ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm in a really good mood tonight.

00:00:01 ◼   ► Good!

00:00:02 ◼   ► You know, when you're writing Swift UI,

00:00:05 ◼   ► sometimes things don't go your way.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Sometimes you hit walls and you can't figure out

00:00:12 ◼   ► why something isn't updating or you can't get something

00:00:14 ◼   ► to look or work right or whatever the case may be.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Today, I had an incredibly good Swift UI day

00:00:21 ◼   ► where I'm like, I was like firing on all cylinders,

00:00:23 ◼   ► like getting everything working.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Like I actually would like go like, yes.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Like when I got something working to nobody

00:00:29 ◼   ► and you know, I'm alone in the house

00:00:32 ◼   ► in a room by myself, clapping to myself.

00:00:35 ◼   ► This was a really good day.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I feel so good right now.

00:00:38 ◼   ► This is like the Swift UI high.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Things are working, things are looking good.

00:00:43 ◼   ► I'm actually making progress.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Now I just have to rewrite the entire rest of the app.

00:00:49 ◼   ► But the things I've been working on have been really good.

00:00:53 ◼   ► - Other than that, how'd you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

00:00:54 ◼   ► No, all kidding aside, that's really fantastic.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - I love a good Swift UI day.

00:00:59 ◼   ► A good Swift UI day, like I really just like the whole thing

00:01:03 ◼   ► about a 10X developer and I think that's mostly been put

00:01:06 ◼   ► in the recycling bin as things that we think are true.

00:01:09 ◼   ► But when I'm having a good Swift UI day,

00:01:14 ◼   ► I feel like one of those mythical 10X developers.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I get so much done in so little time.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Like when you and Swift UI are holding hands

00:01:21 ◼   ► and skipping together, it is the best.

00:01:25 ◼   ► It is the best.

00:01:26 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:01:28 ◼   ► Five minutes before the show,

00:01:29 ◼   ► I finally got the Vision OS SDK downloaded and installed

00:01:32 ◼   ► and I got to run Overcast, the current version of Overcast,

00:01:36 ◼   ► not the new Swift UI rewrite.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Got to run that in the simulator,

00:01:38 ◼   ► just like in iPad window mode.

00:01:40 ◼   ► And hoo boy, do I have a lot of work to do.

00:01:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:44 ◼   ► That's, you know, it's funny.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Like earlier I was, I had tried, hey, let me see if I,

00:01:50 ◼   ► should I be doing a Mac Catalyst version as well?

00:01:53 ◼   ► I decided, last week I mentioned like I'm not gonna do

00:01:56 ◼   ► the native AppKit version because it just wasn't worth

00:01:59 ◼   ► the amount of trouble it would be.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And I'm looking at Catalyst, I'm like,

00:02:03 ◼   ► I might do Catalyst, I don't know.

00:02:05 ◼   ► But it seemed like even that's like a decent amount of work.

00:02:08 ◼   ► And then I look at Vision OS, like, oh no.

00:02:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:11 ◼   ► This is gonna be a lot of work.

00:02:13 ◼   ► But you know, we'll see.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I mean, the iPad version seems to work.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I wouldn't say it's good.

00:02:22 ◼   ► But neither is the iPad version that runs on the Mac now

00:02:25 ◼   ► for M1 Macs, like, that's not good either.

00:02:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not that bad.

00:02:28 ◼   ► It's not that bad.

00:02:29 ◼   ► - It's not that good.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And I know that, 'cause it's just an iPad app

00:02:32 ◼   ► running in the window.

00:02:33 ◼   ► You know, there's only so good that can be.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And so, you know, it's fine.

00:02:38 ◼   ► It's better than not having anything.

00:02:40 ◼   ► It's certainly better than my horrendous web app.

00:02:42 ◼   ► But it is not nearly as good as something that has

00:02:45 ◼   ► like any care put into it at all

00:02:47 ◼   ► to customize it for the platform.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And I would like to just keep that running on the Mac

00:02:52 ◼   ► like in the way it is now and just like tweak things

00:02:54 ◼   ► a little bit, like, you know, give it a nice toolbar,

00:02:56 ◼   ► give it, you know, a couple little things.

00:02:57 ◼   ► But I don't think I can actually do that

00:02:59 ◼   ► without making a Catalyst app.

00:03:01 ◼   ► And that's, making a Catalyst app is harder

00:03:03 ◼   ► 'cause it's a whole separate target,

00:03:05 ◼   ► a whole separate binary.

00:03:06 ◼   ► You gotta submit it to the Mac App Store,

00:03:07 ◼   ► everything separate from the iOS app.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Like, it's kind of a different beast

00:03:11 ◼   ► that's probably not worth the amount of trouble.

00:03:12 ◼   ► But Vision OS, I'm looking forward to.

00:03:14 ◼   ► I think I have a lot of work to do.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And I'm really glad it isn't coming out like, you know,

00:03:19 ◼   ► next week or next month or anything like that.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Thank goodness we have a lot of time

00:03:23 ◼   ► because we're gonna need it.

00:03:24 ◼   ► - Now, I actually think you're selling yourself

00:03:29 ◼   ► a little short.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Overcast for Apple Silicon on the Mac is really not that bad.

00:03:33 ◼   ► The only complaint I have about it,

00:03:34 ◼   ► which you probably can't fix, is that, you know,

00:03:36 ◼   ► as we've discussed many times, I'm a devout spaces person

00:03:39 ◼   ► and Overcast lives in one of the spaces

00:03:41 ◼   ► on one of my monitors.

00:03:43 ◼   ► And the media keys work fine as long as Overcast

00:03:47 ◼   ► is on a visible space.

00:03:49 ◼   ► But if I like hit play when Overcast is on a different space

00:03:53 ◼   ► that I'm not looking at, when I come back to the space

00:03:56 ◼   ► that Overcast is on, that's when it starts playing.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Which again, I don't know that there's really anything

00:04:00 ◼   ► you can do about that short of going the whole

00:04:02 ◼   ► catalyst route, but that drives me bananas.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Other than that, I actually think it's really not bad at all.

