Maurizio

While i agree on the fact that new design is more pro and less design oriented, i would like to stress the fact that the discussion about ports is fake and the position that the 2016 mac book pro had less ports is a myth. I had a Mac Book Pro 2011; had it more ports ? Well, actually not. It just had two usb ports. Yes, it had an Ethernet port, of absolutely no use unless you had a cabled network. I hadn’t. Yes, it had a Firewire port; it was legacy already, never used it. It had a displayport connection, very useful to people using an external screen. Not me. Well, but at least you could connect it with a single cable to a dock, so you could charge it, connect to studio HD and audio interface ? No way. While some Windows computer had some expensive docking option, no Mac had one. Si, essentially, just two usb port. Yes, i used the display port a couple of times, in three years. So yes, the Mac Book Pro 2019 that i owns today have 4 physical ports, but being them multipurpose, i can use them in a lot of different situations. The new Mac Pro, if you are on batteries (or use a Usb C or Thunderbolt screen) have exactly one port less of my 2019 Mac Book Pro. Happily, it has three Thunderbolt controllers, so more bandwidth for more docks and dongles. Essentially, stop believing the trolls that online press helped diffuse, and look ti real life use cases. Some gains, a lot not.

Most of the code of a iOS application compile and run natively on macOS; most of the libraries are the same, and large part of the UI infrastructure is also the same.
Actually, from a developer point of view, iOS and macOS are already very very close.

What is different: everything that deals with file, because of the iOS sandbox, and the actual UI code, that is different, the toolkits are  different, with a different hierarchy of Objective-C/Swift classes.

My personal guess (as an experience developer) is that this project concern a new User Interface toolkit, either on macOS, on iOS or probably on both, that allows to write user interfaces that run on both platforms, plus some other limited stuff, mostly support in XCode to allow building for both platforms.
My guess is also that this will not be transparent and automatic, but it will allow a developer, with a explicit design decision, to target both platforms at the same time, with the same code base, but ossibly with custom code and functionalities on each of the two (or more) platforms.

Maurizio

ITGUYINSD said:

What would one be doing when rack mounting it?  It doesn't have a true server operating system, but a server app (with minimal functionality at that) which runs on top of macOS.

With racks typically down the hall and in a secure room, how would one use one of these?

None ever said (other then this articole) that it was proposed as a server; it is just a new Mac Pro with a rack mountable enclosure. In place where racks are used, it may be convenient to have three or four of them mounted in a rack, may be with video equipement, huge raids, and so on.

An event the 31 octobre, evening/late afternoon ?

Plus a chip with hardware ray tracing support ?

To me, it sound that there is a gaming market implication in this event. An M3 iMac, sold as the first gaming oriented iMac.

Well, you heard it here first

Maurizio

If there is one thing to learn from these facts, is that Apple is actually working on a flying car.
Remember, i told it first 

Maurizio

PS: just joking

thrang said:

So for the few percent of people that listen to 10 hours of music straight a day, or will be switching their ear buds among several devices constantly, I suppose there is some legitimate agitation. Just like there were a few percent of people who lamented the loss of floppy and CD media. But this is no reason to delay progress.

While agree with everything else you said, i do not agree with the conclusion: moving out the jack to an adapter is not progress.
And has nothing to do with the loss of floppy or CD media. In both case, it was a natural evolution, following the simple fact that floppies and CDs did not correspond
any more to the needs. USB stick and external disks took their place. USB  is a standard, fits better the needs, and the whole market moved to it.

Being a Sennheiser user you know very well that 99.9% of the medium-end and high-end headphones and earpods use jack for the connection; i.e. a standard connection for an analogue signal that is completely adequate to the need; the market is not moving away from analogue connections. All the music you listen is made with analogue connections at the source, even for digital instruments and effects.

Lightning is not a standard analogue connection, you cannot use it even for your Mac, and  not on any other equipment. Is proprietary, and do not fits the needs.
USB C is standard, and it may eventually happens, but leave out all the equipment that is not digital.

Bluetooth is a standard connection, but the high end audio market is just not taking up Bluetooth as a standard connection, because most of the "other" use of an headphone do not require a wireless connection.
There is no economic reasons for companies like Sennheiser, Audio Technica, Shure, to move to Bluetooth, adding the cost a receiver and that of a good DAC system for products that already cost a significant fraction of the cost of a iPhone.

So, no, Apple did not killed the analogue jack, it just moved out the jack to an adapter. This is not progress, it is just a nuisance, even if minor.

Maurizio

Can somebody explain me where the innovation is ? Three sensor (video) camera were commons in the end of the 80s beginning of the 90s. Probably the innovation is elsewhere, around resolution.