TechTheDay

Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) for this year is on and the company is pointing to a busy year with several announcements of new products and services.

HomePod

One of their new products is the HomePod. It’s a digital assistant Siri, slapped by Apple into a speaker. Meant to be a rival to Alexa and Echo, this intelligent personal assistant and navigator comes with woofers and microphones in a cylindrical design. The device is meant to be a speaker after all, so it has the function to connect to other Apple devices and act as a speaker. It also has echo cancellation and is able to detect the shape and size of a room to tune the best settings for it.

Apple said the HomePod will be available to the public in December for $349.

Apple iMac, MacBook Pro and Macbook

In an article by Indian Express, Apple also announced the new iMac with better display and graphic capabilities. Apple said that the new iMac is a great platform for making some virtual reality contents, which would definitely make good use of that upgraded display and graphics.

There are two versions of these, the 4k and the 5k display. The 4k has a resolution of 4096 x 2304 pixels, while the 5k has 5120 x 2880 resolution. Both have the same 7th generation Kaby Lake processors, though if you want to upgrade to i7 from the i5 base you’ll have to pay some extra.

The 4k also has a maximum of 16GB DDR4 RAM, while the 5k has a maximum of 64GB RAM. Another optional is the Radeon Pro 500-series graphics that will come with your unit. Both are optional and you’ll have to add another extra to get them. The final price really depends on your choices: if you choose to buy the high-end variations you’ll definitely will be paying extra, taking the final price up to $2,300.

They also have upgraded the MacBook Pro this year. There are two variations for this: the 13-inch and the 15-inch MacBook Pros. The 13-inch comes with Intel’s core i5 processor and 8 GB RAM. It has two variations: A 13-inch without the Touch Bar and a 13-inch with the Touch Bar. While the one without the Touch Bar has only 128GB Storage space, the one with the touch bar has 512 GB storage space. Price starts at $1,299 for those without the Touch Bar and $1,799 for units with the Touch Bar.

The 15-inch also has two variations: One using a 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor and the other one comes with a 2.9GHz quad-core i7 processor. They also come with 16GB DDR3 RAM, 256GB SSD storage, and a new Radeon Pro 555 GPUs with 2GB memory for video. The base price is at $2399.

Finally the Apple MacBook was also updated. It is now using dual-core Intel Core m3 processor, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM and cost just as much as the base 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Apple’s WatchOS 4

Finally Apple also announced the coming of their watchOS 4, the next version for their smartwatches. Apple announced that it will include new features as well as a Siri-based watchface. They also developed a kaleidoscope watchface and added new characters, based on Disney’s Toy Story, to the already available options.

Another feature they will be updating is the watch’s fitness tracking, which will include a new user interface for the workout app and new integrations with gym equipment. The integration will provide information to the Watch to get a more accurate workout tracking. Apple said that this will be possible via the NFC.

The Watch will now be able to automatically import Apple Music playlists and support multiple playlists. Apple has redesigned the dock with a vertical interface for scrolling as well. The watchOS 4 update will be coming this fall.