Gadgetory

what's going on Brian Tong here and welcome to the Apple buy for everything good and bad inside the world of Apple this week it's my reactions to yes the home pod the new iPad pro iOS 11 and everything else from WWDC 2017 now we won't be able to cover every single thing but let's just dive in right now okay first up the star of the show has to be the new iPad pro paired with the all new iOS 11 it's really like its own iOS and I know the iPad isn't Apple's most popular product tablet sales have declined the past three years in a row but I'm one of its biggest fans and they surprised me with the all new functionality with a dock for apps the new files app with third-party support for my Dropbox and others and come on we're getting drag-and-drop all over the place you can drag images you can drag text you can drag URLs you can multi-select and multi hand drag it's a drag fest okay Craig I'll give you that one since the product is awesome now does the surface pro technically do more as a hybrid tablet and PC absolutely but apples approach is clear we're making this an iPad and you won't interact with any device like this one and that's what I love about it now that Apple pencil that Apple avoids at all cost to call a stylus now of course everything I've done so far I've done using touch but with iPad pro we have the best stylus that's ever been made whoops see that's okay infinity photo guy you have an amazing app so I'll forgive you now I'm drooling over that new screen with pro motion a 20 millisecond latency is unmatched and it's finally made the Apple pencil worth the price of admission that's a rad Apple yeah so yes mainstream media isn't even talking about the iPad they're talking about the home pod and other stuff which we'll get to but the new iPad pro with iOS 11 was the standout of the keynote we'll just have to see if people end up buying them all right this year's WWDC pack with so much stuff and as for the operating systems it's more of a refinement year especially for the new Mac OS hi Sierra now we talked to the guys and we said there might be this might be misconstrued but they assured us this name is fully baked so thanks Craig but I think you meant buckles oh yeah yeah he ain't going away anytime soon kids now max across the board get kb lake updates for better performance the iMac updates were a total surprise but welcome for all of you who've been waiting for an upgrade but then Apple dropped a bomb on us with the iMac Pro it's sessi and all that Space Gray no doubt the power in this thing is a match with the option for an 18 core Xeon processor now the good thing Apple has a machine for companies to develop VR and AR content natively on the Mac it remains to be seen how many will but guess what they should our kit is powerful not because of what it does we've seen this type of stuff before for years but Apple just instantly created the largest platform for augmented reality without the need for anyone to purchase a single piece of additional hardware that's a big deal but let's be real not too many of you are going to be able to dive in on this with a starting price of $4,999 this is for professionals but that's what was sobering for me this iMac was clearly the vision that Apple had in mind for their next Pro machine like they didn't do squat with the 2030 Mac Pro for over three years because their vision was that this iMac would be the next Pro machine now that all changed when they realize they were alienating guess who their pro users it took them three years to realize this and they announced back in April that they made a boo-boo so a new modular Mac Pro will be coming maybe by the end of this year but let's be honest more likely like 2018 now I'm really hoping we get more from iOS 11 when it's featured with the new iPhones in September Apple pay person-to-person payments in messages is nice but I'm not a fan of the new control center it looks like this mishmash of widgets like a modern art mural but that's not what I want with a control center I don't know maybe it's just me all right the big iOS 11 feature they didn't talk about in the keynote you can now add more control to your air pod the settings will now allow you to use a double tap to either go to the next track or previous track on either ear and yes you'll still have the single tap option four pause and play or ciri now it's much needed and next up volume control in 2018 see that's funny at first until you realize that I am probably right alright the biggest letdown from iOS 11 Siri I was really hoping this was a chance for Apple to show us their vision in the artificial intelligence and virtual assistant game and maybe maybe they're holding off until the iPhone in September I'll give them that but this is a Developers Conference and it's all about the software now they mentioned machine learning a few times they gave us a demo of a Siri boys that's more conversational here's to the forecast in the next 10 days Sun Sun and sunny three different ways to say sunny very powerful okay but they never fundamentally showed us how much smarter Siri really is WWDC was a golden opportunity to show us the details of Apple's AI and vision with their platform and ecosystem moving forward like is it really that much better they didn't talk about it and more importantly they didn't brag about it and that tells me it's not everything is moving in that direction Amazon and Google they have better assistants and people who keep telling me Siri is good enough try using those other devices on a day-to-day basis Siri is really behind by a lot and that's a sad Apple now it's where things are going in if we don't hear anything about it in September then yeah a bad apple is coming out in full force but let's talk about the home pot apples three hundred and forty nine dollar home pot I have no doubt this will be the best sounding smart speaker on the market with its four inch woofer seven tweeter array whose guts kind of look like an imperial probe droid now its ability to analyze a room and adjust the sound for optimal quality will have to be tried out in person but that sounds neat Apple positioned this as a music speaker first the focus wasn't on the smart aspects of it it has Siri built-in but it was another opportunity to tout its improvements that didn't happen now did you know this isn't Apple's first rodeo with the home speaker that was apples iPod hi-fi that also retailed for 349 in 2006 now come on the Internet always is the best when it comes to new Apple designs like here check out some of these hot takes like for example the home pod looks like a scratching post so if you have cats you might want to stay away some people already found they have at home pod in their bathroom it also comes in many colors if you know you're shopping at jo-ann fabrics and the first thing that came to me the home pod would be perfect at a campfire roasted now Apple was showing it off after the keynote at their demo room but it was hands-off a reporter's so I gotta admit I like the glowy top that I'll never see from a distance because it's on top but the Apple crew is able to infiltrate apples headquarters and I snuck out one of their early prototypes for the home pod so check it out here you'll notice some of the details like the first attempt that the mesh fabrics and then we have these these two things here for cable management and I don't know it's just like this form factor it looks familiar but I don't know I just can't place it yet alright this is going to be available in December and of course I'll buy one to try but we'll see if I keep it all right that's going to do it for this week's show we couldn't cover everything but we'd love to hear what you thought about the WWDC keynote email us at the Apple bite at cnet.com or tweet me at brian tom thanks so much for watching we'll catch y'all next time for the bite of the Apple oh my gosh oh cool