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WWDC is quickly approaching, and while we know things are going to be different with this first-ever digital-only event, there's still a lot to look forward to. Apple will be streaming a keynote address from Apple Park where we'll see the usual introductions of Apple's next major operating system updates, and hopefully we'll get some hardware news as well.


We're starting to see some intriguing rumors for WWDC, including the possibility of a redesigned iMac and the likely start of Apple transitioning its Mac lineup from Intel processors to its own custom chips. This week also saw news on the iOS beta front, Apple's stock performance, and the iPhone 12 production schedule, so read on below and check out our video above for all of the details!

New iMac With 'iPad Pro Design Language' and Thin Bezels Reportedly Coming at WWDC

WWDC is just over a week away, and a new rumor indicates we could see some significant updates for the iMac at the event. According to leaker Sonny Dickson, Apple will use the WWDC keynote to introduce a redesigned iMac with "iPad Pro design language" and much thinner bezels around the display similar to those seen on the Pro Display XDR.

imac_2020_concept_2.jpg

According to Dickson, the iMac will join the rest of the Mac lineup by including Apple's custom T2 chip to integrate several security controller functions. Dickson also says the iMac will include AMD's Navi graphics processors and move to all-SSD storage, eliminating the hybrid Fusion Drive setup seen on current lower-priced configurations.

Apple has been quoting extended shipping estimates on the 27-inch iMac for a while now, but it hasn't been clear whether it's due to component shortages or an upcoming update. Either way, it's best to wait until WWDC if you're currently in the market for an iMac.

Apple has officially announced some of its schedule for the first digital-only WWDC, which will kick off with the traditional keynote broadcast from Apple Park at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday, June 22.

Apple Expected to Announce Arm-Based Mac Plans at WWDC, Transition Away From Intel to Begin in 2021

Apple has been rumored to be looking to move its Mac lineup from Intel processors over to its own custom Arm-based chips for years now, and it looks like it's finally about to happen.

a14-MacBook-Feature.jpg

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to announce the beginning of that transition at WWDC later this month, giving developers several months to begin preparing ahead of the launch of the first Arm-based Macs in 2021.

Apple's first Arm-based Mac chip is said to be based on the upcoming A14 iPhone chip and include 12 processor cores: eight high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. Chips with even higher core counts based on A15 iPhone chips would follow in the future. One rumor this week says Apple might start its Arm transition with a revived 12-inch MacBook.

For more details on what the transition from Intel to custom Arm chips would mean for Apple, check out our overview guide.

Apple Planning Apple Card Financing Options for Devices Other than iPhone

Apple Card users in the U.S. have been able to take advantage of convenient interest-free payment plans for iPhone purchases, and it looks like they'll soon have the option of similar plans for many other Apple products.

apple-card-feature2.jpg

Tim Cook briefly mentioned the company's plans on Apple's April 30 earnings call, but the latest details indicate it will be valid on a broad array of products including iPads, Macs, AirPods, and other accessories, with customers given up to 12 months to pay before interest is due.

Apple Seeds Second Betas of iOS and iPadOS 13.6

Apple has thrown another curveball in its iOS beta testing cycle, renaming iOS 13.5.5 to iOS 13.6 alongside the release of the second beta version.

iOS-13.6-Feature.jpg

We'll be seeing iOS 14 very shortly at WWDC, but that won't get a public release until around September, so iOS 13.6 will provide some additional new features and updates to tide users over.

Among the changes found in the latest iOS 13.6 beta are a new toggle to set whether available iOS updates are automatically downloaded, a new Symptoms section in the Health app, and a new feature that saves your reading position within an article in Apple News.

Meanwhile, Apple has stopped signing iOS 13.5 following the release of iOS 13.5.1 last week. iOS 13.5.1 fixed a vulnerability that allowed for devices on earlier iOS versions to be jailbroken, and Apple's move to stop signing iOS 13.5 means users won't be able to downgrade their devices if they've already updated to iOS 13.5.1 or later.

Apple Becomes First U.S. Company to Hit $1.5 Trillion in Market Value

Following a steady recovery from its late March lows in the wake of the global health crisis, Apple's stock price late last week achieved its first all-time high since late January.

aapl_1_5_triillion.jpg

By the middle of this week, Apple became the first U.S. company to hit a market value of $1.5 trillion as it surged above $350 per share before pulling back later in the week amid broader market declines.

Apple previously became the first trillion-dollar company back in August 2018, and Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent company Alphabet have since joined Apple in hitting that milestone.

iPhone 12 Production Expected to Begin in July

Amid concerns that Apple will have to delay the launch of at least some iPhone 12 models due to delays stemming from coronavirus impact on the development phases, a new report claims that production on the iPhone 12 lineup is set to begin in July.

iPhone-12-5G-New.jpg

With Apple unable to send its usual teams to China to work through prototyping and development, the company was reportedly able to beef up its China-based teams to get the job done, with the second phase of engineering validation and testing wrapping up at the end of this month.