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's more than serviceable.

00:04:08 ◼   ► It's actually even pretty decent.

00:04:10 ◼   ► So you're selling yourself short.

00:04:12 ◼   ► - I mean, it's bad, but I mean, you know,

00:04:14 ◼   ► this is coming from the guy who was like,

00:04:16 ◼   ► "Yeah, my iMac reboots itself like, you know,

00:04:17 ◼   ► "three times a day, but it's not that bad."

00:04:19 ◼   ► - Oh, stop.

00:04:20 ◼   ► At least I'm being generous, right?

00:04:22 ◼   ► - And the media key thing, I don't think

00:04:23 ◼   ► I can do anything about that.

00:04:24 ◼   ► I can try, but like I made some change early on

00:04:28 ◼   ► in the M1 Mac era.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - Which made it much better.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I remember, I don't remember

00:04:32 ◼   ► what it was specifically, but I remember you doing it

00:04:34 ◼   ► and it made it much better, but it didn't get us

00:04:36 ◼   ► 100% of the way there.

00:04:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was some like, you know, change

00:04:39 ◼   ► to one of the remote control command things

00:04:41 ◼   ► or some audio session thing, I forget.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Some like little tiny detail.

00:04:43 ◼   ► But I mean, I've found, personally,

00:04:45 ◼   ► I've found Mac media key handling, in general,

00:04:48 ◼   ► not just in Overcast, like even just with Apple's own

00:04:51 ◼   ► music app, has been so buggy that I usually

00:04:54 ◼   ► don't use media keys anymore.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Like it works so infrequently, I usually just

00:04:58 ◼   ► switch over to the music app and hit space bar

00:05:01 ◼   ► because it's just so unreliable.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Like if I hit play/pause on my keyboard at any given time,

00:05:06 ◼   ► I don't know what's gonna happen, usually nothing.

00:05:08 ◼   ► And so I'm just like, that's not worth the hassle.

00:05:10 ◼   ► I'll just, like I just give up on 'em.

00:05:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the problem for me with media keys,

00:05:15 ◼   ► normally I feel like they work okay,

00:05:17 ◼   ► but if there's a scenario where I have multiple things

00:05:20 ◼   ► that I could ostensibly want to play/pause,

00:05:23 ◼   ► so let's say I have Apple Music open,

00:05:25 ◼   ► I have a YouTube video open in Safari,

00:05:29 ◼   ► then the Mac, I don't know how it's supposed to intuit

00:05:32 ◼   ► which one I want, but I feel like it always guesses

00:05:36 ◼   ► the wrong one. (laughs)

00:05:37 ◼   ► And so like, you know, I like just opened up a tab

00:05:40 ◼   ► in Safari that happens to have a YouTube video in it,

00:05:42 ◼   ► but music is playing, so I wanna pause my music

00:05:45 ◼   ► so I can watch the YouTube video,

00:05:46 ◼   ► and what ends up happening inevitably

00:05:48 ◼   ► is it plays the YouTube video

00:05:49 ◼   ► while the music is still playing.

00:05:51 ◼   ► It's like, no, I wanted the other one.

00:05:53 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a hard problem to solve.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Like again, how can you possibly know

00:05:56 ◼   ► which one I want to control with this one button?

00:05:59 ◼   ► But it's just funny to me

00:06:00 ◼   ► that it seems to consistently choose the wrong one.

00:06:03 ◼   ► - Wait till they add eye tracking to Mac OS,

00:06:05 ◼   ► then they'll tell what you're looking at and play/pause that.

00:06:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true, that's true.

00:06:09 ◼   ► All right, and speaking of eye tracking,

00:06:10 ◼   ► we have a lot of followup to do,

00:06:11 ◼   ► and it starts with Vision Pro,

00:06:13 ◼   ► and Brandon Jones has some feedback for us

00:06:16 ◼   ► and information for us.

00:06:17 ◼   ► You wanna talk about this, Jon?

00:06:19 ◼   ► - Sure, this is something that was in the WWDC videos,

00:06:21 ◼   ► but Brandon Jones did a good job

00:06:23 ◼   ► of summarizing sort of the implications of it all.

00:06:25 ◼   ► So I'll read, these are from several Mastodon posts

00:06:28 ◼   ► that I've sort of compiled here.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Apple's Vision OS significantly limits how applications

00:06:32 ◼   ► are allowed to interact with the user,

00:06:33 ◼   ► especially regarding their new gaze-based input,

00:06:36 ◼   ► and I think it's worth talking about.

00:06:37 ◼   ► The summary is, if you wanna do AR apps,

00:06:40 ◼   ► you must give Apple full rendering control.

00:06:42 ◼   ► A lot of it centers around Apple's choice

00:06:44 ◼   ► to both make eye tracking central to the headset's input

00:06:46 ◼   ► and simultaneously declare it to be too private

00:06:48 ◼   ► to be exposed to apps, which to be fair,

00:06:50 ◼   ► is pretty sensitive data.

00:06:51 ◼   ► We've talked about this before

00:06:52 ◼   ► when we were talking about the WWDC sessions,

00:06:54 ◼   ► like Apple was saying you wouldn't get eye tracking data,

00:06:57 ◼   ► you couldn't tell where the user was looking,

00:07:00 ◼   ► and how that might preclude certain types of games

00:07:03 ◼   ► or whatever because it's a privacy concern.

00:07:05 ◼   ► It's not the same as where your cursor is

00:07:07 ◼   ► in Mac OS or whatever, or gaze data is more sensitive

00:07:11 ◼   ► because you haven't even yet decided to do anything,

00:07:13 ◼   ► it's just where your eyes are wandering.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Anyway, that's the principle behind that, right?

00:07:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also, and not just that,

00:07:17 ◼   ► but also the Vision Pro is also looking at your entire room

00:07:21 ◼   ► and all of your surroundings,

00:07:22 ◼   ► and parts of your body and everything.

00:07:24 ◼   ► And so not only can apps not tell where you are looking

00:07:27 ◼   ► until you choose to click on something,

00:07:29 ◼   ► but also they can't see your room.

