Will Apple take the Metaverse mainstream?

WatchOS: Widths, Symbols, and Other Features Announced by Apple at WWDC 2017 Including FaceTime on Apple TV

Apple will soon let you use FaceTime on Apple TV. The new capability leverages the iPhone’s Continuity Camera, allowing you to use your iPhone as a substitute for a webcam as you see and chat with the people you’re meeting with from your TV. It will even ensure that you’re in the frame using Center Stage.

As you can see from the above announcements, widgets were pretty big at this year’s WWDC. watchOS 10 will allow you to look at information in an at-a-glance fashion by turning the crown on your watch. Apple is also adding several new watch faces, a way to measure how much time you spend in the daylight, cycling features, and trailhead information for hikers.

The game mode for macOS will make it easier for you to play a game on a Mac while also making it easier for you to play it with your headphones on. As part of Apple’s push into gaming, developer Hideo Kojima also announced that Death Stranding (and some of his other games) will arrive on macOS.

Apple announced some visual upgrades to macOS Sonoma, which will now support widgets that you can add to your desktop, along with new moving screensavers that you can also use as your wallpaper. There are some new features that allow you to pin your web apps to your dock, as well as make profiles for different browsing sessions.

Those aren’t the only updates coming with iPadOS 17. It will also feature a personalized lock screen, just like on iPhone, and will finally come with the Health app.

Apple is adding new interactive features with iPadOS 17 that will allow you to quickly access features from the homescreen. There are also updates for the device’s Notes app, which will now be capable of detecting the fields in a PDF. It will also let you work with others in real time to organize and annotate PDFs.

The new feature known as Check In, which will allow you to share your location with someone you’re meeting, will be available iniOS 17 along with a namedrop feature that allows you to share email and phone numbers. Apple is dropping the portion of its “Hey, Siri” triggering phrase.

There were some new features revealed by Apple, along with a new journaling app. A new Stand By feature that allows your phone to tell you the time and date when it is tilted horizontally while charging is also included.

Apple has a new app for iOS, and it’s called Journal. As its name implies, Journal will encourage you to log your thoughts about recent activities or trips. Apple says the app is secured with end-to-end encryption and that your logs are stored locally on your device. The app will arrive later this year.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23749243/apple-wwdc-2023-biggest-announcements-vision-pro-macbook-air-15-inch-ios-17

On the Status of Mixed Reality Headsets: Apple, Disney, and the Soccer/Turtle/Hustpad/Video Game Platforms

Both the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are getting Apple Silicon-powered upgrades. Apple revealed that the new M2 Ultra chip will be part of the latest version of the two desktop devices.

Apple says the 15-inch laptop has a small weight of just over three pounds, and is considered the world’s thinnest. The device can offer up to 18 hours of battery life and 500 nits of brightness. It costs $1,299, and you can order it today, with availability starting next week.

Apple followed up a week stuffed with virtual reality news—Meta has a new headset, so does Lenovo—by debuting its own mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, during its WWDC keynote yesterday.

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.

The device is powered by Apple’s new R1 chip (along with an M2), which the company says keeps track of the 12 cameras, five sensors, and six microphones that all operate in tandem to control the device. Vision Pro will be available sometime next year.

There will be watchable content, along with some interactive experiences that can be accessed via the Vision Pro headset, that Disney Plus will add to its platform. The turtle is swimming across the presentation and it looks like it’s a simulation of a video game.

The video also teases that Disney Plus users will be able to use the Vision Pro headset to watch sports games in VR, a feature that prominent Apple leaker Mark Gurman mentioned in his Power On newsletter in April. This is demonstrated in a number of ways, the first being a 2D football game with useful information in boxes such as the score, win probability, and player statistics. Another example involves a 3D top-down view of a basketball game projected onto a coffee table in the user’s lounge, allowing them to see a courtview replay of the match from every angle.

Was all this made better by the wildly superior Vision Pro hardware? Without question. But was it made more compelling? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I can know with just a short time wearing the headset. I do know that wearing this thing felt oddly lonely. How do you watch a movie with other people in a Vision Pro? What if you want to communicate with people in the same room as well as on video call? What does it mean that Apple wants you to wear a headset at your child’s birthday party? There are many questions that get at the very nature of what it means for our lives to be literally mediated by screens.

On Monday, Apple showed off a number of apps that were very similar to the ones shown on Monday, but rather than a whole experience in virtual reality. Early tester had to say:

The chance to create an extremely Human experience in mixed Reality headsets would be an opportunity that would be best created with the help of Facetime. In my demo, it didn’t achieve this. The internal cameras within the headset are capable of capturing and regurgitating your face in digital form, a hyper-realistic digital twin that appears before the person you’re chatting with. In my FaceTime demo I chatted with the digital twin of an Apple employee who cheerfully talked me through some of these features. But she felt disembodied. She was real, but she was also not. I’m afraid I don’t even recall her name.

