An Eye for an ‘i’ – Apple’s WWDC23
Developers from all over the world traveled to Apple Park for WWDC23. (Apple Newsroom)
Wow!
Okay, let me start by saying that I’ve only used Apple products all my life, and have loved Apple’s past offerings.
WWDC: four letters that can bring us some trendsetting products or a great conversation topic to laugh about with some friends. Luckily for us, WWDC 2023 served us both dishes. Every year, they come out and spill the tea about what they have been cooking up. Well this time, they cooked something juicy. WWDC and I go way back, using their old products to talk about the new ones.
Apple worked tirelessly for their newest MacBook Air update. They put a cursor at the corner of the 13-inch MacBook Air and dragged it up. Don’t believe me? They put it in the video themselves. Truly, revolutionary. ‘Mayhaps’ that’s a good thing because, in my very unprofessional opinion, the MacBook Air is the product to get… as I write this using an aged MacBook Pro.
The new Mac Pro and Mac Studio get the latest and greatest potatoes, with the capability of driving six of Apple’s finest displays. Finally, they are done converting every Mac to Apple silicon chips. They believe that “It’s never been a better time to switch to a Mac.” Can’t wait for next year, when they say it again.
Okay, so what about the software end of things?
Adding more gimmicks, I mean widgets (with a 😉) and more customizations to the home screen makes me think, is the world’s supposedly most innovative company finally out of ideas?
Well, not so fast. Apart from copying the best features of other apps and Apple-fying it, they did have some things that are worth mentioning. For one, the in-the-moment transcribed voicemails make for a great feature, perhaps even life-saving. Voicemails on FaceTime calls are also a neat addition. Although with the wrong combination of people, God help you! Speaking of God help you, now we need to just say “Siri,” and it will wake up. That, in my eyes, is siri-ous innovation. Phenomenal! No, really!
Gone are the days when one has to physically add a contact, simply use AirDrop. Now it’s possible to share contact info by placing your phones together, and the same goes for photos. Apple thought it through. It’s not NFC, in case Android users were beaming.
Here’s a scenario: your dog saw a squirrel and he went after it. So did you. You also have videos being Airdropped to your iPhone. In the past, this meant waiting for the transfer to complete or biting the bullet and re-transfer the videos later. Well, you needn’t worry now. Even if you are out of range, the videos will transmit over the internet so now you can get your videos and your dog, at the same time.
Remember when making things ‘clean’ and ‘minimalist’ was the goal? Apple has decided to abandon that with the addition of widgets to EVERYTHING. They didn’t just stop there. Now there are endless possibilities for the home pages. But it begs the question: at what point is it too much? How many people are going to take time out of their busy days to customize each device they own? I guess for those creative minds out there, now they can have a field day.
Video conferences now can be made cinematic. If you were to impress your bosses, it definitely hits the target. Consider this: Your boss gets the wrong idea and starts thinking they are paying you too much. How else can you hire a real-time editor?
Building on this, Apple TV paired with a camera-enabled Apple device work together to make a cinematic FaceTime call. Putting together their past innovations with CenterStage, SharePlay, and this new way of FaceTiming, watching movies with others is far more intuitive. Maybe this is Apple’s take on the Facebook Portal? Well, that’s not the only thing they took from Meta, but we will get to that later.
Families can also be well connected with the ease of having a shared password book. Finally! No more digging around to find a password, even though lost things only show up when Mom is around.
Enough. Let’s talk about the more serious innovations of the day.
iPads take on PDFs and threw them into notes. Many different PDFs can be put into one note. Using the benefits of a touchscreen, annotations are incredibly easy. Collaborating is seamless as the changes show up right away. Macs, on the other hand, have a more iPad-like start-up screen and yet again more widgets for the home screen. So… are iPads becoming Mac’sy or are Macs becoming iPad’sy?
Throughout all of Apple’s past few events, the word ‘phenomenal’ echoed from the words of its presenters. Today, it was different. I was thinking in my mind, “What If?”
They did not use it in the first hour and a half. This ‘better version’ of the previous keynotes expanded their vocabulary to ‘astonishing’ and ‘amazing’. Then almost ‘magically’, came in the phenomenal sentence from none other than Tim Cook, shaking in excitement, as he finally uttered the magic words… “But we do have one more thing…”
I simply translate that to ‘phenomenal.’
Introducing Apple VisionPro, there is no simple way of explaining this. But in one word: ‘everything.’ And ‘anything.’ Okay fine, two words.
A totally new and immersive way to drive many other products out of business. It blends Apple’s software might with your surroundings. Your environment can be whatever you want it to be, ranging from your living room to the open ocean, next to a shark.
Remember the Meta thing? Well, Apple finally fell for the VR trap, except they got it right.
These goggles essentially blend AR and VR into one, making for an interface where the apps are engaged with the power of your eyes and gestures. Suddenly, everything they have done over the past decade makes a whole lot of sense, or dare I say, a whole lot of cents.
Let’s just quickly see how some industries are completely, totally, absolutely, and undeniably ducked. Damn, autocorrect.
TV: Apple VisionPro can superimpose any visual content right over your living room however big or small you want. Want to escape your brother’s distracting shenanigans? Dimming the surroundings is simply a twist of a dial away. They complete the experience with Airpods connectivity or the built-in spatial audio drivers, oh there goes the audio industry too.
iPad/Mac/PC: It’s over for them… This revolutionizes the way we interact with technology. Including touch-like capabilities, the integration of a keyboard and mouse, or the fact that you can simply use your eyes to move around… It takes the best of these three and combines them into one, even more, capable gadget, while using it gets even easier. You can have as many windows or apps as you want, and you can place them anywhere in your room. In a way, Apple threw a stone out of its glass window, making its traditional products seem like something out of a museum.
Game-changing possibilities with this new VR headset. Graphic designers are empowered by the human touch. Airplane rides transform into riding an elephant at the top of Mt. Everest. We cannot even begin to imagine the endless possibilities with the blend of AR and VR. For now, we have to settle for leaving them as dreams.
Apple has me speechless, finally creating a product deserving of the word ‘phenomenal.’ Let’s just hope that the cameras don’t get covered with greasy fingers. For now, that’s enough mac and cheese.