00:07:32 ◼   ► And they don't even know necessarily where the walls are

00:07:36 ◼   ► in regular app modes.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And so yeah, a lot of these details we'll get to.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But the gist of it is your app can say,

00:07:44 ◼   ► "Here's a button, let me know if someone taps it."

00:07:47 ◼   ► But it can't tell if you're hovering over it

00:07:50 ◼   ► by looking at it or selecting it or anything like that.

00:07:52 ◼   ► So there's all sorts of implications with this

00:07:54 ◼   ► that I think are pretty interesting.

00:07:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, so continuing here from Brandon's summary,

00:07:58 ◼   ► in the Safari session they described a whole new element

00:08:01 ◼   ► highlighting pattern that discards the web's built-in

00:08:03 ◼   ► hover APIs in favor of one handled entirely by the OS

00:08:06 ◼   ► in the name of not leaking gaze data.

00:08:08 ◼   ► But it's not just the web that gets this treatment.

00:08:10 ◼   ► If you want to display anything in the user's space,

00:08:12 ◼   ► you don't get to render and shade it yourself.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Instead, you hand off meshes and high-level materials

00:08:17 ◼   ► to the OS and it renders it for you.

00:08:19 ◼   ► The relevant WRC session,

00:08:20 ◼   ► if you wanna learn about this by the way, is 10096,

00:08:24 ◼   ► build great games for spatial computing.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Although I haven't actually watched the session,

00:08:27 ◼   ► but I do wonder if they talk about

00:08:28 ◼   ► shooting things with your eyeballs.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Anyway, Brandon continues,

00:08:32 ◼   ► "From the OS perspective, this is an attractive approach.

00:08:34 ◼   ► They can handle object selection and highlighting

00:08:36 ◼   ► without ever exposing gaze or hand data."

00:08:38 ◼   ► Now let me just summarize what this part

00:08:40 ◼   ► is talking about here.

00:08:42 ◼   ► So when you look at something,

00:08:43 ◼   ► you might want it to highlight, as the controls do,

00:08:46 ◼   ► the little buttons and stuff or whatever.

00:08:47 ◼   ► But hey, whatever you're doing.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Say you write an app and it's got a bunch of 3D objects

00:08:50 ◼   ► and you want the thing that the person's looking at

00:08:52 ◼   ► to highlight so they know when they make

00:08:54 ◼   ► the pinch gesture, it will do it.

00:08:55 ◼   ► If you as the application developer

00:08:58 ◼   ► were able to actually render the 3D objects,

00:09:00 ◼   ► you'd be like, okay, well now if they're looking at it,

00:09:03 ◼   ► I have to make it glow.

00:09:05 ◼   ► So you'd have code for that.

00:09:06 ◼   ► But you don't know when they're looking at it.

00:09:08 ◼   ► The OS handles all the rendering for you.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And because the OS has handed the meshes

00:09:13 ◼   ► and it says here you go, here's the raw materials OS,

00:09:16 ◼   ► you render it, the OS can decide when to highlight

00:09:20 ◼   ► your button, your 3D object or whatever

00:09:22 ◼   ► without your app knowing.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Because that's all happening on the rendering side.

00:09:25 ◼   ► So you don't get to choose like,

00:09:27 ◼   ► oh, when they look at it, I want this to look like this

00:09:31 ◼   ► or whatever, the OS handles that entirely,

00:09:32 ◼   ► which is very unlike 3D APIs in the normal sense

00:09:36 ◼   ► where you, yes, you construct the objects or whatever,

00:09:38 ◼   ► but you also choose how to render them.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And not so in Vision OS and that's so the OS

00:09:43 ◼   ► can do things like highlight without your app knowing.

00:09:45 ◼   ► To continue, they can light the scene

00:09:47 ◼   ► without exposing environment data.

00:09:49 ◼   ► What that means is, what Mark was just saying,

00:09:51 ◼   ► how they don't know what your room looks like.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Like if you're doing it in AR mode,

00:09:54 ◼   ► they take like your room, whether you know,

00:09:57 ◼   ► say you have like your walls are painted red

00:09:59 ◼   ► and you have lots of lights on.

00:10:00 ◼   ► That's gonna bounce a bunch of red light around.

00:10:03 ◼   ► That is incorporated into the rendering

00:10:05 ◼   ► of whatever you put in there.

00:10:06 ◼   ► If you have a little 3D object in your app

00:10:08 ◼   ► or your little windows or whatever,

00:10:09 ◼   ► the red light bouncing off the walls

00:10:11 ◼   ► influences how they're rendered.

00:10:13 ◼   ► But because you as the app developer

00:10:15 ◼   ► don't even have access to the surrounding room,

00:10:17 ◼   ► you couldn't do that.

00:10:18 ◼   ► The OS does it for you.

00:10:19 ◼   ► The OS sort of treats your room as kind of like,

00:10:21 ◼   ► I imagine kind of like a cube map or whatever

00:10:23 ◼   ► and lights the objects that you put in front of the user

00:10:27 ◼   ► so they look like they're incorporated into the room

00:10:29 ◼   ► without your app ever having any idea

00:10:32 ◼   ► what the room looks like

00:10:33 ◼   ► because you don't have to render that.

00:10:34 ◼   ► You don't have to figure out what the lighting should be.

00:10:36 ◼   ► You don't have to figure out how to like

00:10:38 ◼   ► make it look like that object is really on the coffee table

00:10:40 ◼   ► given the room's lighting.

00:10:41 ◼   ► The OS does that for you.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Continuing from Brandon here,

00:10:44 ◼   ► they can include virtual objects

00:10:45 ◼   ► without exposing room geometry.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Again, they can, you know,

00:10:48 ◼   ► they know what's blocked by your coffee table or whatever.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Brandon says, "Want to try to experiment

00:10:53 ◼   ► with different input models

00:10:54 ◼   ► or try out an advanced new rendering technique?"

