- If I'm Intel right now, I am scrambling.
Apple doesn't usually announce hardware at WWDC,
but they famously announced the transition
to Apple silicon in 2020.
And today, before they've even completed their transition,
they announced the next-generation M2.
And it might just impact the industry
like Linus impacts hard drives.
Of course that's not even all they announced.
So let's get into it, shall we?
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(techno music)
(techno music intensifies)
- The most exciting news for the computer industry
to come from WWDC
has to be M2.
Arriving in new MacBooks due out next month,
M2 puts a one-and-a-half year cap
on M1's extraordinary debut.
Love it or hate it, M1 was, is impressive.
And while there are still teething pains,
this next-gen hardware looks even better.
Built on what Apple calls second-gen 5-nanometer technology,
Apple is boasting a CPU with 33% larger cache
for its performance cores.
This, along with
significant enhancements to the efficiency cores
works out to roughly 18% more raw CPU performance than M1,
according to Apple's "select industry-standard benchmarks."
I'd recommend only looking
at the M1 versus M2 performance graphs here,
because, well, Apple's efficiency and power curve graphs
are basically worthless
without knowing how they're drawing those curves,
'cause they do not look that way.
There is a new Media Engine
that Apple says handles even faster ProRes decoding support,
which is just bonkers.
And they're claiming that it's now
capable of handling 8K H.264 and H.265,
something that I recently found lacking with the M1.
In terms of GPU performance,
the M2 gets access to an extra two cores,
that, along with an updated memory controller
with half again more bandwidth,
works out to a 35% performance improvement over M1,
again in "select industry-standard benchmarks."
That beefed-up memory controller
lets the M2 SoC address up to 24 gigs of memory,
which sounds like they're using an odd channel arrangement,
like Intel did back in the first-gen Core i7-900 series.
In fact with a 50%, yeah, yeah, that sounds about right.
It's tough to put this in perspective,
because quite frankly,
Intel, and AMD for that matter,
don't have anything that we know of
that can really come to blows with this.
Both their platforms are geared towards
a more modular approach,
but as we've seen,
even the best APUs don't hold a candle to the M1,
thanks in large part to how tightly integrated it is.
It's tough to see a future
where the industry fails to follow Apple's lead here.
What's more, if we assume
M2 will follow the same pattern as M1,
then M2 Pro should get access to 48 gigs of system memory.
M2 Max, 96 gigs.
And M2 Ultra, a massive 192 gigs of total system memory
available to both the CPU and GPU cores.
PCs do still have
the high-end workstation and server market.
Those theoretical M2s aren't quite Mac Pro territory yet.
And Apple's still mum on
when the new Mac Pro will be coming.
They weren't shy about introducing new M2 hardware, though.
Interestingly, none of the listings
that were put up early on B & H
ended up making the cut.
The first up is a redesigned MacBook Air
that takes after the 14-inch MacBook Pro here,
doing away with the wedge shape,
but maintaining a thinner profile
than the thickest parts of the old Air,
and coming in a hair lighter.
At 1,199, it's a little more expensive than we'd like,
but the M1 Air is still available for 999.
For the extra spend, you're not only getting M2,
but a 500-nit Liquid Retina display,
complete with a notch housing a 1080p FaceTime camera,
MagSafe, and a new four-speaker sound system
that somehow supports spatial audio
despite firing from the rear.
If you buy the more expensive model
with the 10-core GPU and 512 gigs of storage,
your choice of a handy dual-port 35-watt
or a single-port fast-charging 65-watt power adapter
that can do 50% in 30 minutes,
is on the house.
Otherwise it's a $20 upgrade for either of them
from the basic 30-watt.
I guess they just couldn't get the costs down enough
on the base model.
Either way, it looks like
you'll be getting a color-matched MagSafe charging cable
to go with the four available finishes,
so that's kind of neat.
What's a little strange is that Apple is also adding M2
to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.
I guess they either
still have more of those chassis lying around
that they need to get rid of,
or people just really like the design.
I know there are some that are religious about it.
Either way,
Apple claims that the Pro's integrated cooling
allows for the M2 to reach its full potential,
a claim that we'll have to put to the test
once we get our hands on them.
