Our Apple WWDC Quick Take; Amazon Prime Free 1 Day Ship- 10Million Items; FTC & DOJ Divvying Up Investigating Amazon, Google, Apple, etc.

A big headline from Apple’s marathon WWDC keynote today: A new Mac Pro! This thing is a beast, definitely aimed at pro users, and configurable and flexible enough to do massive video, audio, and programming projects (all for a princely price, of course.) The new Pro starts at $5999, and runs on an Intel Xeon processor with 28 cores. The Pro has 6 memory channels in 12 slots, for up to 1.5 TB of memory! It has 8 PCI-e slots…4 double wide, 3 single wide. Two Thunderbolt 3 ports and two USB-A ports take up the 8th. The standard video is a Radeon Pro Vega II. It can actually run 4 of these! the beast has a 1.4Kw power supply. You can get a 6K display for it that will set you back another $4999. The computer can run up to 6 of these displays at once! The entire cover comes off the Mac Pro for access on all sides, and there are optional wheels so the workstation can be rolled around.

A new OS? Yep, they rolled one out….a separate iPad OS. It adds a number of features to iOS, including the ability to slide over your widgets to the home screen, easier switching of the slide out window for 2nd apps, and better Split view multi-window capability. Appleinsider.com notes that it will bring full desktop type browsing to the iPad, and will support plugging in thumb drives with full access in the Files app. There is also a download manager, and Apple is offering support for enterprise users to have a work Apple Cloud account and a Home one, so you don’t have to bring your work home….or vice versa.

The new Mac OS is Catalina (10.15). A headline item is the widely rumored split of iTunes. Apple Music, Podcasts, and TV will now be spun off into their own dedicated apps. Sidecar allows using an iPad as a 2nd screen, something that has been available in outside developer apps, but now is native to Apple’s OS. They have also merged Find My iPhone with Find my Friends. Dark mode was touted in a big way. One caveat….the new Mac OS will be the first to not support 32 bit apps.

The Apple Watch gets some new faces, new complications, and more health trackers. It picks up a new Noise app that warns you about loud sound that can damage your hearing, an app can track a woman’s menstrual cycle and ‘peak fertility.’ WatchOS gets its own App Store, which means you won’t have to use your iPhone to download Watch apps. 3 cheers for the calculator app…it’s a small thing, but it finally makes it to the Watch. This will be very handy! (OK, terrible pun…I know.)

Apple also introduced at WWDC a feature called ‘Sign in With Apple.’ Its being touted as a log in system that will minimize the tracking everyone on the web does. This iOS 13 feature allows you to create a fresh, new account on pages or apps that ask for an account, but just shares the info you tell it to. If the page or app asks for an email, Apple will create a custom dummy address for it that auto-forwards to your email without the page or app actually HAVING your real email! Each one will have a custom, dummy email account…and you can shut them down if you close that account at the page or App, so you don’t get massive amounts of spam forwarded to your real email forever!

In a rather large non-apple story today, businessinsider.com reports that Amazon has announced one day free shipping for Prime members on 10 million items. this is a shot across Walmart’s bow. The latter had announced next-day shipping, but on an initial220,000 items! Walmart’s are also regionalized, so may be different in different parts of the country.

Some not-so-exciting news to big tech companies. The Feds have announced they are splitting up duties to investigate the big tech companies. The FTC will be taking Amazon, and the Department of Justice will investigate Google, according to the Washington Post. Apple will also be under the eye for antitrust by the DOJ. **Facebook will also fall to the FTC along with Amazon.