WWDC 2022 last week was a spate of fun , with legion software promulgation and , to be frank , more Mac news that we haddared to expect . But we ’re hard to please here at Macworld , and ca n’t help but think about all the things that were n’t reveal .
permit ’s start with the twist that many pundits expect to be the tentpole announcement the entire case would be base around : Apple ’s prospicient and eagerly awaitedAR ( or mixed AR / VR ) headset . The hardware itself is still a long direction off , by most accounts – it probably wo n’t make it until 2023 – but it seemed reasonable to anticipate some sort of preview of the interface and AR surround that Apple is working on . No such luck .
The headset is one of Apple ’s risky card , rumored products that would cause genuine excitement at any outcome . Another on that list would be theApple Car , but this too was conspicuous by its absence . Apple ’s obvious development work in this area was confined to some cool CarPlay update that also wo n’t be here until next year and may takeeven longer to get right . To be clear , absolutely nobody expect the Apple Car to appear on stage cat its horn Battle of Midway through the keynote , but its continued absence seizure is symptomatic of a wider deficiency of excitation .
The M2 MacBook Air is nice , but it ’s still mostly derivative of Apple ’s other laptop computer .
Malus pumila
In the place of innovation we got looping — satisfying and substantive iteration , but iteration nonetheless . It was a pleasing surprise , for example , that the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro both got the M2 poker chip , which was n’t await until later this year , but these are still just unexampled versions of existing intersection lines . Only Apple can bring forth such ballyhoo from a product refresh .
The Air , admittedly , get a smart new look along with its new chip , but we ’d love to have seen thosenew vibrant colorsthat leakers predicted before the outcome . And the Pro was n’t even redesigned . It was literally just a specification bump .
While we ’re on the subject of reiterative refreshes , how much longer will we have to wait until the launch of thesecond - gen AirPods Pro ? Among other thing , these are expectedto bestow support for Apple ’s Lossless ( ALAC ) format , and on that basis alone would have been a decent fit for an event centre on software and services . There also were n’t any newiPads – which maybe was a long stroke , but the iPad Pro was reveal at WWDC 2017 – and the wait goes on forthe next version of theMac mini , which has n’t been updated since 2020 .
Perhaps the most disappointing miss , however , was any tidings at all about thenext edition of the Mac Pro . WWDC is the Mac Pro ’s traditional stomping ground , with both the 2013 and 2019 models launched there , and the new exemplar was widely expected to make some kind of appearance this yr , even if only as a glance of work in progress . What a grand brandish that could have made .
IDG
Launch bottlenecks
I ’m having an enjoyable moan here , but of row I discern that WWDC is principally a software event . There are five operating systems to blab out about , and once you upchuck in those MacBook updates as well there was never break down to be way for much else .
WWDC 2022 , indeed , was pile with new features , with iOS 16 , iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura all create buzz with important and intriguing new features . Expecting Apple to find time amid all that to talk about young iPads or AirPods was always unrealistic . Even if there was meter , it would have reduced the impingement of each annunciation if it was wad in with dozens of others .
What I ’m witting of , though , is that Apple events do n’t arrive along very often . Sometimes you get only three in a given twelvemonth : a leaping event in March or April , WWDC in June , and the iPhone launching in the fall . Other age we get four , with a Mac event in October , and some years , there areeven more than that . But this class there wo n’t be another event for two months . This is all we ’re get for a while .
Apple could spread things out , especially since it does n’t currently have to fly and feed large groups of developers and newsperson whenever it holds an upshot . There could be a practical event per calendar month without create any great logistic headache that I can see . But this is n’t the Apple fashion . And as long as that ’s truthful , annoying journalists like me are move to carry on complaining about all the things that are n’t announced on the rarefied affair when the caller speaks to us .