It's still not clear when we can expect the iPhone 12 to become available, however. Apple typically holds its annual iPhone event in early September, with availability following a week and a half later, although the launches of some models have been pushed back to October or even early November in recent years.

Meanwhile, Apple has registered nine unreleased iPhone model numbers with the Eurasian Economic Commission, which likely correspond to various iPhone 12 models. There's also a newly registered Mac that could be the iMac rumored for launch at WWDC.

iPhone 4 Turns 10: 'Stop Me If You've Already Seen This'

This week marked the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 and FaceTime at the WWDC 2010 keynote in San Francisco.

steve-jobs-holding-iphone-4.jpg

The introduction was a remarkable one due to the fact that the iPhone 4 had leaked several months earlier after an Apple employee left a prototype in a bar in Redwood City, California, near the company's headquarters.

The iPhone 4 was the first one with a high-resolution Retina display, and it featured an all-new design with a glass and stainless steel unibody with squared edges. This year's iPhone 12 is rumored to carry a similar design after many of years of rounded edges dating back to the iPhone 6.

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Article Link: Top Stories: Redesigned iMac at WWDC?, Mac's Transition to Arm Chips, AAPL Hits $1.5 Trillion
 
I wonder if ARM transition will mean no more hardware configurations except for storage and screen size. If you want a MacBook you will buy either the Pro or Consumer...

If I had to guess Apple might be tired of having to design for different CPU packages in the same form factor computer. One ARM chip version per year per form factor I think is Apples future.
Why would changing the processor remove the need for different RAM options?
 
$1.5 Trillion ... Apple should double their software devs and knock out some of these longs standing bugs. Frankly, there is no excuse for such buggy releases.
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Why would changing the processor remove the need for different RAM options?
He's talking about CPU's, I believe. No more i3 or i5 or i7 choices.
 
I bet they will throttle the newest ARM processors to leave room for improvement. How they plan to emulate an x86 instruction set is the big question...
 
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Has anyone heard rumors about how this might affect virtualization software like Parallels or VMWare? Are people that need to run windows in a VM just out in the cold? They wouldn't HAVE to be (after all, Windows runs on ARM, but there is a lot of missing functionality). But if Apple was interested in keeping Windows in a VM viable, one would think these vendors would be brought in early.
 
I wonder if ARM transition will mean no more hardware configurations except for storage and screen size. If you want a MacBook you will buy either the Pro or Consumer...

If I had to guess Apple might be tired of having to design for different CPU packages in the same form factor computer. One ARM chip version per year per form factor I think is Apples future.
This would lean towards the minimalism philosophy of Steeve Jobs.
And would definitely simplify parts sourcing and assembly processes.

Not a crazy idea! I'm eager to see the Keynote.
 
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How they plan to emulate an x86 instruction set is the big question...

I expect they plan to do it in a very similar way to the PowerPC -> x86 transition. Provide seamless emulation in the OS, but strongly encourage developers to update their apps ASAP for the best performance. Apps compiled on the latest XCode will be dual-architecture "fat binaries" by default.
 
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I always just thought Apple's Apple Pay card financed anything big (iPhone, iPad, Mac) you could buy at Apple - the idea of financing a more expensive Mac (some quite a bit more expensive) than an iPhone for a shorter period of time than a iPhone seems like a weird choice on Apple's part.

With the lack of a serious update on Intel's chips (that's on Intel...for yet another year - their chips for the iMac are 14nm die size, the iPhone 11's cpu die size is 7nm) I see mostly downsides to the iMac update other than a change in looks. I will probably get one next year, but am bummed about the dropping of fusion drives for larger storage sizes (3TB etc.) as I can only imagine how horrendously more expensive Apple's SSD solutions for that size and larger will be. With a T2 chip in there now to finally lock that machine down I'm guessing there won't be any way for user SSD changes upgrades to get around it either.
 
Apple will never position ARM Macs as low end, low performance devices. That silly speculation about a new Air flies in the face of Apple’s entire marketing message. iPhones are faster than Mac Book Pros TODAY despite having an order of magnitude less electrical power and exponentially more constrained passive thermals.

Apple is going to come out of the gate with the fastest Apple device by several times. They’ll push to 4GHz and beyond, higher voltages, & more cores. They’ll quickly beat the price/perf of discrete GPUs too.
 
Based on the A14 or an actual A14? The iPhone's A14 is way too weak to put in a desktop and most laptops. It doesn't have the features (such as long pipelines) you need to get clock rates (and therefore corresponding thermals) into desktop territory.
 
