At long last, Apple this week unveiled Final Cut Pro and Logic Audio for the iPad, finally bringing its professional production apps to its high-end tablets. I’m no AV expert, but the apps appear to be nearly full versions of the Mac apps with touch interfaces for the relatively low price of $4.99 a month or $49 a year.
It’s the kind of announcement that would work very well as an appetizer at any keynote. And there just happens to be one coming up in just a few weeks. But Tim Cook must have looked at the slate of announcements for WWDC and decided there simply wasn’t room for one more.
That’s pretty exciting. WWDC doesn’t usually get the level of hype that the September iPhone event gets, but this year already feels different. Rumors are pointing to several new products for the software-centric show—and now that Apple has seemingly dropped a major announcement from the event, iOS 17 might feel like an afterthought.
While WWDC is no stranger to hardware announcements—last year brought the M2 chip and redesigned MacBook Air; 2017 gave us the HomePod, iMac Pro, and 10.5-inch iPad Pro—but this year is shaping up to be a monster show, with several potential headlining announcements, including a 15-inch MacBook Air and Apple silicon Mac Pro. And WWDC could be the launch event for Apple’s first completely new product in years, the Reality Pro AR headset.
Add to that rumors of a watchOS 10 overhaul, some of our “most requested features” in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, and the expected debut of xrOS for the headset, and you’ve got what could be the biggest Apple keynote of all time.
And we don’t have much longer to wait. The WWDC keynote will kick off at 10 am PT on Monday, June 5. We’ll be sure to bring the popcorn.
