Gadgets Philippines – July 2019

86 july 2019 http://www.gadgetsmagazine.com.ph

Apple confirms killing iTunes at WWDC 2019

Days before Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer’s

Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California, there

was a buzz that the company is discontinuing its

music component, iTunes. The tech giant confirmed

the news along with its other announcements on

software and hardware upgrades.

iTunes

As anticipated, Apple made the announcement

that it is “killing” iTunes and breaking it down the

once integrated music platform into three different

services. When users update their devices to the

new macOS dubbed as Catalina later this year, they

will get three apps which are Apple Music, Apple

Podcast, and Apple TV. The move, according to

online observers, is to simplify the user experience.

Apple first released iTunes in January 2001.

Mac Pro

Ridiculed for its “cheese grater-look,” the new Mac

Pro packs power running on Intel Xeon processor

with up to 28 cores with 1.5TB of system memory. If

you feel the system memory is not enough, Apple

adds six slots for memory expansion and eight

PCI slots including two USB-A ports, two USB-C,

and three Thunderbolt ports. Clearly intended for

content creators, the Mac Pro’s graphics card can

play three streams of 8K video or 12 streams for 4K

videos. The new module supports AMD Radeon Pro

580X or the Radeon Pro Vega II which is designed to

be configured to add up to two Vega IIs.

iPadOS

A move that many observers say is an indication of

more surprises to come, Apple is giving iPad its own

operating system. Many tech and gadget experts

say this may be the harbinger for the company to

transform iPad into a “main computer. The OS will

allow iPad to exist into its own ecosystem with one

of the hyped features being the split screen where

users will be able to work on multiple windows. The

company powered up its own browser, Safari, to

resemble the desktop experience.

MacOS Catalina

MacOS Catalina update is said to be coming later

this year with a new feature to look forward to which

is the “Sidecar” which will make an iPad a support

display or drawing surface. Under Project Catalyst,

formerly known as Marzipan, Apple wants to give

developers a way to seamlessly drop iPad apps to

their Macs using Xcode.

Siri

New features on Siri are more like enhancements.

Although some of these enhancements resemble

those that Microsoft has unveiled in its own

developers’ conference. One of these similarities

is the objective of making their own Digital

Assistants open for use for third-party apps.

Apple is making Siri’s voice more “human-like”

and is said to be “entirely generated by the

software.”

PS4 title ‘DEATH STRANDING’ will arrive soon

in the Philippines

Metal Gear Solid game producer Hideo Kojima is

back in producing action-packed games. His latest

development, DEATH STRANDING, gives an all-

new, genre-defying experience in the PlayStation

4 console.

Players begin their journey as Sam Porter Bridges,

whose mission is to unite each division in the

society by connecting with fellow players around

the globe. “DEATH STRANDING is a completely

new type of action game, where the goal of

the player is to reconnect isolated cities and

a fragmented society. It is created so that all

elements, including the story and gameplay, are

bound together by the theme of the strand or

connection,” Kojima said.

The standard edition of “DEATH STRANDING” will

be released in the Philippines on Nov. 8, 2019 with

a suggested retail price of PHP 2,999. Meanwhile,

the special edition will be at PHP 3,899 with a steel

book case. Included in the “DEATH STRANDING”

collector’s edition are a steel book case, BB pod

statue, Ludens keychain, and BRIDGES cargo

casewill. More details regarding its price will come

at a later date.

iTunes is now Apple Music, Apple Podcast, and Apple TV.