I have to admit, I’ve been busy for the past week trying to hunt down the MacBook Pro with retina display after it was announced by Tim Cook and had no fucking luck at all. The Apple stores in Doncaster, Southland and Chadstone had no or minimal stock of these wonderful machines and the online store is qouting a 3-4 week wait.
I don’t wanna wait 3-4 weeks god damn it.
I was fortunately enough to have a play with the display model at Chadstone and it was just something I had to have. The retina screen was amazing and the machine was surprisingly light weight and this is coming from me who has been using the 11 inch MacBook Air for the past 18 months.
Retina MacBook Pro at Chadstone Apple store.
I’ve got an order with my on-campus Apple reseller and they’re telling me they’re getting stock this week but I’m not convinced. Fingers crossed I’ll get my MacBook Pro soon.
To tell the truth, the retina display isn’t really the most compelling feature I’m after. I’ve been wanting to upgrade to a portable with more screen estate as I’m doing more work on it nowadays. My preference was to wait for the WWDC hardware refresh announcement and pile the cash on a top specced 13 inch MacBook Air because I really want the portability.
Tim Cook and Apple decided to throw the spanner in the works for me by announcing the super thin retina MacBook Pro. After the keynote, I was holding out to see the MacBook Pro in person to decide if I should get that or stick to my plans on getting the MacBook Air. When I finally laid my eyes on the MacBook Pro, it’s love at first sight.
I wanted text Sonti to tell him that I have seen the MacBook Pro in person and wanted to make love to it. I was afraid that would be weird so I stopped myself.
And of course there were tons of other announcements at Tim Cook’s keynote. Craig Federighi demoed tons of features on the next version of Mac OS X Mountain Lion and I’ve been using the developer’s preview for the past 6 months on my MacBook Air and it’s been pretty good so fair. The newer features like system wide sharing and Power Nap looks interesting but the best part of it was that the cost of upgrading to Mountain Lion would be only AUD$20.99.
Couldn’t complain about the price really.
Scott Forstall also took the stage to show everyone what iOS 6 is going to bring to the masses and one of the biggest announcement that everyone was expecting would be that Apple would be dropping the Google Maps app in iOS 6 and implementing a new Maps app built in-house. First impressions look interesting but Apple’s maps look like they might be lacking in details compared to Google’s in Melbourne CBD area as detailed in this Gizmodo article.
The Flyover feature of the Maps app was pretty impressive though but as always, iOS 6 is still in beta and won’t be expected till September/October when it should be released at the same time as the purported iPhone 5.
But my favourite moment of the WWDC keynote? Apple had Siri do opening jokes at the keynote and the best one was where Siri asked the crowd who was naming Android’s firmware Ice Cream Sandwich and Key Lime Pie. Ben & Jerry?
Burn.
Alright, so this is a very quick and brief wrap up of what’s happened at WWDC this year and what I’ve been up to after the announcements. Oh! I’ve also been busy with Euros 2012 though but the time of the matches shown isn’t really helping with my sleep schedule. I’m still insisting that Germany and not Spain will win the Euros though.
UPDATE: I just found out Apple uploaded the keynote video to YouTube so I thought I’d embed that into this post as well.
