Anyone watch any of it? Impressed? Unimpressed? Couldn’t care less?

Unsurprised – and pleased – that they’re finally bringing some competition to the Amazon Echo and Google Home with the HomePod. Disappointed it’s not going to be here until December. Multi-room AirPlay2 looks interesting, if far from revelatory.

There was definitely a lot more focus on pros this time around, with a lot of talk about development tools (e.g. AR kit) and new “pro level” iMacs. That’s not much interest to me personally, but they seem to have listened to the disenfranchised pro market who felt Apple had abandoned them.

Other than that, there were some nice new bits, but at a consumer level my overwhelming sense was of a load of incremental improvements and competitor catch-up and the revealing of not-very-well-kept secrets.

Not watched it yet but had a brief Google when my mate told me about the iMac Pro. I’ve always considered the iMac exceptional VFM, this could be even better (obviously dependant on spec/price!) so could be a real home run (if you need the extra performance). Think I also saw they’ll be refreshing the Mac Pro line also next year.

Hopefully this will persuade Oculus to develop software for the Mac, that would be cool!

Homepod looks cool, I take it at this point they’re just playing catch-up with Google/Amazon so it was an essential release really.

Not watching it live this year, will do the catchup later this evening or tomorrow.

I like the look of the new iPad pro, but it still costs a grand if you want a pen & a keyboard to go with it.

far from revelatory

Well that is par for the course for Apple so no surprise there. I like their stuff – I like the way they’re trying to simplify and take away the ‘mystery’ from devices and relegate them to white goods status. My concern are the price hikes. They’ve always been pricy, but justified through better apparent quality, but the prices are now just getting silly. But then again I’m currently getting to a point where all my devices are due a refresh.

i’ll possibly be in the market for an iMacPro but would have liked the option of changing/adding the ram myself. would much prefer a decent Mac Pro though as i really don’t want the huge iMac screen plus another screen as my desk isn’t big enough. whatever they say about how wonderful the iMac screens are they are no match for an Eizo and not ideal for retouching/image work. good to have the option for an 8gb graphics card.

nobody seems to have mentioned the cheap 2015 era MacBook Pro that is in the apple store, wonder why they held onto that model?

glad they didn’t bump the ram on the macbookpro’s as i recently bought one but I’m starting to realise a lot of the issues i have with working on large files is the software not the hardware. Adobe really need to make improvements as do Davinci (resolve) whereas final cut X absolutely flies which goes to show how efficient software can be when its totally optimised for the hardware.

i guess the new OS thats coming enabling external GPU’s will be a good thing and help with mashing pixels around.

no idea about those little talking speaker things they are just toys for geeks.

They’ve always been pricy, but justified through better apparent quality, but the prices are now just getting silly.

I don’t really agree that they are pricey compared to “premium” offerings from other brands.

I’ve got a new laptop from work, a Dell, which is admittedly small and shiny but only 8GB ram and an i5 with 256GB SSD – pricing on Dell website comes out at £1400 ish which is 13inch macbook pro money…

I think OS 11 looks like an excellent update, esp for a guy primarily trying to ditch the laptop for work completely and just use the wonderful 12.9 ipad pro. Many of the changes look like they will move me a big step toward that.

Agree that the pro level mac stuff is a great shift in focus, brilliant to see how this will drive further innovation.

Homepod? Seems a bit ‘meh’ and ‘me too’. But I will no doubt get sucked in and buy one, then claim it to be the best thing EVER 🙂

no idea about those little talking speaker things they are just toys for geeks.

That’s what people said about iPads. Not much imagination for a creative professional! 😆

I haven’t bothered for a couple of years, we’ll get the bullet points in a few hours.

Sad to say it, but these days it’s more of a case of “here’s a white version of the same thing you’ve been able to buy for a couple of years now” “oh and it’s costs twice as much”.

Apparently they are selling it (homepod) more as a premium speaker, with siri as an afterthought. Personally I have always found siri to be pretty poor, and give up on it after 5 mins of failures to get it to do anything. So even as a bought up member of apples environment I just don’t expect the speaker to be value for money against other established bt speakers.

any mention of offline siri?

but these days it’s more of a case of “here’s a white version of the same thing you’ve been able to buy for a couple of years now”

well, the new iMac Pro is space grey, so you literally could not be more wrong. Thanks for playing, hope you had a great time. 😆

any mention of offline siri?

that would be great, even if it were more basic. Never had a problem getting Siri to understand me, so it’s something I use all the time! Annoying though when you can’t get it to play an album already on your phone, if you don’t have internet at that time (i.e. when driving)

Homepod looks a bit duff, will be Apple ecosystem only, so no Spotify etc.

