For The Talk Show Live at WWDC this year, John Gruber was joined by Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak. The trio talked about Apple’s announcements yesterday, including the Mac Pro, iOS 13, iPadOS, and much more.

Mac Pro + Pro Display XDR

Regarding the new Mac Pro, Gruber first pressed Joswiak and Federighi on the price of the wheels – an optional accessory that Apple showcased alongside the cheese grater tower. Naturally, Federighi wouldn’t offer a firm price, instead jokingly telling Gruber that it would depend on how many wheels he wanted and that installment plans would be available for the wheels.

Gruber also said that he’d heard from a source that the new Mac Pro “will ship with the most insane packaging” that Apple has done in a while. Joswiak’s response? “You can imagine it won’t be shitty packaging.”

As for the sheer power of the Mac, Joswiak explained that Apple knew it had to create something “really, really great” for its pro users:

Joswiak also offered some detail on the nano-texture design of the new Pro Display XDR, noting that Apple has undercut the competition of the “gold standard” reference display:

Project Catalyst

After talking about the new hardware introduced at WWDC, Craig Federighi dove into Apple’s new Project Catalyst, which allows developers to easily port their iPad apps to the Mac. Federighi noted that if a developer simply ticks the “Mac” option in Xcode, they’ll get some degree of “Mac-ification” right off the bat, but that developers can fine tune that for a true Mac experience.

The gold standard costs $43,000. What’s amazing about it, is that reference display can only keep the brightness for a very short period of time. Within seconds, it has to go amber and say it no longer trusts that image. We’ve blown that away at just over a tenth the price.

In defense of the first set of Catalyst apps that were released by Apple last year, such as Apple News and Home on the Mac, Federighi said that some of the complaints people voiced were actually simple interface design decisions that the development teams made. Not necessarily because of Project Catalyst framework itself. Over time, Federighi says that Apple has learned how to strike a balance between the best design for these types of media-oriented applications on the Mac:

Accessibility

Joswiak also offered some new information about the development of the new Voice Control feature in iOS 13 and macOS Catalina. He called the work on this Accessibility feature “some of the most touching things we do.” Joswiak also noted that many of the people on the Accessibility team have a wide-range of abilities, saying that “we’re living this in house and these technologies really impact the people at Apple working on the projects.”

One of the most popular announcements yesterday among developers was Apple’s new SwiftUI platform. On The Talk Show today, Federighi called SwiftUI a “generational kind of development” for Apple because of the benefits it has on programming language:

Apple Keynotes

Apple fit a lot of information in its WWDC keynote yesterday, and Joswiak shared some color with Gruber on how Apple goes about building its keynotes:

iOS 13

As for iOS 13, Federighi said that one of the important goals with the new Photos app is to help users better surface their major life events amid a growing sea of photos:

Federighi also noted that Apple continues to focus on its on-device machine learning strategy, something that the “other guys” are finally starting to catch onto. He noted, however, that on-device machine learning is easier when you have a consistent hardware base, something that companies like Google lack:

Federighi said that “having your phone know you is cool, having some cloud person know you is creepy.” That’s, of course, a clear shot at other companies that send data to the cloud for AI and machine learning.

iPadOS

Speaking on the decision to launch iPadOS 13 as the new operating system for the iPad, Federighi explained that while it’s a marketing thing on the surface, it’s something the engineering teams also felt strongly about:

When asked why it took so long to bring USB drive support to iOS, Federigihi explained that it really boiled down to security:

He also touched on the new text controls and gestures in iPadOS 13, explaining that this was an area where it still felt easier to do things on the Mac:

Privacy

Regarding Apple’s requirement that apps implement Sign in with Apple if they also support other social sign-ins, Joswiak explained that Apple felt responsible to offer customers a more private log-in option. He repeatedly emphasized that it comes down to transparency and control for the user:

The iPad experience has to be one that everyone can understand, but there can be depth that you can discover and you can become a pro and discover and really accelerate your work.

Lastly, Joswiak reiterated that privacy is something that Apple has been focusing on for a long time, “before it was popular.”

The full video and audio from The Talk Show with Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak will be available tomorrow.