00:10:56 ◼   ► Sounds like you simply can't,

00:10:57 ◼   ► at least not in any AR environment.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Apple is offering more flexibility

00:11:01 ◼   ► if you're doing a VR app,

00:11:02 ◼   ► but there is no camera/gaze data allowed.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So I thought this was really interesting

00:11:07 ◼   ► and like it's, there's sort of the technical side of this

00:11:10 ◼   ► that allows Apple to do two things.

00:11:12 ◼   ► One, to handle a lot of the drudgery for you.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Like I don't want to, you know, I just have an iOS app.

00:11:17 ◼   ► I don't want to figure out how my little floating window

00:11:19 ◼   ► should look like it's well integrated into the room.

00:11:22 ◼   ► But two, even if you're writing

00:11:23 ◼   ► a full fledged native Vision OS app

00:11:25 ◼   ► with a bunch of 3D objects and whatever,

00:11:27 ◼   ► you know, whatever you come up with,

00:11:28 ◼   ► a cool app that would only work in Vision OS,

00:11:31 ◼   ► you both don't get to render those things.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Also, you don't have to.

00:11:36 ◼   ► The OS will handle it for you.

00:11:37 ◼   ► And this is, you know, a great example

00:11:39 ◼   ► of how privacy focused Apple is,

00:11:42 ◼   ► that this sort of like fundamentally defines

00:11:45 ◼   ► the application programming interface

00:11:47 ◼   ► for 2D and 3D stuff on Vision Pro

00:11:49 ◼   ► entirely in service of privacy

00:11:52 ◼   ► and not letting apps get at information

00:11:54 ◼   ► that they don't have to have to do their job.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you can imagine if they didn't

00:11:59 ◼   ► put all these protections in place,

00:12:01 ◼   ► look at the terrifying, awful, like morally bankrupt way

00:12:06 ◼   ► that ad tech and surveillance tech over the years

00:12:10 ◼   ► have exploited even the smallest bits of information

00:12:14 ◼   ► they can collect from you or they can infer about you.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Anything that you give them, any like,

00:12:20 ◼   ► they'll try to sniff your browser configuration

00:12:22 ◼   ► and confederate, try to fingerprint you.

00:12:24 ◼   ► Like, you know, the obviously IP address stuff,

00:12:26 ◼   ► like there's so much stuff they try to derive

00:12:30 ◼   ► from any little bit of data they get about you.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Imagine if they could see your room,

00:12:35 ◼   ► everything around your room, everything about it.

00:12:37 ◼   ► They could derive where you were,

00:12:38 ◼   ► they could derive who you are very, very easily,

00:12:41 ◼   ► even more easily than they do now, you know.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Then imagine gaze data, imagine if they could track

00:12:46 ◼   ► your eyes in real time as you like browsed a webpage.

00:12:48 ◼   ► If you think algorithm generated content is bad now,

00:12:53 ◼   ► imagine if they had that much data

00:12:55 ◼   ► on exactly where you look and when and how.

00:12:58 ◼   ► Imagine what they could create, what kind of hellscape,

00:13:02 ◼   ► like the web would become even more horrible than it is now

00:13:06 ◼   ► with data they could like generate based on,

00:13:09 ◼   ► well, this will generate not only the most clicks,

00:13:12 ◼   ► but this will make people look at it more.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Like, it would be a terrifying hellscape

00:13:17 ◼   ► even more than it is now.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And so having this level of focus on an AR environment

00:13:23 ◼   ► is something that I don't think any other major tech company

00:13:27 ◼   ► would even consider, let alone put this much effort into

00:13:32 ◼   ► and have this much conviction about,

00:13:33 ◼   ► 'cause you know this is going to, in some ways,

00:13:37 ◼   ► hurt app development on VisionOS.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And I have more to say about that later,

00:13:41 ◼   ► but talk about like principles and courage

00:13:44 ◼   ► to this heavily restrict such fundamental data

00:13:49 ◼   ► about your app's environment and interaction

00:13:51 ◼   ► from being visible to apps and to put as much effort

00:13:54 ◼   ► into it as they did to keep those things separate

00:13:56 ◼   ► and private, that really takes a lot of dedication

00:14:00 ◼   ► on this front.

00:14:01 ◼   ► And again, I think it's the right call.

00:14:02 ◼   ► I mean, this platform is extremely early.

00:14:06 ◼   ► It's really hard to say at this point

00:14:09 ◼   ► what will be the best decision in retrospect,

00:14:11 ◼   ► what will work out long term, will they have to loosen up

00:14:13 ◼   ► on some of these things over time?

00:14:15 ◼   ► We don't really know yet, it's way too early to say.

00:14:17 ◼   ► But I think this is gonna prove to be a good move,

00:14:21 ◼   ► even though it will create a bit of pain in the buttery

00:14:24 ◼   ► for certain development tasks and things like that.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Certain things will become a little bit tricky

00:14:29 ◼   ► that you have to work around, or certain features

00:14:32 ◼   ► or interactions that you'll have to either not do

00:14:34 ◼   ► or stick with the stock way that they're done,

00:14:36 ◼   ► rather than doing your own custom thing.

00:14:37 ◼   ► But again, I think overall this is probably the right move.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And only Apple would have done this.

00:14:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and if they didn't do this,

00:14:45 ◼   ► the ad tech companies would be reading the spine

00:14:48 ◼   ► of every single book in your bookshelf,

00:14:50 ◼   ► reading the publications that are sitting

00:14:52 ◼   ► on your coffee table, doing face recognition

00:14:54 ◼   ► against everybody in your family,

00:14:56 ◼   ► listening to every sound that plays,

00:14:57 ◼   ► like determining where you live

00:15:00 ◼   ► based on looking out your windows at the angle of the sun

00:15:02 ◼   ► and cross, you know, calibrating with Google Earth

00:15:06 ◼   ► because you didn't give a location date.

00:15:07 ◼   ► - Oh, they're watching you, they'd be watching your arms,

00:15:10 ◼   ► your skin, your fingerprints, anything they could see

00:15:14 ◼   ► they would use, and they could see a lot from something

00:15:17 ◼   ► that has such a broad view of the world.

