WWDC16 disappointment

Title says it all really. Every year I've been doing IOS games I get up in the middle of the night (cos I'm in Australia) to watch the WWDC live stream. Sad i know but I liked seeing the new iPads, iMac's and other hardware about to be released.

This year no hardware at all, just boring software updates and a laughable swift demo. Wish I'd stayed asleep now.

Anyhow the reason for the post was what others thought of it, Why no hardware? Apple seems to have massively changed direction any views?

 

I was under the impression that WWDC was about software and that hardware comes later on in the year. Has this not been the case before? Maybe I'm failing to recall.

 

WWDC has almost always been about software/development and introducing the new OS'es. It's quite rare that they would announce any major hardware during that time.

 

WWDC is for developers (that's what the D means) so it's not the place to announce new hardware, unless it's particularly relevant to developers (AppleTV yes, new laptops not really). The regular September event will have new devices.

They typically have 3-4 events every year, so be patient

 

I must be thinking of some other conference then. I'm sure iPhone 3 & 4 plus Macbook pro was announced at previous WWDC's.

I'm desperate for a new laptop and have been holding on for the new pro and was kinda hoping it would be in the financial year!

 

Yes, sometimes they do announce new hardware at WWDC, but most of the time hardware gets its own events.

There are very serious rumours hinting at new MacBook Pros with Skylake this fall, as well as new MacPros ( for the latter , see : http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/new-mac-pro-2016-release-date-apple-wwdc-3536364/ )

 

So they announced updated hardware requirements for the next version of OSX.

My early 2009 iMac is not going to be compatible.

Does anyone know if Xcode is tied to the installed version of OSX?

Will I be able to install the latest version of Xcode without the latest version of OSX?

If not, I'll have to buy a Mac Mini when the new models come out.

 

Xcode will start requiring the latest OS eventually, but they give it a few releases before they lock it out. You can still use an older version of Xcode, up to a point, but for the latest SDKs they tend to demand latest Xcode too.

 

Thanks @orb, it's nice to know I can hold off for a little while.

I might play with building a Hackintosh to see how well that works.

I agree with @arkon that it's nice to see the new designs and occasional innovations.

 

With iOS 10 they are removing the GameCenter App (who is using it anyway?). I hope it's a first step toward improving the service as it has major flaws that need to be adressed

 

Yeah, we had the same impressions in our company. Basically, all iOS devs were hugely disappointed.

 

The most interesting thing wasn't even mentioned: new file system (finally). Granted it won't be done for a while.

--Eric

 

They used to announce hardware regularly, but seem to have changed tack. I believe this is the third year in a row there has been no hardware announcements. There were only 2 years in the decade before where they didn't according to a search.

My old white iMac was removed from the list of compatible hardware a few years ago. If I remember correctly, it was just under a year later before the Xcode version I had access to was not acceptable for uploading builds to Apple.

 

Thanks, @moonjump.

 

They have went from trying to get people that can't afford it to upgrade HW every year to a business model that promises rich people luxury & security that the rest of us can't afford. That security promise is why they actually decided to upgrade the file system too.

 

Well, I'm more than interested in that switch that will free almost 50% of my SSD drive!

 

Not sure what it'll actually do (see the scary images of a trashcan), but using HFS+ compression has given me a lot of extra space. I save over 4GB on the Unity installation, for example. I'm hoping it automates that sort of thing in addition to automagically finding duplicate files.

 

I'm using Clusters to handle compression on my SDD. But I find myself looking for extra space everyday, moving out old Unity projects and so on.

I guess that switch will automate similar tasks, looking for metadata to find less frequent used files to move them to the cloud drive.

However, I'm looking after a true distributed, web-based file system, where SDD would act as a big local cache, nothing else. In fact, almost every file in my laptop is backed up on an external drive and through DropBox as remote backup tool.

 

Back in the day, I used to use AutoDoubler on my Mac Classic. But I guess that's not a thing anymore...

 

Well, went into Mac just a few years ago.. +20 years ago, I'd use Stacker and loved it!

 

I use afsctool (via HomeBrew) manually after installing apps/instruments/other things which compress well. Used to use Clusters, but it started acting weird. Then I hunt down useless data with GrandPerspective.

 

Nice. I also use a similar tool, called Disk Inventory X.