Like the new Air,
the refreshed Pro is supposed to launch next month,
starting at 1,299 for 8 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage.
Interestingly, the up-model version
is the same price and specs as the up-model Air,
which pushes me towards the Air
being the better buy in that case.
But again, we'll have to see.
We'll have them linked below
in case you want to check them out.
Since it's just a refresher of an existing SKU,
there's really not a whole lot else to say about it for now.
Which isn't something I can say about
the macOS/iOS/iPadOS ecosystem.
The newest macOS, named Ventura,
contains some interesting new features
that are mostly shared throughout the entire lineup.
In fact, pretty much none of it is exclusive to macOS.
Stage Manager is an interesting window management feature
that creates a second vertical dock of open apps
on the left-hand side of the screen,
where only the open windows in the current app are shown.
You can drag windows from one stack onto the screen,
and then add it to the current stack,
and like Windows 11's window groups feature,
their size and layouts are remembered
as you switch between them.
The difference here is that they're not tiling.
But what's fascinating about this
is that it's also coming to the iPad,
allowing, for the first time for an iPad,
full window management,
including windows over windows, resizing,
the whole nine yards.
It goes even deeper for iPadOS,
because now you have full external display support.
No longer are you limited
to a clone of the current non-standard display resolution,
but you get a fully-extended desktop
at the display's native resolution
that you can drag windows into.
It's not quite macOS yet,
but this is the kind of quality-of-life feature
that has been sorely missing from iPadOS,
and something that I have been asking for
for a long, long time.
What's gonna make this even better
are system-wide enhancements
Apple's referring to as desktop-class apps,
which includes things like
a system-wide undo and redo system,
enhancements to the Files app
like changing file extensions and getting folder sizes,
inline find-and-replace,
and even customizable toolbars,
with an API that makes all of this accessible
to third-party developers.
In fact,
pretty much all of the new features Apple talked about
are available to third parties,
including some features that were previously Apple-only,
like the new enhanced Maps views for cities,
the Weather app,
and the new Collaboration feature.
Collaboration is what it sounds like.
It turns any compatible app into a live workspace,
with its own message threads and realtime activity updates,
kind of like a shared Google Docs file.
Collaboration can be accessed directly via the Share Sheet.
And if shared to a group,
it automatically pulls everyone in.
Alongside Collaboration is a new concept called Freeform,
which is basically a giant whiteboard
that supports multimedia,
as well as what Apple calls
a full complement of drawing tools,
including Apple Pencil support.
I can see this being used a lot
by artists looking to do group art.
I mean, it used to be a thing
back with old versions of openCanvas,
and more recently with Drawpile.
And those artists with Apple Pencils
can now be assured
that they're in a color-accurate environment,
thanks to a new Reference Mode for iPad.
And they can give themselves more room to work with
by adjusting the iPad's display scaling.
These improvements might sound like little things,
and it's surprising it's taken this long,
but make no mistake.
These are huge,
and turn iPad into an even more viable tool
for a lot of people.
And when they're done with work,
gaming is getting an overhaul across the ecosystem,
with the Metal 3 API.
Now, granted that I'd prefer
that they went with something a little bit open,
and just picked up Vulkan,
but they did show off two major new components:
MetalFX Upscaling and a Fast Resource Loading API.
Both do what they sound like,
with MetalFX Upscaling performing
a temporal and spatial upscale of the rendered scene,
like DLSS and FSR do,
and Fast Resource Loading
pulling assets from the SSD directly into video memory,
a la DirectStorage.
The first title to support Metal 3 that was shown off
is Resident Evil Village, which is due out later this year.
It's tough to make a call
on how effective it is over stream,
but upscaling makes a lot of sense on small displays,
like those on the iPad and especially the iPhone.
You can trade visual fidelity
that you probably didn't even notice to begin with
into better performance, better battery life, or both.
It's about time.
I'd be here all day
if I talk about every new feature Apple brought up,
but there are some big ones.
And first in my mind is Passkeys,
a way of accessing websites and services
without using a password
or even sending the key itself over the internet,
effectively negating password phishing attacks.
