobs, and the many achievements and products Apple has made over the years. It’s all very important-sounding and after years of rumors, it’s finally time for the Apple headset!
11:22: Marketing video time. Lots of moody low-lit shots of abstract shapes against a backdrop of ominous music.
11:23: The buildup is palpable. And here it comes…
11:24: We’re getting our first view of the headset. It’s gorgeous, frankly. Apple does these videos so well. But what about battery life? What about price? What about content?
11:26: The video is over and Cook talks a bit about what it means and introduces an exec we’ve never seen before: Mike Rockwell. Rockwell starts talking about how VR and AR are “the most important technologies in the world right now, bar none.” He says Apple has been exploring these technologies in its software releases for years now but has been waiting to create hardware until it felt it could create something to match its high standards. Tell that to the designers, Mike.
11:28: Rockwell is ready to tell us the name of the thing. Please, no jokes.
11:29: It’s called… Reality Pro. As we expected. Leaks really have killed the fun of Apple events.
11:30: Rockwell is talking about all the things we can do with the headset. Games, movies, product design, “next-gen social” which looks suspiciously like the metaverse, training, art…
11:33: A nervous-looking developer called John Caramel is talking us through the delights of VR gaming. It looks a bit boring. The problem with these kinds of presentations is you can’t really appreciate what it’s like unless you’re using the hardware.
11:37: A Hollywood mogul named Ron Waffle pretends to be excited about watching movies in VR. We’re looking at a mocked-up Marvel short that clearly makes no sense unless you’re wearing a headset. The short is called “Ant-Man Pays Off A Parking Ticket.”
11:41: Rockwell is back to talk about the hardware. He says the screens are the “highest-resolution displays on any VR hardware in the world,” and that the viewing experience is “buttery smooth.” Shades of Federighi there.
11:43: Ah, the all-important question of battery life. Rockwell says Reality Pro lasts for four hours between charges and claims this is better than any rival hardware.
11:44: …but that’s only possible because there’s a separate battery pack you have to carry with you. That could reduce the number of customers, I suspect.
11:45: Rockwell is now talking about how the device works. As expected there’s an Apple Watch-style dial (which Apple is calling the “Reality Switch”) to move smoothly from augmented reality to virtual reality and vice versa.
11:47: We’re now talking about augmented reality, and the way the headset will be able to overlay information about your surroundings. The headset uses both short- and long-range LiDAR to develop a 3D map of the world around you.
11:49: We’re looking at some of the device’s pre-installed apps. There are xrOS (yes, that name has now been confirmed) versions of FaceTime, Fitness, Camera, Calendar, Maps, Mail, Numbers, News, and a whole lot more. Pretty much every preinstalled iOS app has an xrOS equivalent ready to go. Third-party content might be sparse to begin with, but Apple has made plenty of in-house apps for early adopters.
11:51: Here come the two key facts: price and launch date. The Reality Pro will cost $2,899/£2,999, so Apple has managed to come in under the all-important three thousand. That’s still a heck of a price to ask for something that feels niche at this point. It’s not clear if the headset will be available to just everyone, or only through the developer channel as was hinted ahead of the launch.
11:53: Either way, it will go on sale “this fall.”
11:54: And that’s your lot. Tim Cook has returned to the stage and appears to be summing everything up. Lots in store for iPhone and Apple Watch owners, a little less for iPad and Mac owners, but the latter gets new hardware at least. And what an exciting prospect Reality Pro is!

Apple

One more thing

11:56: Hold your horses! We’re not done yet. It’s time for One More Thing. It’s… the new Mac Pro! And John Ternus is back to talk us through it.
11:57: Just a second, John, we’re going straight into a marketing video. Has the Mac Pro been redesigned? No. It’s the cheese grater suitcase again. This was expected, to be fair, and it’s what’s inside that counts. Apple has still managed to make the 2019 design look exciting, by the way. The people who make these videos are geniuses.
11:59: Ternus says Apple has been accused of ignoring pro users, but it “never gave up on them for a second.” The new Mac Pro has all the power and upgradeability you could possibly ask for, he says.
12:01: We’re now officially into our third hour of this presentation, by the way. As virtual keynotes go, this is a marathon.
12:02: Apple confirms that the Pro is getting a brand-new chip. Will this be the first sighting of the M3? No, it’s an M2 Ultra. And we’re switching to another presenter: it’s Johny Srouji, who talked us through the M2 last year.
12:04: The M2 Ultra is “the most powerful system on a chip ever seen in a personal computer.” It has 24 CPU cores and 76 graphics cores. RAM goes up to 192GB. Those are the exact numbers Mark Gurman released in December.
12:06: We’re looking at graphs. So many graphs.
12:08: Think the M2 Ultra is powerful? There’s an upgrade option to get the M2 Extreme instead. This has 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores. More graphs.
12:10: Apple is skirting around the issue of expandability, but is implying that significant upgrades will be possible. You can definitely upgrade the SSD, and the media and networking cards, but no mention of RAM or graphics.
12:12: Ternus is back and starting to wrap up on the Mac Pro. Price? Launch date? (And is there going to be an upgrade to the Pro Display XDR?)
12:13: The new Mac Pro will start at $5,999/£6,299. For U.S. customers that’s the same as the 2019 model, which is decent. U.K. customers probably expected that price bump. We’re assuming the M2 Extreme model will push past the $10,000 mark, but Apple isn’t revealing the upgrade pricing just yet.
12:15: The Mac Pro will launch “in the fall of 2023.”
12:17: And now Tim Cook is back to wrap up–for real this time. It’s over. With Lil Durk’s “All My Life” to play us out.

