Apple certainly delivered the goods at WWDC, and although most were pleased with iOS 6, Mountain Lion, and the hardware upgrades across the board, the introduction of the new "next-gen" MacBook Pro with Retina display was certainly a sight for sore eyes.
When Apple released their iTunes integrated Ping service back in September 2010, it kind of looked to me like as they had just come out of some corporate buzz meeting where social networks were the topic of discussion. Not wanting to be left out of the social circle, I get the impression that Apple threw a couple of engineers into a room and told them to make iTunes a more socially capable beast, eventually giving birth to what we know as iTunes Ping.
We all had a day or so to absorb all of the information which Apple felt they needed to give to us during the opening keynote presentation at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The announcement surrounding the new line of notebooks as well as the included features of OS X Mountain Lion was great, but the real excitement came from getting that early insight into what they have in store for us with iOS 6, the next major release of their mobile operating system.
The limelight during yesterday's WWDC keynote was hogged almost entirely by the MacBook range, in particular, the brand-new, Retina display MacBook Pro. With the four-year wait for Mac Pro enhancements bringing only incremental improvements at best, you could have been forgiven that Apple was distancing itself from the desktop in favor of the notebook.
Today's WWDC event certainly went off with a bang, and as well as a new Retina iMac, MacBooks, iOS 6 with all the expected trimmings, there was also a big surprise in the form of the next-generation MacBook Pro.
There has been a lot of chatter over the Internet for last few months about OS X Mountain Lion, Apple's latest OS for the Mac. Considering Apple is an ever evolving company, with consumers developing a growing admiration for their OS X and iOS operating systems, the company have opted for a new direction with Mountain Lion with an offering that shows the first signs of unity between desktop and mobile.
While Apple's annual event may be dubbed as Worldwide Developers Conference and will be mainly focused around development workshops for iOS and OS X developers, the company likes to cater to all tastes and always has a number of announcements and releases to keep all Apple loving tech fans happy. The yearly event is regarded so highly amongst Apple aficionados that the $1600 tickets regularly sell out in minutes, with attendees queuing outside the Moscone Center hours before the doors open for the keynote.
With iOS 6 having just been announced, the beta version of the upcoming firmware has now been seeded. And, as usual, this first released build of iOS 6 beta is only available to registered members of Apple's developer program, so if you're a non-developer hoping to catch a glimpse of the future, sadly, you're going to have to wait.
Having wowed the crowds with the introduction of the next-gen MacBook Pro, Apple's Craig Federighi began unveiling some brand-new features of the forthcoming iteration of OS X, known as Mountain Lion. As well as reiterating what's already been showcased in the Mountain Lion Preview, he also gave an in-depth look into some of the new apps and features Apple has been working on over the past few months, in anticipation for the release in July.
As anticipated, Apple has announced its very own, completely rethought Maps app to replace the long-serving Google offering, and as equally foreseen, it's got the hallmarks of a truly great new feature. The days of relying on a city's A-Z are long gone in this digital age, and although it has taken a few more years than Apple would perhaps have liked in order to develop, iOS Maps is now well and truly in the pipeline.