The video passthrough was very impressive. It was clear and sharp, and appeared with zero lag. I happily talked to others, walked around the room, and even took notes on my phone while wearing the headset — something I would never be able to do with something like the Meta Quest Pro. It is still video passthrough. I could see a loss of detail and compression when people’s faces moved into shadows. I could see the IR light on the front of my phone blink, even though it was trying to use FaceID. And the display was dimmer than the room itself, so when I took the headset off my eyes had to adjust to how much brighter the room was in reality.

The display is ridiculously small with only 23 microns in size and makes for a very eye-catching display. In the short time I tried it, it was totally workable for reading text in Safari (I loaded The Verge, of course), looking at photos, and watching movies. It is easily the highest-resolution VR display I have ever seen. There was some green and purple fringing around the edges of the lenses, but I can’t say for certain if that was down to the quick fitment or early demo nature of the device or something else entirely. We’ll have to see when it actually ships.

There is no manual eye adjustor on a headset like the Quest Pro, and there is a quick automatic eye adjustment that is much quicker and more seamless than that. Apple wouldn’t say anything specific about its field of view this long before launch, but I definitely saw black in my peripheral vision. The Vision Pro isn’t as immerse as the marketing videos would tell you.

The top of the Vision Pro has a button on the left that serves as a shutter button to take 3D videos and photos, which I didn’t get to try. The Digital Crown is on the right; clicking it brings up the home screen of app icons, while turning it changes the level of VR immersion in certain modes. I asked why anyone would want to leave the side open for their work to go on, and Apple apparently thinks of the middle level ofImmersive as a sort of workspace that can be adjusted to fit your needs.

The small bumps you see on the sides of the Vision Pro’s band are where the built-in audio lives. One of the biggest selling points of the device is spatial audio. Most of its other sensors and cameras are housed just under the front-facing glass; at just the right angle, you can see some of the cameras pointing outwards from the headset. The cheese grater-style vent runs underneath both eyes, presumably to push all the processor’s hot air down onto your cheeks.

The design language is all brushed aluminum, shiny glass, and soft fabrics; it’s a bit closer to the iPhone 6 than the 14. That glass on the front is an obviously complex piece of optical engineering: it is perfectly curved but still serves as an appropriate lens for the cameras and the OLED screen that shows your eyes when you’re looking at people. I did not get to try it in any way.

Apple Glasses: The Better-Looking AR & VR Headset Compared to other Goggles and AR/VR Devices

Two hours of use can be had from the silver battery pack that is connected to the headset by a braided white power cable. The cable detaches from the headset with a mechanical latch, but it’s permanently connected to the battery pack. If you want to plug into the wall you plug a USB-C adapter into the battery pack.

Apple held Vision Pro demos in a large white cube-shaped building it built for WWDC called the Fieldhouse. I was handed an Apple device with a setup process that included a turn-Your-face-in-a- circle Scan and another one that looked at my ears. After that, Apple had me visit an “vision specialist” who asked if I wore glasses — I was wearing my contacts, but glasses-wearers had a quick prescription check so Apple could fit the Vision Pros with the appropriate lenses. (The lenses are made by Zeiss; Apple needed a partner that can legally sell prescription lenses. They will be sold seperately at launch.

Based on the little bit we’ve seen, it’s a dramatically better-looking device than any other AR or VR headset we’ve seen. The headset itself is thin, but most of the device’s heft and size is from the fabric shield around it and the plushy band around the back. The goggles should fit around most faces fairly well. There’s a nice silvery color to the whole thing and the cable that comes out of the left side provides two hours of battery life.

The initial response to virtual, augmented and mixed reality has been dull. Some of the gadgets deploying the technology have even been derisively mocked, with the most notable example being Google’s internet-connected glasses released more than a decade ago.

The Case For Apple’s Virtual Reality Headset: A Pedagogical Look at “Measurement Pro” or “Magic Leap”

An update to Apple’s operating system, called “ios 17,” is coming later this year. The front and center of the Posters appear when a phone call is made. You can create your own design and you can show it on the caller’s screen when you call. The Contact Posters of your friends live in the Contacts app, so when you pull a person’s information up or communicate with them anywhere in iOS, you see the images they’ve chosen to represent themselves. Contact Posters are related to NameDrop, a new feature.

Using the headset seems very Minority Report. It uses eye movements and finger gestures to control the virtual interface. The physical dial on the headset lets you adjust how much of the screen occupies your vision, as well as seeing the room around you in real time.

Apple has over 200 million of its marquee iPhone sold a year. In its first year on the market, the iPhone sold less than 12 million units.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives estimated Apple will sell just 150,000 of the headsets during its first year on the market before escalating to 1 million headsets sold during the second year — a volume that would make the goggles a mere speck in the company’s portfolio.