Apple

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

One week to go

There are just seven days to go until Apple’s WWDC 2023 keynote presentation, the second biggest event in the company’s calendar and the first of any kind since last fall. This time next week, the lucky few will be attending the watch party at Apple Park (and looking forward to their special tour; no, of course, I’m not envious), while the rest of us will be huddled around our monitors listening to the latest announcements. Both groups, it’s fair to say, will have high expectations.

From the sounds of things–and for all Apple’s ruthless efforts to keep things secret, a lot has leaked–there will be some big news to justify the hype. The problem is that the news, as big as it is, will only be relevant to a small audience.

When you work in the media, you quickly learn to identify the things that are interesting to the largest number of people. On Macworld we are well aware that an article about the iPhone will be relevant to many more people than one about the HomePod, and is consequently likely, all things being equal, to get more pageviews; the former is simply more widely popular than the latter. It’s more mainstream. Following a similar logic, at WWDC each year Apple tends to focus on the software that runs on the products with the largest user base. For this reason iOS tends to be the marquee section of the presentation. There are lots of iPhone owners out there, and they want to know what new features are on their way.

Now, I’m not saying that Apple is going to ignore the iPhone completely at WWDC 2023. iOS 17 is expected to include a raft of new features, including a clever smart display function and, very likely, the momentous ability to install apps from third-party stores without jailbreaking. But most pundits agree that this is going to be a quiet update with no “tentpole improvement.” It’ll be about fixing bugs and improving reliability, with a few “nice to have” new features chucked in as a bonus.

Meanwhile, macOS appears to be headed for a dull June–so much so that my colleague has wondered if Apple cares about macOS anymore. “Our macOS 14 news hub has nothing,” he laments. “The chirping crickets just gave way to the sad trombone.” On the bright side, there’s the possibility of new Macs, such as a 15-inch MacBook Air and a Mac Pro (finally).

And these, remember, are the flagship products. iPhone and Mac, side by side, dragging Cupertino out of its 90s doldrums and making it the envy of Wall Street and Silicon Valley alike. Surely Apple has something to say about these titanic product lines that’s worth hearing? Perhaps not.

Instead, the highlights of WWDC 2023 are likely to sit in two categories: the mixed reality headset, and watchOS 10. Reality Pro is certainly an interesting prospect to me, given that it’s an entirely new product line that could eventually be more important to Apple’s fortunes than the iPhone. It’s real futurist, risk-taking stuff. The problem is that, for now, it’s niche. A TrendForce report last week predicted that Apple’s headset will initially be targeted at developers, not consumers and that this year’s shipments are likely to fall short of 100,000 units. By Apple’s standards, this is peanuts, and the product is largely irrelevant to the vast majority of people watching the keynote.

The Apple Watch isn’t quite as niche as that, but it’s nowhere near as mainstream as the iPhone or even the iPad. Depending on which research firm you ask, there are probably between 1 billion and 1.5 billion iPhone users in the world right now. The Apple Watch user base, by contrast, sits somewhere between 100 million (which the line officially passed in 2021) and 200 million, the approximate total number ever sold. And so it’s debatable how much the WWDC audience will care about even a fundamental rethink of the way we control our Apple Watches.

I’ve argued in the past that a dull Apple event is better than no event, and I think it’s important for Apple to give proper attention to the products on the margins. Apple can’t make every event about the iPhone, any more than we can make every article about it. Aside from anything else, it needs to find the product that will take the iPhone’s place once the tills stop ringing.

But make no mistake: this is going to be the riskiest set of announcements Apple has made in years. A colossal global audience has been waiting a long time for this event. It would be bold, to say the least, to spend most of the event talking about one product whose sales get rolled in with home products and accessories, and another whose customer base for this year would fit in a large sports stadium.

Foundry

Reviews corner

• Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad hands-on: High-end tools for a low-end price.

Trending: Top stories

Apple is finally ready to admit the Apple Watch is all wrong.

Apple’s AI future could be a lot brighter than it seems, says Jason Snell.

Bungie’s Marathon revival is a missed opportunity for Apple and the Mac.

Jason Cross argues that Warner Bros. Discovery blew it with the new Max app for Apple TV.

ChatGPT can give you advice on buying a new Mac. It just happens to be bad advice.

Samsung’s new Smart Monitor M8 is the next best thing to a 32-inch iMac.

The rumor mill

A leaked list of key players in Apple’s headset team reveals the project’s misguided priorities.

Apple has given us a huge WWDC clue by inviting the VR press to the keynote.

The iPhone 15 may not need a MagSafe-certified charger for 15-watt fast charging.

And the year after, Apple reportedly plans to switch back to a vertical camera layout on the iPhone 16.

Patent activity suggests a future Apple Pencil could have Find My support.

Podcast of the week

On this episode of the Macworld Podcast, it’s all about your hot takes! You have thoughts on the latest happenings in the world of Apple! Let’s hear what you have to say!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

No, iOS 16.5 hasn’t killed your iPhone’s battery.

New iOS and macOS updates have fixed severe flaws in iPhones and Macs from the past 10 years.

Look out: The watchOS 9.5 update might turn your Apple Watch screen green.

iOS 16.5 fixes a security hole that was supposedly addressed last year. Mind you, it also stops an Apple adapter working with some iPhones and iPads.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

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