I’m out….

I’ve got a new laptop from work, a Dell, which is admittedly small and shiny but only 8GB ram and an i5 with 256GB SSD – pricing on Dell website comes out at £1400 ish which is 13inch macbook pro money…

In which version of Earth is that £1400? Jesus.

I have, right now, on my desk an invoice for a 13″ Dell Vostro laptop with an i5, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, it cost £490 + VAT.

I also have one for a top o’ the range XPS 13″ laptop, but that’s an i7 with 16GB of RAM and a whopping 1TB SSD, that wasn’t £1400 either.

I’ve got a new laptop from work, a Dell, which is admittedly small and shiny but only 8GB ram and an i5 with 256GB SSD – pricing on Dell website comes out at £1400 ish which is 13inch macbook pro money..

My work Dell laptop was about £2k and it’s not even got a highres screen! 64Gb RAM and 1Tb SSD though…

report on el reg seems to be ‘meh’
adoption of steam is an interesting move though, to me at least.

I don’t really agree that they are pricey compared to “premium” offerings from other brands.

I agree that is the case now. It wasn’t a while ago but the success of Apple has made others realise that they can hike their prices too. We’re not a savvy lot as a consumer society.

Comparing the price my basic MacBook was 8 years ago to one today there has been some serious price escalation going on – way more than labour and materials escalation so the premium we’re paying is increasing. But I’m not blaming Apple for making a buck or two. The right price for a product is the price people are willing to pay. Like mountain bikes really. As long as people are happy to spend £5k plus on a bike they manufacturers will continue to push the price up.

But of course i’ll replace my current Apple kit with new Apple kit! It’s just so nice and shiny.

no idea about those little talking speaker things they are just toys for geeks.

For me, the lack of such a device was a huge hole in Apple’s line-up that I’m delighted they’ve filled. Assuming the sound quality is good, I’d love one. I still have a big collection of vinyl and CDs, but most of my listening is done via Apple Music. It’s a LOT easier to tell Siri to play something than searching and scrolling through an app, and now I’ll be able to do that without using my iPhone. Can’t wait. I’ve little interest in having the thing talk back to me.

A wireless keyboard with numeric keypad – finally.

£129 online and available now. Very expensive, but I’ll still pick one up on Thursday…

iamtheresurrection – Member

A wireless keyboard with numeric keypad – finally.

£129 online and available now. Very expensive, but I’ll still pick one up on Thursday…

My wireless keyboard and mouse were chucked in with my £280 laptop.
Oh how the other half live! 😆

Home pod is a joke! Three time the price of Amazon or Google and all it does is play itunes! Worlds most expensive bluetooth speaker…. still there will be plenty of suckers queing up to buy it because it has the right logo on it.

and all it does is play itunes!

errr… no 😆

In which version of Earth is that £1400? Jesus.

I have, right now, on my desk an invoice for a 13″ Dell Vostro laptop with an i5, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, it cost £490 + VAT.

I also have one for a top o’ the range XPS 13″ laptop, but that’s an i7 with 16GB of RAM and a whopping 1TB SSD, that wasn’t £1400 either.

Yup – I don’t think work paid that for it, that’s what a punter has to pay if they want just one.

– I think this is it

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/wyse-12-e-7270-mobile-thin-client/pd?oc=xctolwe7270tc&model_id=wyse-12-e-7270-mobile-thin-client&l=en&s=bsd

The iOS 11 changes for iPad look good.
Especially updated multitasking, drag and drop and files.
They’ve been a long time coming though.

I think HomePod fills a significant and sizeable niche in the market:

– Those who have chosen to use Apple Music (and not one of the supported music streaming services on Echo, Google Home etc)
– Those who want a Sonos-style equivalent that has some AI rather than a smart(er) hub that plays music. I.e. for those for whom music is more important than the AI/smart stuff.
– Those concerned about the security/privacy issues surrounding the way Amazon and Google use your data for AI. This *could* play out to be a key strength for Apple
– and of course those who just want to keep everything Apple

These differences may be subtle. They may simply be clever marketing rather than objective advantages. However, they are marketable differences and I think they’ll be lots of people who will snap these up.