00:15:19 ◼   ► - And the flip side of that is that, you know,

00:15:21 ◼   ► so this is, it makes certain things in apps more difficult,

00:15:23 ◼   ► but it does make the experience more coherent.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Not having control over the rendering means

00:15:29 ◼   ► every object that is rendered in augmented reality,

00:15:32 ◼   ► everything that is supposed to be floating

00:15:33 ◼   ► in the middle of your room or sitting on your coffee table

00:15:36 ◼   ► will be rendered in a consistent way.

00:15:38 ◼   ► If you control that rendering yourself,

00:15:40 ◼   ► app developers could do whatever they wanted

00:15:42 ◼   ► with the rendering and the texture mapping

00:15:44 ◼   ► and the shading and the shadowing,

00:15:46 ◼   ► and would they all choose to do things in the same way

00:15:49 ◼   ► with the same level of skill?

00:15:50 ◼   ► Probably not, and that would lead to a,

00:15:53 ◼   ► more of a hodgepodge inconsistent experience,

00:15:56 ◼   ► even not in any kind of malicious way,

00:15:58 ◼   ► but just if, you know, app A developer makes different

00:16:01 ◼   ► choices about how to shade things in app developer B

00:16:03 ◼   ► and you have them both running at the same time,

00:16:05 ◼   ► it'll look, they'll look different.

00:16:06 ◼   ► Even if they both try to incorporate themselves

00:16:08 ◼   ► into the room somehow, they would look different

00:16:10 ◼   ► from each other due to different decisions,

00:16:11 ◼   ► whereas in the OS does it, it's gonna be consistent

00:16:14 ◼   ► across every single application, because it has to be,

00:16:16 ◼   ► because the apps literally don't control the rendering,

00:16:19 ◼   ► the OS does.

00:16:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, look at, on iOS,

00:16:22 ◼   ► you have many different visual styles

00:16:25 ◼   ► and many different interaction styles,

00:16:26 ◼   ► and even in the absence of any kind of malice,

00:16:29 ◼   ► what you get is a world of a lot of web apps

00:16:31 ◼   ► and electron apps, and the way they behave,

00:16:34 ◼   ► on that we all know this by using them,

00:16:36 ◼   ► they behave in subtly different ways

00:16:38 ◼   ► in lots of little implementation details,

00:16:40 ◼   ► lots of feels, lots of looks, lots of behaviors,

00:16:43 ◼   ► they're just different from the system defaults.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Imagine that in AR, it's easy when we see,

00:16:50 ◼   ► we're seeing this new platform right now,

00:16:52 ◼   ► we're seeing it in PR demo mode.

00:16:54 ◼   ► We're seeing Apple's polished apps

00:16:57 ◼   ► that they showed during the demo,

00:16:58 ◼   ► we're hearing about the press demos that everyone else got,

00:17:01 ◼   ► that are all these carefully walked through events

00:17:05 ◼   ► that were carefully polished for those demos.

00:17:07 ◼   ► What we're not seeing yet is what's gonna happen

00:17:10 ◼   ► when this gets exposed to the world,

00:17:12 ◼   ► and we get every crappy developer

00:17:15 ◼   ► trying to make crappy corporate apps for this thing.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It's not gonna be that perfect,

00:17:20 ◼   ► and the more Apple puts in place at the start

00:17:23 ◼   ► to try to control the basics,

00:17:26 ◼   ► the better this platform can be,

00:17:27 ◼   ► and something like how an object is rendered in your room,

00:17:31 ◼   ► that probably should be consistent,

00:17:33 ◼   ► because if you imagine different objects on screen

00:17:35 ◼   ► at different times from different apps,

00:17:37 ◼   ► or different styles, or different renderers

00:17:39 ◼   ► that are being used, different libraries

00:17:41 ◼   ► that are being used between different apps,

00:17:42 ◼   ► if one of them's using whatever the AR version

00:17:46 ◼   ► of Electron will become, like R Electron or whatever,

00:17:48 ◼   ► if somebody is using R Electron apps today,

00:17:51 ◼   ► their corporate BS app, 'cause they don't wanna write it

00:17:53 ◼   ► for three different AR headsets,

00:17:55 ◼   ► that's gonna have a different rendering style.

00:17:57 ◼   ► The light might hit it differently,

00:17:59 ◼   ► it might have different textures,

00:18:00 ◼   ► or different edge behaviors,

00:18:02 ◼   ► or different interaction behaviors.

00:18:03 ◼   ► There are so many ways that that could be

00:18:05 ◼   ► really disorienting, or just crappy looking and sloppy,

00:18:09 ◼   ► and so much about AR needs to be both consistently rendered,

00:18:14 ◼   ► and rendered with a lot of sophistication,

00:18:18 ◼   ► in order to prevent pretty basic fundamental problems,

00:18:21 ◼   ► like motion sickness, or disorientation,

00:18:24 ◼   ► or things like that, and so, you can imagine,

00:18:26 ◼   ► like if there's something, if there's some custom renderer

00:18:28 ◼   ► out there used by R Electron apps

00:18:30 ◼   ► that is a little bit crappier than Apple's built-in one,

00:18:33 ◼   ► and you know it would be,

00:18:34 ◼   ► it could cause weird problems for a lot of people.

00:18:36 ◼   ► This kind of environment is very sensitive,

00:18:38 ◼   ► it needs to be controlled a lot,

00:18:40 ◼   ► and to have Apple control more of that rendering pipeline,

00:18:44 ◼   ► from, again, from this early point of view,

00:18:46 ◼   ► that who knows what we'll think in the future,

00:18:48 ◼   ► but this early point of view,

00:18:49 ◼   ► that sounds like the right call.

00:18:51 ◼   ► - Well plus, what you're looking at

00:18:53 ◼   ► isn't constrained to a small, or at best,

00:18:57 ◼   ► medium-sized box in front of you, right?

