It sounds amazing, and sometimes it is. But the Vision Pro also represents a series of really big tradeoffs — tradeoffs that are impossible to ignore. Some of those tradeoffs are very tangible: getting all this tech in a headset means there’s a lot of weight on your face, so Apple chose to use an external battery pack connected by a cable. But there are other, more philosophical tradeoffs as well.
As I’ve been using it for the past few days, I kept coming up with a series of questions — questions about whether the tradeoffs were worth it.
What’s amazing about watching movies in these two apps is that the virtual movie screens look immense, as though you’re really in a movie theater looking at a 100-foot screen. Apple’s presentation in the TV app particularly good, giving you options to simulate perspectives from the front, middle, or back of the theater, as well as from either the floor or balcony levels. (Like Siskel and Ebert, I think I prefer the balcony.) The “Holy shit, this screen looks absolutely immense” effect is particularly good in Apple’s TV app.
In addition to not letting you rearrange home screen icons, visionOS 1.0 also doesn’t support the ability to pin web apps to the home screen.
On a basic level, the Vision Pro might know it’s in a room with four walls and a 12-foot ceiling and window — so far, so good, Jerome says. But then add in that you’ve got a 75-inch television, suggesting you might have more money to spend than someone with a 42-inch set. Since the device can understand objects, it could also detect if you’ve got a crib or a wheelchair or even drug paraphernalia, he says.
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Developers tell me apps can get access to a stream of data about users’ movement, right down to the wiggle of a finger.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley blew my mind when they explained just how revealing data about how your body moves while dancing could be.
Is this look-then-gesture interaction any different than using a mouse to “indirectly” manipulate a pointer? Does it leverage our innate spatial abilities to the same extent? Time will tell. But I feel comfortable saying that, in some ways, this kind of Vision Pro interaction is less “direct” than the iPhone’s touch interface, where we see a thing on a screen and then literally place our fingers on it. Will there be any interaction on the Vision Pro that’s as intuitive, efficient, and satisfying as flick-scrolling on an iPhone screen? It’s a high bar to clear, that’s for sure.
On iOS and iPadOS, Blackbox plays off the familiarity of our devices. But how do you transpose that experience to a device people haven’t tried yet? And how do you break boundaries on a canvas that doesn’t have any? “I do love a good constraint,” says McLeod, “but it has been fun to explore the lifting of that restraint. I’m trying to figure out what makes Blackbox tick on iOS, and how to bring that to visionOS. That requires some creative following of my own rules — and breaking some of them.”
Behind me, several record albums floated in the air and curled to my left. I was instructed to grab one and then drop the vinyl onto one of the turntables. I did as told, “pushed” the start button, and the vinyl started spinning. From there I grabbed the needle and placed it on the record and then music started playing. It all felt very natural and real. Not real in the sense that the turntables looked photorealistic (they don’t), but more like instinctual to control. Vision Pro is clearly not for babies or kids, but I do think if it were, they’d instinctively reach out and touch, grab, and pinch virtual objects, the same way they instinctively reach out and touch and swipe on an iPad.
If you live in the European Union, iOS 17.4 is going to be a massive upgrade for you. Apple began beta-testing the update on January 25 and outlined many of the changes in a press release.
The primary aim of this release is to comply with the Digital Markets Act in the EU, which has a deadline of March 6. We expect Apple to release iOS 17.4 sometime close to that date.
watchOS 10.4 and iOS 17.4 betas introduce a new toggle on Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2. The new setting is specifically to avoid a conflict between the Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro when gesturing.
Apple today shared the "Replay 2024" playlist with Apple Music subscribers, allowing you to start tracking all of the songs you've been streaming so far this year. Just like the past few years, this playlist ranks a total of 100 songs based on how many times you've listened to them.
It’s that time again. Apple is releasing another round of somewhat nebulous AirPods firmware updates. This time it’s the AirPods Pro AirPods 2, and AirPods Max hardware that are due for an update.
The widgets included in Ulysses allow you to create new sheets, open projects, and more, right from your home screen.
Think: Lifetime movie cut up into TikTok videos. Think: soap opera, but for the short attention span of the internet age.
The biggest player in this new genre is ReelShort, an app that offers melodramatic content in minute-long, vertically shot episodes and is hoping to bring a successful formula established abroad to the United States by hooking millions of people on its short-form content.
Apple revealed today that users earned more than $1 billion in Daily Cash from spending on Apple Card last year. The tech giant also announced that Apple Card has topped more than 12 million users. Apple Card, which first launched in 2019, is exclusively available in the United States.
Yes, it’s Macworld’s 40th as well. As you might expect from the relative health of the technology and media industries, the story of Macworld does not quite follow the same trajectory as the story of the Mac. (In the earliest days, Macworld was more successful than the Mac!)
As the person who has probably been associated with Macworld for two-thirds of its existence–I joined the staff in the fall of 1997, and I’m writing this in 2024–it’s only appropriate that I take you on a little trip down memory lane.
I used to buy single issues of computer magazines from book stores, and read all about all the stuff that I cannot afford to buy. Come to think of it, even if I can afford them, I probably couldn't buy most of the stuff in those magazines, since no local retailers imported them to where I were.
Once upon a time, I was excited about all the Mac clones. Hey, finally, maybe there's a Mac that I can afford. Of course, we know how that story ended, and Power Computing never arrived at our shores.
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Thanks for reading.