Apple’s Developers Conference Kicks Off With New Laptops, iOS Upgrade

It's that time of year again, the time when Apple brings out all of its new toys for its faithful public/fan boys to "oooh" and "ahhh" over. It's time once again for Apple's World Wide Developers Conference.

The event kicked off yesterday with a keynote speech from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who gave a preview of what to expect from Apple this week. One major announcements from yesterday's speech was a new high-resolution MacBook Pro, which went on sale yesterday.

"The new MacBook Pro is the most advanced Mac we have ever built," said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The new "retina display" MacBook Pro measures 15.5 inches across and contains an Intel quad-core i7 processor. It will feature up to 16GB of memory and up to 768GB of internal flash storage, Marketing Vice President Phil Schiller told attendees. It goes on sale today.

Schiller said the new computer's display -- similar to the one in the company's newest iPad -- is the highest-resolution display of any notebook, or simple laptop, on the market. Users will get up to 7 hours of battery life, he said.

The laptop is about .7 inches thick and weighs less than 4.5 pounds -- about the size and weight of a MacBook Air, he said. Prices for the new MacBook Pro will start at $2,199 for a model with 8GB of memory.

In addition to a new MacBook, Apple also announced a new version mobile operating system: iOS 6. The new OS will also include an upgrade to Apple's popular digital assistant Siri.

Apple also announced Monday that an improved version of voice-controlled "assistant" Siri is coming to iPhones -- and, for the first time, to the iPad -- as part of its newest mobile operating system. A more efficient Siri will be part of iOS 6, the next generation of the Apple system that runs iPhones and iPads.

That system, which enhances mobile devices with more than 200 new features, is expected to be available this fall.

Other announcements from Apple include a new mapping system that seems to be in direct competition with Google Maps, and the new OS X "Mountain Lion" operating system for the Macs. However, the keynote speech made no mention of a new iPhone, or upgrades to Apple TV. Considering that it hasn't even been a year since the iPhone 4S came out however, I'm not expecting any sort of new iPhone till at least this fall. As far as Apple TV, however, there's still a week's worth of Apple technology left to be seen, so I wouldn't rule out anything on that yet.