512 Pixels

Here’s a list of all iPhone models that are compatible with iOS 17:

• iPhone XS and XS Max
• iPhone XR
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 12 and 12 mini
• iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 13 and 13 mini
• iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max
• iPhone SE (2nd and 3rd gen)

iOS 17 drops support for the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.

On the iPad front, these models are supported moving forward:

• iPad Pro (2nd generation and later)
• iPad Air (3rd generation and later)
• iPad (6th generation and later)
• iPad mini (5th generation and later)

watchOS 10 has the same requirements as watchOS 9 had a year ago:

• Apple Watch Series 4
• Apple Watch Series 5
• Apple Watch SE
• Apple Watch Series 6
• Apple Watch Series 7
• Apple Watch Series 8
• Apple Watch Ultra

macOS Sonoma is compatible with the following Macs, dropping support for the 2017 iMac and MacBook Pro, as well as the last 12-inch MacBook model:

• MacBook Pro: 2018 and later
• MacBook Air: 2018 and later
• Mac mini: 2018 and later
• iMac: 2019 and later
• iMac Pro: 2017
• Mac Studio: 2022 and later
• Mac Pro: 2019 and later

There are no Intel Macs on sale as new, so the timer is running for when macOS is Apple silicon-only.

Over at The Verge, Dan Seifert has a hands-on with the new notebook:

Apple just announced the new MacBook Air 15, a 15-inch version of the most popular laptop in the world. I just saw it in person. As you can probably guess, it’s just like the smaller MacBook Air, but now it’s bigger.

There were literally no surprises from the hands-on. It feels just like the 13.5-inch model from last year. It’s thinner and lighter and less dense than a 16-inch MacBook Pro, as you’d expect, with a screen that isn’t as nice. It does have six speakers, but I didn’t get to test them.

Sounds exactly like what a lot of folks wanted. I have a friend and a family member both ordering new notebooks today.

Apple has a video up showing off the new computer:

There’s a new Mac Pro in town, powered by the M2 Ultra chip that is also found in the new Mac Studio.

As you can see, the new machine utilizes the same design as the 2019 model, both outside and inside, plus a whole bunch of extra Thunderbolt ports around back:

That second image shows off the difference between this machine and the Mac Studio: internal PCI. Here’s Apple PR:

The new Mac Pro brings PCIe expansion to Apple silicon for pros who want the performance of M2 Ultra and rely on internal expansion for their workflows. Mac Pro features seven PCle expansion slots, with six open expansion slots that support gen 4, which is 2x faster than before, so users can customize Mac Pro with essential cards. From audio pros who need digital signal processing (DSP) cards, to video pros who need serial digital interface (SDI) I/O cards for connecting to professional cameras and monitors, to users who need additional networking and storage, Mac Pro lets professionals customize and expand their systems, pushing the limits of their most demanding workflows.

You will notice a real lack of GPU expandability in that paragraph. Even in this $6,999 machine,¹ Apple silicon graphics remain on-die.

It is, however, much, much faster than my old 2019 machine:

Mac Pro delivers the groundbreaking performance of M2 Ultra, plus the versatility of PCIe expansion, taking the most demanding workflows to the next level. While the Intel-based Mac Pro started with an 8-core CPU and could be configured up from there, every Mac Pro has Apple’s most powerful 24-core CPU, an up to 76-core GPU, and starts with twice the memory and SSD storage. The new Mac Pro can also be configured with up to a massive 192GB of memory with 800GB/s of unified memory bandwidth. This is far more memory than the most advanced workstation graphics cards. Now every Mac Pro has the performance of not just one but seven Afterburner cards built in. It also features the same industry-leading media engine as Mac Studio with M2 Ultra. Both can play an unprecedented 22 streams of 8K ProRes video.

When compared to the Intel-based Mac Pro, Mac Pro with M2 Ultra:

• Empowers demanding real-world pro workflows like video transcoding and 3D simulations to run up to 3x faster.
• Enables video engineers to ingest 24 4K camera feeds and encode them to ProRes in real time, all on a single machine, when using six video I/O cards.

RIP, Afterburner.

The M2 Ultra appears in all new Mac Pros, and can be specced to include:

• 24-core CPU, 76-core GPU and 32-core Neural Engine (+$1,000)
• 192 GB of unified memory (+$1,600)
• 8 TB SSD (+$2,200)
• Stainless steel wheels (+$400)

I for one am staying put with my 14-inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro as my primary Mac, but if I still had my 2019 Mac Pro, I’d be jonesing for an upgrade… and selling a kidney to make it possible.

At WWDC today, Apple unveiled Vision Pro, it’s first spatial computer.