00:18:59 ◼   ► Like, I'm looking at two 5K screens,

00:19:02 ◼   ► and even still, all of the UI wonkiness that's happening

00:19:06 ◼   ► is contained in those two rectangles.

00:19:08 ◼   ► Granted, it's not real, but when you're suddenly--

00:19:11 ◼   ► - You're not real, man.

00:19:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:19:13 ◼   ► When you're busting all of these things

00:19:15 ◼   ► into your quote-unquote real life,

00:19:17 ◼   ► I mean, again, I know it's not exactly true,

00:19:19 ◼   ► but that can be quite a bit more jarring

00:19:21 ◼   ► than when it's limited to just a couple of rectangles

00:19:24 ◼   ► that are directly in front of your face.

00:19:25 ◼   ► And so, I think having that consistency makes sense.

00:19:28 ◼   ► And I really applaud Apple,

00:19:31 ◼   ► 'cause I think I could imagine other companies

00:19:34 ◼   ► going for AR and just shrugging at all the privacy stuff.

00:19:38 ◼   ► What I commend Apple for is they clearly

00:19:40 ◼   ► have really thought it through.

00:19:42 ◼   ► Now, as Marco said, ad tech and tracking

00:19:46 ◼   ► and surveillance tech, they are as slimy as they come,

00:19:48 ◼   ► and I'm sure they'll find a way

00:19:49 ◼   ► around some of these protections,

00:19:51 ◼   ► but it sure sounds like Apple's put a lot of thought

00:19:55 ◼   ► into making sure this is safe for users,

00:19:56 ◼   ► which, as a user, whether or not I get one of these

00:19:59 ◼   ► immediately or later or whatever,

00:20:01 ◼   ► I really appreciate that.

00:20:02 ◼   ► - You're getting one immediately.

00:20:03 ◼   ► - Well, one of the three of us is gonna have to,

00:20:05 ◼   ► and I'm not sure which one of us is gonna be

00:20:07 ◼   ► without a chair when the music stops.

00:20:08 ◼   ► - I'm definitely, do you see how crappy my app looks?

00:20:10 ◼   ► I have to get one.

00:20:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, we do always know you'd find an excuse.

00:20:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:15 ◼   ► - I think, given that I'm a professional iOS developer,

00:20:18 ◼   ► I don't think it's an excuse.

00:20:20 ◼   ► - Are you a professional XROS,

00:20:22 ◼   ► I mean, vision OS developer?

00:20:23 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:20:25 ◼   ► No, I'm giving you a hard time.

00:20:26 ◼   ► We're probably all in for one.

00:20:27 ◼   ► All right, John, tell me about--

00:20:29 ◼   ► - Actually, before we move on,

00:20:31 ◼   ► for the people who listened to what Casey said before

00:20:33 ◼   ► and think, I don't care that all my apps on my screen

00:20:35 ◼   ► have different UIs.

00:20:36 ◼   ► In fact, I think that's a strength.

00:20:37 ◼   ► I like the fact that each app can have its own UI.

00:20:40 ◼   ► It's not so much like, oh, people will be confused

00:20:42 ◼   ► that apps have different UIs

00:20:44 ◼   ► and they won't know how they look.

00:20:46 ◼   ► It gets to more of what Casey was saying,

00:20:47 ◼   ► like they're not just confined to his screens,

00:20:50 ◼   ► they exist in the world of his screens.

00:20:53 ◼   ► And there is some consistency in that world.

00:20:54 ◼   ► The OS controls like the shadows on the windows,

00:20:57 ◼   ► for example, or whatever,

00:20:58 ◼   ► although some of that's over-rightable.

00:20:59 ◼   ► But the whole point of augmented reality

00:21:03 ◼   ► is that everything, even the stupid little rectangles,

00:21:05 ◼   ► even the stupid little flat rectangles

00:21:07 ◼   ► that are just a phone app or an iPad app,

00:21:09 ◼   ► even those that are apps that have nothing to do

00:21:11 ◼   ► with virtual reality or 3D, it's just a plain old app,

00:21:15 ◼   ► the rectangle is supposed to be floating

00:21:18 ◼   ► in the air in your room.

00:21:19 ◼   ► That is not true of any of the windows on your screen.

00:21:22 ◼   ► They're not supposed to be in your room.

00:21:24 ◼   ► They are supposed to be in the room,

00:21:27 ◼   ► on a monitor that's in your room,

00:21:29 ◼   ► but they do not incorporate anything from your room in there.

00:21:33 ◼   ► They're not like floating above your desk.

00:21:35 ◼   ► They're in the world of the monitor.

00:21:37 ◼   ► So everything in Vision OS,

00:21:39 ◼   ► when you're in AR mode and not in VR mode,

00:21:41 ◼   ► where you're seeing your room and everything,

00:21:43 ◼   ► is supposed to look like it is in that room.

00:21:46 ◼   ► That's the consistency they're going for.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Not that everything on the screen has to look the same.

00:21:50 ◼   ► You can make wildly different apps.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Take all those wildly different apps

00:21:52 ◼   ► that Marco was talking about on iOS,

00:21:54 ◼   ► you can run them all in Vision OS.

00:21:56 ◼   ► But when those little rectangles are floating in the air,

00:21:58 ◼   ► they better look like they're floating

00:21:59 ◼   ► in the room that you're in.

00:22:01 ◼   ► The rectangles themselves will be wacky

00:22:03 ◼   ► and have stupid banner ads and whatever the hell they are,

00:22:05 ◼   ► but they have to look like they're in your room.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And of course, obviously for 3D objects,

00:22:08 ◼   ► for actual apps that take advantage of Vision OS

00:22:10 ◼   ► and aren't just little floating flat iOS and iPad apps,

00:22:13 ◼   ► same deal, but even for the flat ones,

00:22:15 ◼   ► the rectangles have to look like they're in your room.

00:22:17 ◼   ► And that goes all the way up to the,

00:22:20 ◼   ► I was playing with the Vision OS demo thing too,

00:22:22 ◼   ► the basically the window backgrounds.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Like someone was pointing out like,

00:22:26 ◼   ► hey, there's no light mode and dark mode in Vision OS.