If Apple hadn’t have launched this yesterday, I probably would have moved back to Spotify and bought an Amazon Echo. If even a relatively small percentage of other Apple Music subscribers did the same, that’s a huge amount of lost recurring revenue for Apple. They had to do this.

– and of course those who just want are forced to keep everything Apple

Agree that the HomePod looks dull and to honest it all really hinges Siri. Currently she is terrible and get more wrong than right. She is also extremely limited compared to Alexa in basic form let alone with all the 3rd party Alexa skills. Apple first has to get Siri as good if not better than Alexa.

Its also a very dull looking product and not something that shouts out style in a loud or subtle way. Just looks like so many other bluetooth speakers on the market. I am sure they will sell loads but not sure is they will take that much market from Sonos. At the price that an Echo is if Amazon just incorporated multi room then it would still be top the the game.

Well Sonos sound quality is pretty pants (Sonus 1 at least) so it can’t be any worse audio wise..

i have an apple music subscription so i guess i’m their target market but i have a dac hi-fi in the living room so I’m not wanting to replace that.
if it somehow acted as a bridge and sent data into the dac (usb or optical) and i could control the library via iPad then i would be interested.

as a siri plant pot for £350 i’ll give it a miss.

i have an apple music subscription so i guess i’m their target market but i have a dac hi-fi in the living room so I’m not wanting to replace that.

Same. If it can act as a voice remote or whatever for an Apple TV that would be fine. Although not £350 fine, so will wait till it comes down in price!!

if it somehow acted as a bridge and sent data into the dac (usb or optical) and i could control the library via iPad then i would be interested.

Can’t you just do that with a good old airport express?

Can’t you just do that with a good old airport express?

didn’t realise they still made them.
i did use an old airport express years ago that enabled an optical signal out into the dac. this bypassed the inbuilt dac and sent data not music.
the new ones still do this so i’ll investigate. will see if i can ethernet it from the router and not have to create my own wireless network from laptop. i want to be able to stream/use the internet at the same time without being physically wired. i couldn’t do this with the old airport express i had 5 years ago when the iTunes library was on an airport time capsule (ethernet wired)

zilog6128 – Member
Not watched it yet but had a brief Google when my mate told me about the iMac Pro. I’ve always considered the iMac exceptional VFM, this could be even better (obviously dependant on spec/price!) so could be a real home run (if you need the extra performance). Think I also saw they’ll be refreshing the Mac Pro line also next year.

The iMac Pro looks like a good machine. Though I’m quite curious how well the top specced version will cope with cooling an 18 core Xeon chip.

Currently she is terrible and get more wrong than right.

I agree that Siri can be infuriatingly poor and have sworn at him/her in frustration on many occasions. However, I do think Siri works well with Apple Music, or at least well enough to be useful.

Depends how much Homepod is. I have a Play1 and 3 Sonos and they are just fine. I’m not mad keen on the app, but it’s better than the bollocks Apple have made of the Music app on iOS.

EDIT: £350?? Err .. no.

Can’t you just do that with a good old airport express?

Yes you can. I’ve not tried it but the output is there, digital.

@Brassneck – Sonos 3 are £299 so similar ballpark to HomePod. Would you consider the HomePod if you didn’t already have a Sonos 3?

Yes you can. I’ve not tried it but the output is there, digital.

for clarity its digital optical out through the headphone min-jack, i don’t know if you can use the usb out on the airport express into the usb input on the DAC, you couldn’t do this on the old plug type ones.

i wish the new MacBooks still had the optical out via the headphone port, they dropped that with the toucher ones.

Homepod? Seems a bit ‘meh’ and ‘me too’. But I will no doubt get sucked in and buy one, then claim it to be the best thing EVER

This.

MacBook Pro now six years old and getting very sloooooow so I suspect I’ll be buying an iMac before long, and native QR reading on iOS is A Good Thing too, I think.

The iMac Pro looks like a good machine. Though I’m quite curious how well the top specced version will cope with cooling an 18 core Xeon chip.

The whole case acts as a heatsink. The old chunky 27″ iMacs ran red hot, the new ones run very cool, so I guess they’ve got the cooling sorted. Plus the Pro will have fans which the current ones don’t.