The A-series processors are not too weak. There surely is a reason why Apple has been touting its "Desktop-Class" performance during Keynotes in the past few years. I'm sure many of you remember Apple was secretly running MacOS on Intel chips even when the G5 was out. Regarding an x86 emulator, who knows... I remember all of those universal binary apps we had. Soon we will find out. I think its really exciting and I'm happy that Apple is going this direction. This is coming from a Pro user who relies on all of their Xeon-type computers.
 
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Based on the A14 or an actual A14? The iPhone's A14 is way too weak to put in a desktop and most laptops. It doesn't have the features (such as long pipelines) you need to get clock rates (and therefore corresponding thermals) into desktop territory.

Why do you think they'd put the iPhone's A14 in a desktop if they don't even do that with iPad Pro's? If rumours are true, the desktop A chips will have 8 high performance cores and 4 low perf ones. But even if they used the iPhone's A14 in a laptop like the MB it would be already way more powerful than the Core-M they carry now.
 
Has anyone heard rumors about how this might affect virtualization software like Parallels or VMWare? Are people that need to run windows in a VM just out in the cold? They wouldn't HAVE to be (after all, Windows runs on ARM, but there is a lot of missing functionality). But if Apple was interested in keeping Windows in a VM viable, one would think these vendors would be brought in early.
A lot of this type of work is done on containers running on AWS, GCloud, or Azure. There are very few applications absolutely needing a VM on your machine.
 
Has anyone heard rumors about how this might affect virtualization software like Parallels or VMWare?

An ARM Mac will not be able to virtualise or dual-boot x86 operating systems like Windows.

It would be possible to run x86 windows under software emulation - the result would look identical to VMWare or Parallels but wouldn't have the same performance - back in the PPC days we had things like SoftWindows - which, basically, were better than nothing for running business/productivity software but pretty sluggish.

CPUs and emulation technology have moved on since then so If you need to run 20-year-old legacy software then it could be workable.

You can find YouTube videos of people running full x86 MacOS on an iPad using emulation - it's not good, but then they're using an open-source emulator tat probably hasn't been optimised for either iPad or MacOS so it's kinda impressive that it runs at all. ARM Macs should be rather faster than iPads with more RAM etc.

The alternative would be to run Windows for ARM (which includes an x86 emulator) - that would require co-operation between MS and Apple and/or Parallels/VMWare, and there are some technical questions, but it disnae break the laws o'physics Captain. That could give better performance than the current MS ARM offering on what native ARM Windows apps exist - and should also be a better way of running x86 Windows apps, because only the application code needs to run under emulation (rather than the whole Windows OS).

Ditto for Linux: emulation (slow) or Linux for ARM. The difference is that ARM Linux is pretty well developed and most of the major packages/open source projects already work fine on ARM: Unix/Linux has a culture of hardware-platform independent source code and, since most of the major packages are open source, if the developer can't be bothered to build ARM versions then someone else probably will.

...but the days of running demanding Windows x86 games and Pro apps on a Mac are probably numbered.
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What's up with that huge corner radius on the display panel? I hope it's just a fake mockup. No. Please, no.

I hope so too. I'd like to still be able to run full-screen apps without getting the corners cut off. If people really, really must have rounded corners then they could go back to the old MacOS Classic trick of just rounding the corners of the desktop background in software. Of course, there was a better reason for that with CRT displays where the corners of the image tended to get a bit distorted...
 
What's up with that huge corner radius on the display panel? I hope it's just a fake mockup. No. Please, no.

Having such a corner radius would require a redesign of the the menubar at the top of the screen, wouldn't it? The Apple Menu in the top left corner would be cut off, and so would whatever is in the top right corner (I'm on Windows right now. Is it still Spotlight in the top right corner? I'm pretty sure it's customizable...)
 
The only comparable real-world example we have today to go by, is Windows on ARM on the Surface Pro X.

That's a laptop running Microsoft's custom ARM chip, the SQ1.

What's the verdict? With some very specific caveats, it's good. Four stars out of five. If you need that kind of machine.

See, e.g. the Windows Central review of the Surface Pro X.

Performance is good, it rivals a last gen i5 (i5-8250U) laptop CPU running native apps, with a 10 hour battery life. But battery life is cut by 30% if you have to run x86 apps on it, and they run way slower than an i5.

To quote the article:

The bottom line on the Surface Pro X's performance is this: when running native ARM64 or UWP apps, it's a speedy system on par or even ahead of most 8th Gen Intel Core i5 Ultrabooks. When emulating x86 32-bit applications, performance slows closer to an Intel Core i3.
 
New iMac, New Apple TV and New Product segments is what i'm hoping for. I can't imagine drastic changes to software across all platforms, apart from OS X's move to ARM.
 
Simple question.

What model Intel CPU with what cores/mhz speed do you think Apple's 1st ARM chip will be comparable to?
 
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