The Shape of Everything
A website mostly about Mac stuff, written by August "Gus" Mueller
» Acorn
» Retrobatch
» Mastodon
» Micro.blog
» Instagram
» Github
» Maybe Pizza?
» Archives
» Feed
» Micro feed
September 27, 2013

A short list of things I'd love to see out of Cupertino before the end of 2013, in order of most likely to least.

New Mac Pros
This one is a pretty much guaranteed to happen before the end of the year. I want the new Mac Pro, and I want it yesterday. Any time I can cut off of the compile and run phase of developing apps is time I can use to fix bugs and implement new features.

10.9
Again, I'm pretty sure this will happen before the end of the year. I'm especially excited about some new improvements with OpenCL and friends.

New Apple TV with Games and Game Controller Support
There has been speculation for years that the Apple TV would get games at some point, and I've even said that this would happen in two to three years. Well, I now think it'll happen before the end of the year for the following reasons:

  • Apple has said that they will enter a new product category this year.
  • The iPhone 5S just got 64 bit processor. That same processor would work great in an Apple TV which played games and it could even address 8GB of ram just like the new consoles from the other players in the market.
  • We've now got game controller support for iOS devices.

But you know what I think is really interesting? iOS 7 shipped last week and no game controller hardware was to be found. And the manufacturers have known for months that this was coming and certainly have had prototypes in the works for that long as well.

It seems to me that if you were making a game controller you would want have it available on the day iOS 7 shipped. Unless of course you weren't allowed to ship it yet for some reason. Maybe, just maybe… what if Apple said you had to wait to show it off with some awesome new unannounced hardware? Is that why we haven't seen any controllers yet?

iPad Mini with Retina Displays
I don't think this will happen before 2014 because the battery technology just isn't there yet to be able to support that much of a power drain at that form factor. But I'm still willing to hope.

Touch ID Support for OS X
Just like Apple sells a Magic Trackpad for its desktop machines, I think it would be awesome if they sold a little Touch ID accessory for the Mac as well. I want to walk up to my new Mac Pro, place a finger on a little Touch ID thing, and instantly log in.

Update:
4k Desktop Retina Displays
Wouldn't that be sweet to have along with a new Mac Pro?