I don’t know whether it will be the ‘next computing mode’, but you can see the conviction behind each of the choices made here. No corners cut. Full tilt engineering on display.
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Overall, I’m hesitant to make any broad claims about whether Apple Vision Pro is going to fulfill Apple’s claims about the onset of spatial computing. I’ve had far too little time with it and it’s not even completed — Apple is still working on things like the light shroud and definitely on many software aspects.
It is, however, really, really well done. The platonic ideal of an XR headset. Now, we wait to see what developers and Apple accomplish over the next few months and how the public reacts.
I also know that Apple still has a long list of things it wants to refine between now and next year when the Vision Pro ships. That’s part of the reason it’s being announced at WWDC: to let developers react to it, figure out what kinds of apps they might build, and get started on them. But that’s the same promise we’ve been hearing about VR headsets for years now, from Meta and others. Apple can clearly outpace everyone in the industry when it comes to hardware, especially when cost is apparently no object. But the most perfect headset demo reel of all time is still just a headset demo reel — whether Apple’s famed developer community can generate a killer app for the Vision Pro is still up in the air.
Iger said the integration will allow Disney to bring its content closer to fans for “deeply personal experiences” in “previously impossible ways.” To demonstrate these experiences, the company showed a sizzle reel depicting its various brands. The video showed a user watching a scene of “The Mandalorian” and interacting with a virtual recreation of Tatooine, a Star Wars desert planet.
iOS 17 features personalized contact posters with photos, memojis, and eye-catching typography that appear during calls and in the updated address book. The update also brings live voicemail, updates to phone, FaceTime, Messages, and more.
Along with several other safety features, Apple is releasing Sensitive Content Warning, which lets adult users know if they receive a photo or video that they might not want to see.
Apple has unveiled Journal, a new journaling app for iOS that allows iPhone users to regularly log their daily activities. Announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Journal is the company’s latest step into the health and wellness segment, joining other iOS apps like Fitness, Sleep, and Breathe that help users track and manage aspects of their everyday lives.
StandBy comes with iOS 17 and kicks in automatically when your iPhone is charging and on its side. It’s designed to be seen from a distance and can display the time with customizable clock faces, Apple Home controls, the weather, music controls, app smart stacks, and other features. At night, StandBy adapts the screen to lowlight, taking on a red tone to avoid being disruptive at night.
With just a few taps, you can create links between notes, making it easy to jump from one idea to another. Long press on a space in any note, and a new “Add Link” option can be found in the pop-up menu. Tapping it lets you link to another note by searching its title or entering a URL.
Apple touted the upcoming Adaptive Audio update as a way to use AirPods Pro with fewer distractions. It uses machine learning so it can detect noises you would want to block out, like cars honking, but not the ones you would want to hear, like someone speaking to you in real life.
Apple will also add what it's calling Personalized Volume, which allows AirPods Pro to make automatic volume adjustments based on "environmental conditions" and how you use the device, Apple said.
Apple has just unveiled macOS Sonoma, the latest version of its desktop operating system, onstage at WWDC 2023. The headline features are support for widgets on the desktop, as well as new aerial screensavers that can also serve as your wallpaper.
The new tablet software update is set to gain many of the same features of iOS 17, including a handful of new Messages features (like automatic voice note transcriptions), expanded AirDrop capabilities, and smarter autocorrect for text input.
At the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple previewed the coming improvements to its smartwatch operating system, which include an updated user interface with a renewed focus on widgets, plus refreshed first-party apps, like Compass, Mindfulness, Maps and more, plus other new features.
There’s no way to cover even those features that Apple highlighted in the keynote, much less the many others it describes in preview pages on its website. Instead, I focus here on 12 features I look forward to trying or find generally compelling, in no particular order.
Processing the keynote is like taking in a big meal: sometimes you have to just sit back and digest. So much information flies by that it can be hard to pick out the details that are important to you, but as I compiled , I found myself thinking about all the new capabilities that would make the biggest difference to me right now.
Watching the start of Apple’s WWDC keynote today felt a bit like watching an American football team score on a long touchdown pass on the first play of the game… and then come back to do it again on its next two possessions. That first score was the announcement of the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air, followed quickly by a new Mac Studio powered by the M2 Max or the new M2 Ultra and then the long-awaited Mac Pro, also based on the M2 Ultra. All three Macs are available for order today and will be shipping 13 June 2023.
Are some extra Thunderbolt ports and a bunch of open PCI slots enough to justify the Mac Pro’s $3,000 premium over the Mac Studio? For most users, my guess is no. The days of the Mac Pro being the most powerful, most capable Mac are over, at least for now.
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Several of us who cover Apple have heard that there are those inside the company that did not want this machine to see the light of day, believing the Mac Studio to be enough to hold down the high-end of the Mac line. Seeing the machine that Apple announced this week, I think they may eventually get their way.
While the larger MacBook Air starts at just $100 above the previous 13-inch $1199 MacBook Air price, Apple is dropping the smaller M2 MacBook Air price by $100.
Today, Apple proudly unveiled the winners of its annual Apple Design Awards, celebrating 12 best-in-class apps and games. This year’s winners, spanning development teams around the world, delivered creative and innovative apps grounded in great design.
Six different categories recognize one app and game each for inclusivity, delight and fun, interaction, social impact, visuals and graphics, and innovation. The winners were chosen from 36 finalists, all of which demonstrate outstanding technical achievement.
Notably, Apple mentioned the AI term "transformer" in an Apple keynote. The company specifically talked about a "transformer language model," which means its AI model uses the transformer architecture that has been powering many recent generative AI innovations, such as the DALL-E image generator and the ChatGPT chatbot.
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Apparently, Apple's new transformer model in iOS 17 allows sentence-level autocorrections that can finish either a word or an entire sentence when you press the space bar. It learns from your writing style as well, which guides its suggestions.
Federighi notes that Apple already uses a number of static and dynamic analysis tools to help the company spot potential code defects that may be hard for a human to detect. “As those tools get more and more advanced” with AI, he says, “we will be on the forefront of using those tools to find problems and to close them before attackers who might have access to similar tools would be able to use them.”
What does concern Federighi from a privacy and security standpoint, however, is the human element. Specifically, he worries about a rise in the use of deepfakes, AI-generated audio and video that can make it look like anyone is saying or doing anything. As AI tools become more accessible in the years ahead, deepfakes could increasingly be used in so-called social engineering attacks, in which the attacker persuades a victim to hand over valuable data by tricking them into thinking they are communicating with someone they’re not.
The question is not how much room can other lesser headset… sorry… spatial computers come in at a lower price to gain market share. (Certainly, the room is quite large.) The question is how long before Apple closes down the room.
Time to start the photocopiers.
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Thanks for reading.