Magic Leap was able to stir excitement with previews of mixed-reality technology that could conjure up the spectacle of a whale breaching through a gymnasium floor, but had trouble getting consumers to buy its first headset.

Meta’s virtual reality headset, the Quest, remains the most popular virtual reality headset in the world, even though it is mostly used by video game players looking for even more immersive experiences. Cook and other Apple executives did not mention the metaverse in their presentations, instead focusing on Vision Pro as the first leap into spatial computing.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been describing these alternate three-dimensional realities as the “metaverse.” It’s a geeky concept that he tried to push into the mainstream by changing the name of his social networking company to Meta Platforms in 2021 and then pouring billions of dollars into improving the virtual technology.

Apple Moves Into Virtual Reality With a Headset That Will Cost You More Than 3-0: How Surprised will You Be to Play Video Conferencing?

The Vision Pro won’t be a big hit right away. That’s largely because of the hefty price, but also because most people still can’t see a compelling reason to wear something wrapped around their face for an extended period of time.

Vision Pro won’t require a physical controller, but it will require a portable battery or power outlet to use, which could make it less attractive for some users.

The headset will be equipped with 12 cameras, six microphones and variety of sensors that will allow users to control it and various apps with just their eyes and hand gestures. The experience won’t cause the nausea and headaches that previous devices have, according to Apple. The technology developed by the company allows each user to have a three-dimensional version of themselves displayed during video conferencing.

The company emphasized that it drew upon its past decades of product design during the years it spent working on the Vision Pro, which Apple said involved more than 5,000 different patents.

Apple’s lineage of breakthroughs date back to a bow-tied Jobs peddling the first Mac in 1984 —a tradition that continued with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, the Apple Watch in 2014 and its AirPods in 2016.

Even though Apple hasn’t always been the first to make a particular device, the headset might become a milestone in the company’s tradition of releasing game changing technology.

Tom said in the Monday research note that it was “surprising” that consumers would pay a similar amount for an augmented and virtual reality headset to those for a combination of those products.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/06/1180362331/apple-moves-into-virtual-reality-with-a-headset-that-will-cost-you-more-than-3-0

Vision Pro: Getting Your Hands on a Technicolor Headset Before You Give It a Second and It’s Coming Your Way

It was almost like a tease, but it was an impressive piece of technology. It seemed like the beginning of a long journey.

Although Apple executives provided an extensive preview of the headset’s capabilities during the final half hour of Monday’s event, consumers will have to wait before they can get their hands on the device and prepare to pay a hefty price to boot. Vision Pro will sell for $3,500 once it’s released in stores early next year.

The initial reviews were mixed, with many skeptics wondering if Apple could make Virtual Reality more than just a niche technology. But boosters say that if any company can make it mainstream, it’s Apple with its ecosystem of two billion iPhone, iPad and Mac users.

At the end of the demo I removed the headset and felt two things: 1) Wow and 2) very cool. The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern wrote a comment questioning if she just did drugs.

Virtual reality is struggling in tough times. The metaverse’s Enthusiasm rose during the pandemic, but waned as thelocks were loosened. Metaverse start-ups raised $664 million in the first five months of the next year, down 77 percent from the year before, according to PitchBook.

How I viewed Virtual Reality, and how I was unable to connect with them: Real-time Calibration of a Home Screen of Apple Apps

The more interesting part was how I interacted with them. I opened Photos by pinching my forefinger and thumb together, scrolled through photos by “grabbing” each image and swiping to the left, expanded panoramic photos by staring and tapping at the “Expand” option. I used my eyes and hands to scroll the web 2D pages. I was unable to send or record a Message, as audio interaction aren’t ready yet. I couldn’t pinch the app to scale up or bring myself into them, as most of the content I saw wasn’t fully volumetric. An Apple representative has said, though, that app makers can build these experiences in the future.

A dock of Apple apps floated in front of me while I was in home mode. I could still see the real-life living room surroundings. An AR home screen of Apple apps in AR is as vanilla as it sounds. The app containers themselves were certainly not reinvented, and their icons were not little grabble globules or anything else that conferred volume. They were just … there.

I thought the headset would be light, but it still felt heavy. Once I adjusted both a bigger backstrap and the top soft strap, I went through another calibration process, which concluded with an audible chime of approval. There was a light orb in the middle of my demo.

“People’s tolerance for wearing an item on their head for a long period of time is limited, and they don’t like it,” said Gebbie. “If it’s something that people are going to wear all day, it needs to be slim and light and comfortable. No one has yet achieved that in the world of virtual reality.

Also, the screens we already use every day aren’t totally reliable. You might have experienced a situation in which you want to take a photo or video of something, but the app doesn’t work or the image is bad, only to see the app crash. Now imagine that happening with your entire field of vision.

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