Days before Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California, there was a buzz that the company is discontinuing its music component, iTunes. The tech giant confirmed the news along with its other announcements on software and hardware upgrades.
iTunes
As anticipated, Apple made the announcement that it is “killing” iTunes and breaking it down the once integrated music platform into three different services. When users update their devices to the new macOS dubbed as Catalina later this year, they will get three apps which are Apple Music, Apple Podcast, and Apple TV. The move, according to online observers, is to simplify the user experience. Apple first released iTunes in January 2001.
Mac Pro
Ridiculed for its “cheese grater-look,” the new Mac Pro packs power running on Intel Xeon processor with up to 28 cores with 1.5TB of system memory. If you feel the system memory is not enough, Apple adds six slots for memory expansion and eight PCI slots including two USB-A ports, two USB-C, and three Thunderbolt ports. Clearly intended for content creators, the Mac Pro’s graphics card can play three streams of 8K video or 12 streams for 4K videos. The new module supports AMD Radeon Pro 580X or the Radeon Pro Vega II which is designed to be configured to add up to two Vega IIs.
iPadOS
A move that many observers say is an indication of more surprises to come, Apple is giving iPad its own operating system. Many tech and gadget experts say this may be the harbinger for the company to transform iPad into a “main computer. The OS will allow iPad to exist into its own ecosystem with one of the hyped features being the split screen where users will be able to work on multiple windows. The company powered up its own browser, Safari, to resemble the desktop experience.
MacOS Catalina
MacOS Catalina update is said to be coming later this year with a new feature to look forward to which is the “Sidecar” which will make an iPad a support display or drawing surface. Under Project Catalyst, formerly known as Marzipan, Apple wants to give developers a way to seamlessly drop iPad apps to their Macs using Xcode.
Siri
New features on Siri are more like enhancements. Although some of these enhancements resemble those that Microsoft has unveiled in its own developers’ conference. One of these similarities is the objective of making their own Digital Assistants open for use for third-party apps. Apple is making Siri’s voice more “human-like” and is said to be “entirely generated by software.” Marlet D. Salazar