Apple WWDC 2023: Hot or Not? (Premium)

Apple's WWDC 2023 keynote was another prerecorded affair with somewhat interesting new hardware and software announcements. But there was nothing new from services, and the late Spring timing means we're just a few months away from new iPhones and other consumer releases. What we're left with is a developer show keynote with little in the way of developer news. Was it any good?

To find out, I've stepped through the keynote a second time. And here are my takeaways.
Mac
Though the Mac has slightly worse market share now than it did two years earlier---7.2 percent in 2022 vs 7.9 percent in 2021 and 2020---Apple's transition to its own M-series chipsets has been undeniably successful. The technical advantages to this shift are enormous, with major gains in battery life, iOS and iPad compatibility, and integrated graphics and AI acceleration. And Apple has raced to improve the product line, having released 7 updated chipsets since the original M1 in late 2020.

That said, Apple Silicon has its challenges, especially for higher-end and workstation-class products, key among them the lack of memory and system board expansion. And so we had to wait until now, and the M2 Ultra chipset, to get an expandable Apple Silicon-based Mac Pro tower. The M2 Ultra doesn't support RAM expansion, so that remains an issue, but it does allow customers to get much more RAM at purchase time, up to 192 GB worth. And the new Mac Pro ships with 6 open PCIe Gen 4-based expansion slots plus an impressive array of Thunderbolt 4, USB-A, HDMI, and Ethernet ports too.

Of course, it’s also very expensive, with a starting price of $6,999 in tower form. (There's a rack-mounted version with an even higher starting price.) And that's what makes the Mac Studio so compelling: this pro-level Mac looks like a tall Mac mini but it can be had with an M2 Ultra chipset and up to 192 GB of RAM now as well, and it starts at just $1999, which I suspect puts it in the sweet spot for Apple's pro market.

These products help reaffirm Apple's position with pros, but there was another Mac introduced today that is of more interest to me and, I suspect, to many of you as well: there's now a new 15.3-inch MacBook Air with an M2 chipset that offers up to 18 hours of battery life in a thin and fanless design that should be tempting to a much broader audience.

The 15-inch MacBook Air starts at $1299 and is available in four colors: midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray. And if you've been holding out on the M2-Based 13-inch MacBook Air, here's some more good news: the starting price of that laptop is now $100 less, or $1099. (The original M1-based MacBook Air with the old design sticks around and brings up the rear at $999 and up.)

We've known that Apple would release a 15-inch MacBook Air since last year, but this is a big deal (literally). It's light for its size---3.3 pounds---has a bright 500-nit display and a MagSafe charger, and it exceeds contemporary premium PCs in ot...

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