Here’s What Apple Announced at their Press Conference Dylan Duarte June 6, 2017 News At the San Jose Convention Center on Monday morning, Tim Cool and other Apple executives held their annual press conference to unveil what’s new in the world of Apple. For a lot of people, 10 am Monday morning isn’t exactly free time, so for those of you who missed the conference, here are the big announcements. Amazon Prime Comes to Apple TV For some time, Amazon Prime streaming has been the big, awkward hole in Apple TV’s lineup, a lineup that consisted of Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Go. Now it’s here, and Apple users are now free to watch Bosch, Mozart in the Jungle, and other Amazon exclusives. Apple HomePod We all knew this was coming. Apple’s answer to Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, the Apple HomePod is the company’s new smart speaker and Siri’s new home-away-from-phone. It’s got seven tweeters, six microphones, and an Apple A8 chip. It customizes the sound to fill the room that you’re in, and you can ask it to play music, tell you the weather, and control your HomeKit devices, among other things. It ships in December and starts at $350. iOS 11 iOS 11 is getting a big update that affects several apps. Maps now has a “do not disturb while driving” feature, photos can now do loops of live photos, and messages have more integrated apps, like Apple Pay, which lets you pay friends through text. The lock screen Control Center now displays all your notifications on one screen. There’s also a brand new app store! The New iMac Pro The new iMac Pro is the most powerful Mac ever created, and the most powerful configuration consists of a 22 teraflop processor, 128 gigs of memory, and 4 terabytes of storage. It also costs $5,000, which isn’t surprising. Oh, and now the shell, keyboard, and trackpad come in space gray. They’re also upgrading all of their MacBooks and iMacs with Intel’s Kaby Lake processors, and those start at $1,299. High Sierra macOS The newest macOS brings a ton of behind-the-scenes changes. Safari gets an 80% speed boost, gets built-in autoplay blocking, and intelligent tracking prevention to hide cross-site scripting data. Mail now highlights your most important messages and uses less space on your phone. And Photos can now automatically sorts your pictures based on who’s in them. It’s already available in developer beta and will roll out wide this fall, with these and other new features. Augmented Reality on your iPhone iPhones are now AR-capable, letting you insert virtual objects into the real world. How this will be used by developers is unknown, but Apple wasn’t going to let everyone else jump into the AR game without them. Apple Watch Gets AI Apple Watches will get an update this fall that will give users a Siri-powered watchface that will automatically deliver relevant information determined by the apps they use the most. You’ll get notifications about calendar events, reminders, and even photos. You can also sync playlists to your Apple Watch and play music without your phone around. Siri Gets Smarter Speaking of Siri, she’s got a new, more humanlike voice and added functionality. She can now translate in five new languages, manage your tasks, and even manage your banking. She can also study how you use your device to help you use it more effectively. Share This With The World!
