10 Cool Leopard Features Shown Off At WWDC Keynote
Sandrine Willert
In Keynote, the app opens in a window. But when it's time to play the slideshow, we use dimming to bring focus to this presentation. Dimming is a simple way to create contrast between your content and people's surroundings without taking them out of their space. When it's time to rehearse the presentation, we can bring people onto the big stage fully immersing them within the theater1. Life-size experiences like these require more room, so Keynote is now in a Full Space and other apps are hidden.
Another foundational design goal for Vision Pro was that you're never isolated from the people around you. You can see them, and they can see you. Your eyes are a critical indicator of connection and emotion, so Vision Pro displays your eyes when someone is nearby. Not only does EyeSight reveal your eyes, if provides important cues to others about what you're focused on.
This goes the other way in that if somebody comes close to you whilst you have the headset on a blended cutout appears so you can see them. Whilst switching on external cameras on a VR headset so you can see has been around for a while2 this is a whole new level.
In the indie development space, the launch of a new version of iOS is the time that getting a coveted featured spot from Apple or the wider blogosphere is more likely if you can add some new feature to your app related to the iOS update. The problem with this is that you typically get about 2 months to come up with this idea and incorporate it into your app whilst dealing with the multitude of bugs in the beta software and the lack of concrete documentation. It can be a stressful time!
AirDrop - The NameDrop feature is cute (I had a pitch given to me for something like this back in the iPhoneOS 3.0 days) but the ability to AirDrop and have it continue over the internet if you step away is the more useful feature to me.
AirPods - A couple of nice feature for AirPods Pro 2 including Adaptive Audio (to seamlessly transition between noise cancellation and transparency mode) and Conversation Awareness (auto-ducking of audio when someone speaks to you). Nice to see AirPods getting software updates between hardware refreshes for features that could easily have been held back.
AirTags - Not announced in the keynote but it surely would have got a standing ovation if it was; AirTags can now be shared with your family. No longer will it look like my wife is stalking me when I take her car keys ?
TipKit - Easily my favourite new addition to the frameworks this year. Clients are always asking to add these little prompts within apps so being able to do it at the system level will be a huge help. I also notice that Apple are using this themselves throughout iOS 17 such as showing you how to undo or edit in Messages.
On the exports page, you can find RSS feeds for all Spatial Audio, just Dolby Atmos, and just Dolby Audio. These feeds work in real time and will give you the artwork, album title, artist name, and then a list of tracks that have been upgraded.
Hopefully those of you that found the @NewSpatialAudio Twitter account useful for surfacing upgraded tracks will like this new website and find it an improvement! If you have any feedback or suggestions, please get in touch.
In fact, perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of our current AI moment is that several billion people just got free interns. They are weird, somewhat alien interns that work infinitely fast and sometimes lie to make you happy, but interns nonetheless.
So, how can you figure out how to best use your intern? Just like any new worker, you are going to have to learn its strengths and weaknesses; you are going to have to learn to train and work with it; and you are going to have to get a sense of where it is useful and where it is just annoying.
Not only does it return well formed code that compiled (complete with in-line comments) it also gave me a set of notes to explain how it works. It also reminded me to change the title, link, and description of the feed as it had given me some random examples inferred from my content.
Succession - I decided to start watching this just as the show finished ? I powered through season 1 in a couple of days and fully intend to do the same with the remaining three seasons. Excellent writing with excellent actors. Kieran Culkin gets a special mention from me for having the best lines (introducing his new girlfriend to his mother towards the end of the series is particularly memorable).
After many years of speculation and waiting, Apple have finally unveiled Vision Pro, their first \u201CVR headset\u201D. Except it\u2019s not a VR headset; it\u2019s a Spatial Computer. Whilst this might just feel like marketing language, I think it definitely helps frame how new this type of product really is.
This isn\u2019t something that is tethered to your iPhone or your Mac; it\u2019s a full computer running with an M2 chip, the same as the most recent Mac laptops and desktops. It also isn\u2019t VR, that\u2019s just a small use case within it. Instead, the default mode is Augmented Reality showing you a window based interface within you own world complete with some truly astonishing effects such as shadows, reflections, and realtime blurring to make it feel grounded in the real world. You can go into a full VR mode but this seems likely to be the exception rather than the rule.
That a device can not only insert content into the real world but then selectively remove bits or have a half-way mode where it\u2019s dimmed is an astonishing feat of engineering. Another impressive demonstration was a mindfulness exercise in which the room is dimmed as you view a pulsating sphere; as the sphere expands with your intake of breath, the room disappears into darkness only to return as you breathe out. Incredible.
It had been rumoured that there was an external display to show your facial expression but this had been blown off for being unnecessary and a drain on a presumably constrained battery. It turns out that it is very real and, to my mind, is one of the most well thought out features of the device. In fact, it was referred to in the Keynote as a \u201Cfoundational design goal\u201D:
Vision Pro has a curved OLED panel with a lenticular lens creating a faux depth effect so your eyes look correct no matter which angle somebody is looking at you from. I love that your eyes get obscured if you\u2019re looking at windows within Augmented Reality and that the entire display gets covered in a fog when you\u2019re within a full screen Virtual Reality experience. It makes it incredibly clear to anyone around you as to whether you can see them or not.
I saw a mockup a few days before WWDC of Tim Cook wearing a VR headset with his Memoji on the front. This seemed semi-plausible to me as I didn\u2019t think there would be enough cameras internally to replicate the user\u2019s eyes. Memoji also seemed like the way one would appear on FaceTime calls. Instead, Vision Pro scans your face with it\u2019s spatial camera during setup and then creates an uncanny valley 3D model of you which is then animated. This is the bit that looks the most odd to me but I\u2019m excited to see how well it will work in practice. Regardless, it\u2019s telling that Apple have gone for a real world look rather than a cartoon one clearly pitching this product as a professional device rather than a novelty.
It was rumoured for a long time that this headset was going to be around $3000. Some expected it to be far cheaper in a twist like the original iPad announcement3 but instead it\u2019s actually a bit more starting at $3500. I expect that \u201Cstarting at\u201D bit is due to it either having multiple storage capacities or to cover those of us that need to buy the magnetic prescription lenses which I fully expect to be at least $250 per lens. Many look at that and think this is a ridiculous price for a VR headset, and they\u2019d be right; but this isn\u2019t a VR headset. I personally think $3500 is an absolute steal for this level of hardware combining an M2 computer with over two 4K screens worth of pixels along with seamless blending of virtual and actual reality with no hand controllers required4. It\u2019s incredibly reassuring that the hands-on reviews coming out of WWDC are all saying it works as shown; the keynote was not a CGI mockup or aspirational demo but an actual, real device.
Whilst there are some videos from WWDC showing off various facets of Vision Pro and how to develop apps for it, a full SDK won\u2019t be available until later this month. In terms of developing for the headset, there is a simulator (which looks pretty good) but you can also go to six different locations around the world to test your apps or you can send a build to Apple and they\u2019ll try it out and let you know if they run into any problems. Apple has also announced that developer kits will be available with more details coming soon. I\u2019ll certainly be aiming to get one.
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