What Apple Released in WWDC17

June 06, 2017

Apple has just concluded their June special event, mostly targeted at developers. There were a lot of expectations and a lot of rumors. That is all going to be laid to rest as Apple has brought out the official announcements regarding new releases for both it's hardware and software product line.

Without further delay, here is the summary of Apple's June WWDC17 special event.

Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the announcements by saying that there will updates to all of Apple's operating systems, tvOS, watchOS, macOS and of course iOS.

After that, Tim Cook set the mood by saying that they will be making 6 important announcements.

First of the 6 announcements is tvOS:

The major announcement for tvOS is that Amazon is now joining as partner to Apple to provide Amazon Prime Video to tvOS.

Amazon Prime Video now adds a lot of Amazon original TV shows and movies like The Grand Tour and Goliath, just to name a few.

Second on the list is Apple Watch. According to Tim Cook, the Apple Watch is now the number 1 smart watch in the world. To top that, the Apple Watch is also number 1 in customer satisfaction.

Watch OS 4

New watch faces were announced, including a Siri watch face, kaleidoscope face and a Toy Story watch face featuring Woody.

The activity app in watchOS is now more personalized for you. watchOS now also features monthly challenges which are achievable because they are based on your actual past fitness accomplishments.

10.5 Inch iPad Pro

The newest member of the iPad Pro family is the 10.5 inch version. Not only is the screen size different, the newest iPad Pro boasts of a lot of hardware upgrades. According to Apple, the 10.5 inch iPad Pro is more powerful than most PC laptops in the market.

The retina display on the iPad Pro is brighter and less reflective and more responsive than ever, which makes working with the Apple Pencil a lot more smoother giving a better overall experience.

The screen on the 10.5 inch iPad Pro is 20% larger than the 9.7 inch model, giving you more room to work with and with the full-size onscreen keyboard, productivity with this iPad will likely increase.

The new iPad Pro Retina display is now capable of a 120Hz refresh rate so movies and videos look spectacular while games run smoother.

The 10.5 inch iPad Pro is powered by the new Apple A10X Fusion chip, this chip is based on a 64-bit architecture with 6 cores. According to Apple, the new iPad Pro is capable of editing 4K videos. All this power doesn't sacrifice battery life as the iPad Pro still claims all-day battery life.

iMac

Updates to the iMac is one of the long-awaited ones in WWDC17. Apple did not disappoint. Three updated iMacs were announced. The 21.5 inch, 21.5 inch 4K and the 27 inch 5K models. All three models are now powered by Intel's all-new seventh generation Core processors.

All iMac models come with 2 Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports. These ports are capable of delivering up to 40Gb/s data transfer for external drives and cameras and twice the bandwidth for video and display connectivity.

A bonus to the iMac line is the latest iMac Pro, available in Space Gray and packed with Pro power.

The iMac Pro can have a maximum of 18 cores, again, that's a lot of power packed in such a slim form factor. The iMac Pro is powered by Intel Xeon processors with Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz and up to 42MB of cache.

Apple HomePod Smart Speakers

With the HomePod smart speakers, Apple goes head to head against its rivals with the likes of Google Home and the Amazon Echo.

The HomePod smart speaker is powered by Siri, so it can take voice commands at the same time, it still can take commands by tapping on it. According to Tim Cook, the sound quality of the HomePod is like nothing we've ever heard before.

iOS11

A lot of new features are coming with iOS11, including a totally new Dock similar to what we have now in macOS. Also, multi-tasking in the iPad comes to a new level with the release of iOS11.

macOS High Sierra

The latest iteration to macOS, now called macOS High Sierra. This will add new features and will have a snappier performance. Apple also introduces it's own file system called Apple File System in macOS High Sierra. The Apple File System is based on a 64-bit architecture and designed for today's flash technologies and future looking for new storage technologies in the future.

So, these are what Apple announced today. I'll go through each of the announcements in more detail in posts to come, stay tuned!