For Linux gurus and advanced Mac folks,
private-key authentication instead of using a password
is nothing new.
But what Apple's doing with Passkeys
is making it accessible to the masses.
And they're working with the FIDO Alliance
to make it an open standard.
Passkeys are going to be integrated directly into apps,
and sync to the iCloud Keychain on Apple's platforms.
And they'll be backed by the Secure Enclave,
built into Apple silicon,
and presumably T2-enabled Intel Macs with Touch ID.
iDevices can use Face ID instead.
Speaking of which, the new lock screen.
Apple's clearly taking a few notes
from Google's Material You here,
with the ability to customize the lock screen
with widgets and typefaces,
and multiple lock screens
that function almost like Apple Watch faces
that can be tied to specific focuses.
These widgets can interact
with depth information from photos,
to appear behind foreground objects,
which can then be moved around at will.
Part of another really cool feature
that detects objects in photos and lets you select them.
It'll be interesting to see how Apple handles this,
because cutting stuff out like that
is a difficult effect to get just right.
Kind like how it's tough
to get your body temperature just right.
But the Swacket is both a sweater and a jacket.
It's not too heavy, not too light, LTTstore.com.
Which is also true of spatial audio,
where the effect really works best
if the software knows the geometry of the old melon.
Apple didn't really go too deep into it,
but iPhones can now take measurements for AirPods
that allows them to tailor the effect
to the shape of your head,
which should make binaural listening
significantly more enjoyable for everyone.
A curious new feature you might also enjoy
is the ability to use your iPhone as a webcam.
At first, this seems both obvious and ridiculous.
Yes, iPhones have excellent cameras,
but clipping one to your display is a bizarre concept.
What it gives you, however,
is a wirelessly connected webcam
that not only has features like Center Stage
and portrait modes,
but can also do simultaneous multi-cam,
and not the one you might think.
The demo they did on stage
looks a little too good to be true to me,
but basically you can get
both the normal angle and a desk angle simultaneously,
thanks to the ultra-wide lens on newer iPhones,
and some undistort software trickery.
Thankfully, if you don't want to bother with that,
you can now hand off FaceTime calls between your devices,
which is a more common thing to want to do
than you might think.
Speaking of software trickery though,
Apple's putting Tesla on notice with next-gen CarPlay,
which is basically a preview
for that Apple Car we keep hearing about.
Not content with just the media console,
now the iPhone is going to take over your entire vehicle,
including the instrument cluster,
which can then be themed in a way
that's similar again to Apple Watch faces.
CarPlay takes over every screen
and communicates directly with the vehicle
to display speed, tachometer,
and even maps or widgets on the dash,
provide climate controls and media controls
on the center and passenger displays.
And probably more.
Like, oh, there's just so much.
This event was two hours long, you guys.
They talked about privacy features like Safety Check
that can help people escape abusive situations
by unsharing everything
and logging out of all their devices.
Live sports updates and play highlights and Apple News.
Easier child account management for parents,
with quick setup of new iDevices.
Being able to edit and unsend messages and mail.
The Fitness app is on iPhone now too.
Spotlight can search Live Text in images,
with full-window rich results.
Oh, and Live Text from video,
which means you can finally get
code snippets or recipes or whatever,
without leaving to take a screenshot.
That doesn't even cover everything.
Like, here's a list of all the other stuff
that I can think of, off the top of my head.
It's probably not even exhaustive.
Ultimately, WWDC is for developers first,
and while a lot of it felt
like it was directed at consumers,
virtually every major feature has an open API.
While I would say that the ecosystem enhancements
overall represent more of an iterative approach
than a revolutionary one,
things like Stage Director
could completely change the game for productivity,
especially with single-display workflows
and even more, especially on the iPad.
Now, M2 is a little more up in the air for me.
If Apple's claims are accurate,
then it represents a solid improvement over M1.
I appreciate that
almost as much as I appreciated the snark
about Apple's marketing department coming up with the name.
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- Thanks for watching, guys.
Go check out our reaction to the WWDC in 2020,
where Apple announced M1,
where we called it a "slow-motion dumpster fire."
(laughs) Oh, we of little faith.
Enjoy.