Hey, how is it going? Dave2D here. So, WWDC for 2017 just happened. And that’s Apple Developers Conference that they have every year. It’s normally more software focused. And this year, I mean, there was a bunch of software that was announced. But the one thing that kind of stuck out for me was the adoption of a file system for iPad. So iOS 11 will have a new app called Files. And I think for a lot of laptop users, that have tried to switch over to iPads to replace their laptop, they hit that obstacle where they just can’t manipulate files the way they want to, but this new Files app looks pretty cool. But I want to focus on the hardware that was announced. And this year there were quite a few. So, first, the entire MacBook and iMac lineup has been updated to KabyLake chips. This KabyLake CPUs are basically chip drops into the 2016 MacBook Pro. So they were just you know put in a new CPU into the existing architecture.That was pretty simple. The advantages of KabyLake… well there’s three big ones. The first that you’ll notice is the faster clock speeds. So these base clocks are about 15% faster than the previous generation. It’s not a huge difference in terms of actual user experience, it’ll benchmark faster, but the 2016 models will feel pretty similar. Another thing that you’ll have with the KabyLake chips are the speed shift technology. So, that’s running a new version of speed shift. And when you launch an app or do anything that needs a short burst of speed, these CPUs use something called speed shift to fire up a turbo. The KabyLake processors turbo up quite a bit faster. The last thing is video encoding and decoding. So the KabyLake chips have hardware on the chip to decode and encode h264 and vp9 codecs and the end result is that you’ll have better battery life when you’re streaming 4k content on your laptop.The integrated graphics on the MacBook Pros are also a new version, so instead of the IRIS 540 and 550, the new ones have IRIS PLUS 640 and 650. In regards to a performance increase for 3d gaming or 3d applications, it’s pretty insignificant. But in general the KabyLake chips are nice, it’s just more focused on energy efficiency more than anything else. So, if you’re running, I guess the 2016 models, there’s really no real reason to upgrade, but if you have one of the older ones, like the 2015 or 2014 models, there’s just a bit more incentive to upgrade now. The iMacs also received a KabyLake
upgrade and they have more options for RAM and the screens. And video cards have also been updated.The base model has an integrated GPU. The higher res models have some new Radeon Pro GPUs. They’re going to have similar TDP to the previous generation, so it’s not going like a massive increase in performance, But it’s nice to have new iMacs. I will be doing a full review of those new iMacs when I get them in. I want to see what those video cards are capable of. Now, the thing I was most interested in was the new iMac Pro. It launches in December and it’s pretty expensive. It’s going to start at $5,000, loaded out with nice hardware and packaged in a very compact iMac shaped case. But what makes it special is the processor. This is the first iMac that has more than four core for the processor.And I mean that’s special, because it’s difficult to cool something with six eight or ten cores. And in this case their top-end model has 18 cores which is insane. I find it difficult to believe that they can cool a properly utilized 18 core Xeon processor in that chassis. I’ll be impressed if they do. But the other thing that kind of sucks about it, is the price tag. They haven’t revealed like the full top-end price, but you know that, it’s Apple and the price jumps up exponentially when you go up in core count. So, 18 cores, I think is going to top out like 10 grand. It’s crazy. The iPad Pro also had a hardware revamp. 10.5 inch screen with smaller bezels, a bunch of nice new features, the strange thing for me though is the 120 Hertz refresh rate. So, 120 Hertz panels are really nice for gaming, animations look really smooth, stuff just looks very fluid on it. Movies and videos will still look the same, but any kind of high frame rate stuff will look really fluid, provided the developer or the creator of that content has allowed for higher frame rates.So, things like UI animations and possibly some games, those are just going to look really smooth. Now the faster refresh rate is going to allow for a faster response time with the Apple pencil. The old versions had a response time, I think, of 38 milliseconds, so noticeable lag when you were using the pencil. This has an advertised rate of 20 milliseconds, so quite a reduction in response time. As for whether or not 120 Hertz panel is useful otherwise, aside from the artists application, I would say no. It’s really difficult to justify the extra frames,
that’s just an aesthetic thing, but it is nice to look at. The Apple home pod. I don’t know how I feel about this thing. At $350, it’s not crazy expensive, but the integration feels, I don’t know I’m not that impressed by it. I mean there’s cool tech in it, there’s seven tweeters, there’s technology inside this thing to kind of measure and map the room that you’re in for adjustment of the sound waves and stuff like that.It’s cool, it’s just that I feel like any kind of high-end Bluetooth speaker could have done something very similar to this with your phone. Now the one thing I can say is that, this is the first generation of it, if they add stuff to it so if they add like an Apple TV built into this home pod thing, so let’s say home pod 2, there’s a built in Apple TV or there’s built in like mesh Wi-Fi into these units, and you can place them all over your house, that’s kind of cool. That’s cooler but in its current iteration, I’m not that impressed by it. Anyways, that’s the end of this video, I mean there’s a lot of hardware from this WWDC. I’ve covered like a very small amount of it, just the superficial stuff. I will be doing individual reviews for anything that I personally find super interesting. So, be subscribed for those. Hope you guys enjoyed this video.Thumbs you liked it, sub if you loved it. I’ll see you guys next time. .
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