00:22:28 ◼   ► You wanna know why?

00:22:29 ◼   ► The window material,

00:22:30 ◼   ► the thing that windows are made out of in Vision OS,

00:22:32 ◼   ► is this weird, magical, translucent, frosted glass,

00:22:36 ◼   ► watch a moozy.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And they have a bunch of like demo rooms that you can flip,

00:22:40 ◼   ► like kitchen during the day, kitchen at night,

00:22:43 ◼   ► living room at night, living room.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Try all the different lighting.

00:22:46 ◼   ► It's like, how can this window be legible

00:22:48 ◼   ► in all this different lighting?

00:22:48 ◼   ► What color is this window?

00:22:50 ◼   ► Is it a white window?

00:22:50 ◼   ► Is it a dark window?

00:22:52 ◼   ► I can't really tell.

00:22:53 ◼   ► It's the OS handles this for you.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Like, because if you tried to do it yourself and you said,

00:22:58 ◼   ► well, my app is always a black window with white text,

00:23:01 ◼   ► and then you put it in a pitch black room

00:23:02 ◼   ► and no one can see the window anymore,

00:23:03 ◼   ► just like the text is floating in midair.

00:23:05 ◼   ► The OS is handling so much stuff for you

00:23:07 ◼   ► to maintain the illusion that things really are integrated

00:23:12 ◼   ► into your reality.

00:23:13 ◼   ► And the final point I'll make of this is that

00:23:15 ◼   ► by Apple doing all of this,

00:23:17 ◼   ► when Apple gets better at doing this,

00:23:19 ◼   ► when the new hardware comes out,

00:23:20 ◼   ► when they revise their software,

00:23:22 ◼   ► when they get better and better at making it look

00:23:24 ◼   ► like it's photorealistically floating in your actual room,

00:23:27 ◼   ► every app will benefit from that

00:23:29 ◼   ► because the apps never controlled that rendering

00:23:31 ◼   ► to begin with.

00:23:32 ◼   ► It's not like if someone does an app

00:23:33 ◼   ► and doesn't update it for three years,

00:23:34 ◼   ► it'll look like a cruddy, you know, old version.

00:23:37 ◼   ► It doesn't look like, no,

00:23:38 ◼   ► every app since they control the rendering

00:23:39 ◼   ► will advance along with Apple doing this stuff.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So I think this is definitely the right choice.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I do definitely think they should expose gaze data

00:23:47 ◼   ► in full VR for games,

00:23:48 ◼   ► but those are two entirely separate things.

00:23:51 ◼   ► One has an awareness of your surroundings

00:23:52 ◼   ► and the other has no,

00:23:53 ◼   ► it doesn't mean I have any awareness of your surroundings,

00:23:55 ◼   ► at which point I have no problem passing my gaze data

00:23:58 ◼   ► to the shooting game of letting it know

00:24:00 ◼   ► which thing I'm looking at to shoot.

00:24:02 ◼   ► So hopefully Apple will figure out

00:24:04 ◼   ► how to separate those priorities.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think this is one of those things

00:24:08 ◼   ► where Apple needs to see how are we gonna use it?

00:24:12 ◼   ► You know, I'm not the first to say that the Apple Watch,

00:24:16 ◼   ► you know, Apple had ideas about how we were gonna use it,

00:24:18 ◼   ► both in terms of just regular use

00:24:20 ◼   ► and in terms of developers,

00:24:21 ◼   ► and over time they refined, you know,

00:24:23 ◼   ► what they thought the watch was for

00:24:25 ◼   ► based on what people were actually using the watch for.

00:24:28 ◼   ► And I suspect we're gonna see a lot of that

00:24:30 ◼   ► with the Vision Pro.

00:24:31 ◼   ► And if there's a cry for,

00:24:33 ◼   ► oh, we really would like to do such and such,

00:24:36 ◼   ► but we need eye data,

00:24:38 ◼   ► then presumably Apple will figure out a way to facilitate it,

00:24:41 ◼   ► be that, you know, only in VR mode, like you're saying,

00:24:44 ◼   ► or maybe there's some sort of way to do it in AR mode

00:24:47 ◼   ► that's privacy conscious,

00:24:48 ◼   ► or maybe you have some sort of like a dialogue

00:24:51 ◼   ► that you have to approve that says,

00:24:52 ◼   ► hey, you know, this app really, really, really

00:24:54 ◼   ► wants your location.

00:24:55 ◼   ► I mean, eye tracking data, and you know,

00:24:58 ◼   ► is that okay with you?

00:24:59 ◼   ► And any of those things,

00:25:00 ◼   ► I don't know if they're the right answer,

00:25:01 ◼   ► but they are answers.

00:25:03 ◼   ► So we shall see.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Speaking of gaze and things like that,

00:25:08 ◼   ► we have some links to some various WWDC sessions,

00:25:11 ◼   ► particularly 10073 Design for Spatial Input.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Tell me about this, please.

00:25:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this is just kind of like,

00:25:19 ◼   ► hey, how do I design things for Vision OS,

00:25:21 ◼   ► assuming I'm like making a native app for it

00:25:22 ◼   ► and not just like running one of my existing ones.

00:25:25 ◼   ► One of the things that caught my eye

00:25:26 ◼   ► was they showed like the minimum area for UI elements.

00:25:31 ◼   ► They say that it is 60 points,

00:25:34 ◼   ► but the elements can be smaller than 60 points with margins.

00:25:36 ◼   ► And so there's two little diagrams.

00:25:37 ◼   ► They showed like a button and a 60 point square.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And they said, hey,

00:25:42 ◼   ► so the button doesn't fill the 60 point square.

00:25:44 ◼   ► In fact, there's an eight point margin on either side,

00:25:46 ◼   ► making the actual button, dun, dun, dun, 44 points,

00:25:49 ◼   ► which a number that stuck out to me,

00:25:51 ◼   ► wasn't that exactly the same size that they used to say

00:25:54 ◼   ► it was like on the original iPhone,

00:25:56 ◼   ► the minimum size of your buttons should be 44 points.