There is a lot to unpack with this new device and platform, but here are some numbers to get thing started:

• Its two displays pack in more than 23 million pixels. Each display is akin to a 4K display.
• The headset is powered by two Apple silicon chips: the M2 for computing tasks and the new R1 for dealing with real-time sensor data from 12 cameras, five sensors and six microphones.
• The R1 also streams new images to the displays within 12 milliseconds — 8 times faster than the blink of an eye.
• Virtual screens can scale up to 100 feet in width, complete with 3D movies and Apple Immersive Video, that offers 180-degree high-resolution recordings with Spatial Audio.
• Each audio pod contains two individually amplified drivers.
• There are two physical input devices on the headset: a digital crown to adjust levels of immersion, and a shutter button to capture spatial photo and video.
• There are zero physical controls to move around the user interface. Vision Pro is designed to work with the user’s hands, eyes and voice.
• The screen is a singular piece of three-dimensionally formed and laminated glass.
• The Light Seal and headband will be available in a range of sizes.
• On battery, the Apple Vision Pro will run for two hours, but it can also be used plugged in.
• Apple is touting more than 100 Apple Arcade titles for the new system.
• Apple boasted that it filed over 5,000 patents in the development of the platform.
• It will cost $3,499 when it goes on sale early next year in what appears to be just one country, the U.S.

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The 2023 WWDC keynote is just a few days away, so before any more last-minute leaks make it out, I wanted to put my line in the sand for what I expect to see Monday.

On this week’s Connected, I made the following picks:

• Apple will announce a 15-inch MacBook Air.
• The phrase “One more thing” will be used before The Headset is announced.
• The announced price of The Headset will be less than $2,500.

That last one generated quite a bit of conversation on the show. The rumors have been pretty consistent that this thing is going to be in the neighborhood of $3,000, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any counter-reporting planted by Apple to adjust expectations. So either The Headset is going to be that expensive, or Apple is going to surprise us, and likes the bar set where it currently is.

This was my “risky pick,” so I admit I’m out on a limb here, but even at $2,500, it is going to be pricey. I can see Apple preferring to rip the bandage off now, so by the time it goes on sale people have had time to digest (and prepare for) the price. If they announce it now, it’ll cloud the coverage of the device, but at least that cloud will have time to clear before pre-orders open.

Here are the rest of my picks on the show:

• The keynote video runs over 2 hours.
• The 15-inch MacBook Air will be powered by an M3.
• Apple reframes an existing feature as being powered by “AI.”
• Jeff Williams has a major role in introducing the headset.
• iPadOS 17 gains Lock Screen customization.
• We see a Mac Pro preview.
• The next version of macOS is not called Skyline, as Viticci has predicted.

I think all of these are pretty straight forward, and I feel pretty good about most of them.

No matter who wins on Connected next week, WWDC is going to be jam-packed and should be one for the books. I’ll be in Cupertino Tuesday-Thursday and can’t wait to talk about all of this with folks.

WWDC23 is just a few days away, so Myke, Federico and I have made our predictions for what Apple will — and won’t — announce.

Christian Selig, the developer behind the Reddit client Apollo got some shockingly bad news from Reddit today:

Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month.

I’m deeply disappointed in this price. Reddit iterated that the price would be A) reasonable and based in reality, and B) they would not operate like Twitter. Twitter’s pricing was publicly ridiculed for its obscene price of $42,000 for 50 million tweets. Reddit’s is still $12,000. For reference, I pay Imgur, a site similar to Reddit in userbase and media, $166 for the same 50 million API calls.

Holy moly.

Last week, news broke that the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) planned on firing its staff and volunteer helpline folks and replace them with a chatbot named Tessa, less than a week after the workers formed a union.

That is going about as well as you would think, as Chloe Xiang writes:

As of Tuesday, Tessa was taken down by the organization following a viral social media post displaying how the chatbot encouraged unhealthy eating habits rather than helping someone with an eating disorder.

“It came to our attention last night that the current version of the Tessa Chatbot, running the Body Positive program, may have given information that was harmful and unrelated to the program," NEDA said in an Instagram post. We are investigating this immediately and have taken down that program until further notice for a complete investigation.”

It’s one thing to have an AI hallucinate and get some simple fact incorrect. This is way, way worse. Shame on the people at NEDA who made this call.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto has an in-depth look at the little buttons on the underside of the Apple Watch that make swapping bands so easy:

While I often prefer a universal solution over a proprietary connector, here’s the thing — Apple’s band release button beats the hell out of fiddling with little spring bars and jeweler’s tools. Instead, you just press a near-invisible button, slide your band out, slide another one in, and get a lovely audible click as it locks in. No fuss, no muss; just a simple swap for a different visual vibe to match your style and wardrobe.

But how does it get that precise click, that nearly foolproof snap? Hint: it’s not magnets. My colleague Sean Hollister and I spoke with two ex-Apple engineers who worked on manufacturing the original parts. We quickly learned that it’s kind of the unsung hero of the Apple Watch — despite launching a $1 billion accessory ecosystem and remaining unchanged since its debut eight years ago.

The secret: there are actually three buttons in the Apple Watch, two of which interlock so precisely that Apple had to rethink its entire approach to manufacturing. “The tolerances in there are kind of insane,” say our sources. “It’s super hard to machine. You can’t get tools in there; the angles are all weird.” So the company wound up buying Swiss CNC machines that cost up to $2 million — each — just for the sake of its swappable band system. “It didn’t cut anything else on the watch, just this, that’s all it did.”

As a side note, I love The Verge’s “Button of the Month” concept. I wish I had thought of it.

The Verge has published a half-hour documentary on what happened to the Lisa at the end of its life, and it’s a fantastic watch:

Apple Support:

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