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WWDC: Apple unveils HomePod smart speaker and a range of powerful new Macs

Tim Biggs
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Apple has announced a new smart speaker device at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, as well as a new super-powerful iMac and iterative updates to its desktop, laptop and tablet computers.

WWDC is traditionally the place where Apple shows off improvements to the software that powers its devices, rather than hardware revisions or brand new machines. But with the company feeling pressure from rivals in the home computer and laptop spaces — and with many of its Mac lines having languished without significant updates for quite a while — many analysts were tipping an uncharacteristically hardware-heavy show, and that's exactly what we got.

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Apple drops its latest gear

The computer giant unveils an enormous assortment of new products.

Hello HomePod

As expected, Apple is introducing a smart speaker to compete with Google's Home and Amazon's Echo. The HomePod, Apple says, is a wireless speaker that uses "spatial awareness" to adjust its output to the shape of its surroundings. Designed to pair with an iPhone and play music via a user's Apple Music subscription, the device will also field queries and control other smart home devices thanks to Siri integration.

The speaker features an upward-facing woofer, seven tweeters each with dedicated amps and a six-microphone array.

The HomePod will launch in Australia in December, although a price is yet to be announced. In the US it will cost $US349 ($466), more than twice the price of its Google competitor.

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iMacs and MacBooks updated, Mac Pro re-imagined

While whispers of a touch-enabled Mac line that would open the door to more versatile Apple machines turned out to be baseless, Apple is significantly updating several of its existing products with modern components, as well as introducing a new turbo-charged iMac.

The iMac Pro blends the super-thin design of the standard Apple all-in-one with the bleeding-edge productivity focus of the old Mac Pro, packing enough power to handle high-end tasks like 3D modelling for VR. The increased power means Apple needed to craft a new kind of cooling mechanism to keep the components' temperatures lowered in the skinny enclosure.

The dark grey computer sports a 27-inch, 5K display and will start at $US4999 ($6676) in the US. So far there is no word on international pricing, and no indication of what the most powerful iteration of the device — with 18-core Xeon processors, a Radeon Pro Vega GPU with 16GB of VRAM and a 4TB SSD hard drive — will cost.

For regular folks who don't need a computer that can handle artificial intelligence research, the iMac, MacBook and MacBook Pro have all been brought up to date with new Intel Kaby Lake processors.

The iMac now features Thunderbolt 3 ports and, in most models, dedicated graphics chips. At the low end there is still a 21.5-inch iMac with a 2.3GHz processor and a 1080p display, starting at $1599. More powerful 21.5-inch models with 4K screens start at $1899, and 27-inch models with 5K screens start at $2699.

Meanwhile the 12-inch Macbook has faster hard drives and now supports up to 16GB of memory, while the 13-inch Pro has a new entry-level model that comes in at $1899. The 15-inch Pro, which starts at $3499, now comes with a more powerful AMD graphics chip with either 2GB or 4GB of memory.

The new iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros are all available for order now.

iPad Pro gets a refresh

Despite ever-shrinking sales, Apple announced a refresh for its line of high-end tablets. The iPad Pro now comes in an all-new 10.5-inch variation in addition to the original 12.9-inch size. The previously available 9.7-inch Pro appears to have been put out to pasture, presumably to avoid confusion with the standard non-Pro iPad, which is the same size.

The 10.5-inch Pro has some impressively skinny bezels and weighs in at a tiny 469 grams. Both models feature an improved processor and something Apple calls "ProMotion", which essentially means the screens are now capable of higher refresh rates for smoother video and animations.

The new iPad Pro starts at $979 and $1199 for the smaller and larger models respectively. The standard iPad and iPad Mini 4 remain unchanged.

First look at iOS 11, MacOS High Sierra and WatchOS updates

While the iPhone was largely absent from the announcements at WWDC, Apple did give a sneak peek into the future of the device with the unveiling of a new version of iOS, which also powers its iPads.

New in iOS 11 will be a better camera app, a more capable Apple Pay system, a new version of Apple Maps with indoor mapping and a new toolkit to help developers bring augmented reality features to their apps. On iPad Pro, a redesigned app switcher and customisable dock gives the operating system a flatter, more modern look.

The new software also contains a "Do Not Disturb While Driving" mode, which Apple says will help prevent iPhones distracting those behind the wheel, and a new "Files" app that resembles a traditional computer file system for viewing and organising documents.

On the Mac front, Apple showed off High Sierra, the next version of MacOS. The update includes refinements to Photos and enhanced ad-blocking features for Safari. Most improvements will be under the hood, including an all-new file system, VR features and support for the new HEVC video standard.

Finally, the company previewed some improvements coming to the Apple Watch. A new Siri watchface predicts what you'll want to see when you look at your wrist, while improvements to the device's fitness features will let you track new types of high-intensity workouts.

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