WWDC 2012 first impressions
Just watched the keynote for Apple’s WWDC 2012
- New Macbook pro with Retina is expensive, but quite a nice machine. Disappointed that the whole line wasn’t refreshed though– hopefully within a year we will have “Retina” displays across the board.
Apple’s new maps application with sexy 3D cities and turn-by-turn navigation looks sweet and has me looking forward to ditching the appallingly ugly, expensive and dysfunctional Navigon app (seriously fuck you, Navigon). It seems a long way from ready though, considering it’s scheduled for release in the next few months, and I wonder if Apple bit off more than they can chew by taking on worldwide mapping. Even if they succeed, the break with Google maps means no street view, which I’ll really miss.- Still no 3rd party apps for Apple TV– that was a rumor I was quite keen to see come true.
- Still no Siri for iPhones older than the 4S.
- iMessage across all Apple devices makes sense, but the focus on this + notes and reminders makes it feel like Apple is dumbing down OS X a bit. I mean, wow reminders how incredibly innovative durrrrrrr
I thought this comment was interesting (http://alexobenauer.com/blog/2012/06/11/the-new-retina-display-macbook-pro-a-downgrade-from-my-current-macbook-pro/). The resolution is going up but the screen real-estate is going down, because all those extra pixels are going into making the fonts look smoother rather than giving you more lines of text on screen.
A commenter links to this article that demonstrates that non-integer scaling on such a high res display is actually pretty good
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-display-macbook-pro-handles-scaling
I was literally getting itchy waiting for retina iPad and it was totally worth it. retina on MBP? Meh. when i’m due for an upgrade, then this will be nice.
on iPad it’s really very useful.