00:25:59 ◼   ► So I thought that was interesting.

00:26:00 ◼   ► And also interesting that the eye tracking

00:26:02 ◼   ► is apparently less precise than our meaty fingers

00:26:05 ◼   ► because they want the hit area to be bigger than 44.

00:26:08 ◼   ► The hit area is 60, but the visual thing is 44.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Now you may be hearing this and saying, wait a second,

00:26:13 ◼   ► what the hell does 60 points mean in an environment

00:26:17 ◼   ► where my window is floating in midair

00:26:19 ◼   ► and can be pulled closer and farther away from the user

00:26:21 ◼   ► and the person can walk around?

00:26:22 ◼   ► Like, does points mean anything?

00:26:24 ◼   ► On a screen, it means something

00:26:26 ◼   ► because no matter how far away your iPhone screen is to you,

00:26:28 ◼   ► you have to touch your finger to it to touch it.

00:26:31 ◼   ► And once your finger touches it,

00:26:32 ◼   ► 44 points given Apple's DPI and blah, blah, blah,

00:26:35 ◼   ► is roughly the same size for across different lines.

00:26:37 ◼   ► It's varied a little bit,

00:26:38 ◼   ► but you can see how point size for touch targets,

00:26:41 ◼   ► having a standard makes some sense.

00:26:42 ◼   ► But how does having a point size on an AR app

00:26:46 ◼   ► make any kind of sense?

00:26:47 ◼   ► Well, Apple continues in that same session to explain this.

00:26:51 ◼   ► We'll put a timestamp links of these two different offsets.

00:26:54 ◼   ► You can see that those parts,

00:26:55 ◼   ► if you don't wanna watch the whole video.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Apple says, "The system provides dynamic scale

00:26:59 ◼   ► for app windows.

00:27:00 ◼   ► You can see how the window scales larger as it moves away

00:27:03 ◼   ► and smaller as it moves close.

00:27:04 ◼   ► Dynamic scale makes your UI fill the same field of view

00:27:07 ◼   ► and preserve the size of the targets

00:27:08 ◼   ► no matter where the window is positioned."

00:27:10 ◼   ► So you can see this in the video, but think of it this way.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Normally, when objects get farther away from you,

00:27:15 ◼   ► they look smaller.

00:27:16 ◼   ► That's just perspective, right?

00:27:18 ◼   ► What Apple does is as you push a window away from you,

00:27:22 ◼   ► it makes the window bigger.

00:27:24 ◼   ► So no matter how far you push it away and vice versa,

00:27:27 ◼   ► or how close you pull it to yourself,

00:27:28 ◼   ► it always fills the same proportion of your field of view.

00:27:31 ◼   ► That is a dynamic scale mode for windows.

00:27:34 ◼   ► So 60 points makes sense because it's like,

00:27:35 ◼   ► go ahead, put that window wherever you want.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I am gonna make sure that in the world of this AR thing,

00:27:42 ◼   ► that button is always 60 points.

00:27:44 ◼   ► You can't make it bigger by pulling the thing towards you.

00:27:46 ◼   ► You can't make it smaller by pushing the thing away.

00:27:48 ◼   ► It's gonna be 60 points no matter what,

00:27:50 ◼   ► because you have to be able to target it with your eye

00:27:52 ◼   ► and their judgment of what is comfortably eye-trackable

00:27:55 ◼   ► given their current eye-tracking technology

00:27:56 ◼   ► in people's eyes is 60 points.

00:27:59 ◼   ► So that's really weird if you see it happening

00:28:01 ◼   ► like they show in the video.

00:28:02 ◼   ► From your perspective, it seems okay, right?

00:28:05 ◼   ► But if you were to look at it from the side,

00:28:07 ◼   ► like if you were to, you know,

00:28:08 ◼   ► they give you like a view in the 3D world of like,

00:28:10 ◼   ► well, what if there was another 3D camera over here

00:28:12 ◼   ► looking at, you can see the window getting bigger

00:28:14 ◼   ► as it gets pushed away and smaller

00:28:15 ◼   ► as it gets pushed forward and it looks really weird.

00:28:18 ◼   ► You can use fixed scale instead,

00:28:20 ◼   ► and in that case, it behaves like a regular 3D thing

00:28:23 ◼   ► where when you push it away from you,

00:28:23 ◼   ► it gets smaller, when you pull it towards you, it gets bigger.

00:28:26 ◼   ► But I thought that was super interesting

00:28:27 ◼   ► and that answers a question

00:28:29 ◼   ► I hadn't really thought about until, you know,

00:28:30 ◼   ► actually try using these apps in the simulator.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Like, can you make an app unusable

00:28:35 ◼   ► because it's too far away from you?

00:28:37 ◼   ► And in their default mode,

00:28:38 ◼   ► they try to make sure that doesn't happen.

00:28:40 ◼   ► - Vision OS, where everything's made up

00:28:42 ◼   ► and the points don't matter.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Well, the points do matter, but everything's still made up.

00:28:47 ◼   ► - Hey, hey you, you ATP listener.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Hi, hey, it's me.

00:28:51 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by ATP Membership.

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00:30:07 ◼   ► Thank you so much, and now back to the show.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - And then Christopher Masto had some information

00:30:17 ◼   ► on how our eyes work and will likely cope with Vision Pro.

00:30:22 ◼   ► And so this begins with the two techniques

00:30:26 ◼   ► your eyes have to focus on stuff.

00:30:28 ◼   ► There is, and I read up on this earlier,

00:30:30 ◼   ► I'm probably getting some of these details wrong,

00:30:31 ◼   ► but the general idea is there's vergence and accommodation.

00:30:34 ◼   ► So vergence is your eyes ever so slightly,

00:30:39 ◼   ► they're pivoting along a vertical axis.

00:30:41 ◼   ► So you're not going literally cross-eyed,

00:30:44 ◼   ► but your eyes will come closer together a little bit

00:30:47 ◼   ► as you're focusing on something far away,

00:30:49 ◼   ► I think I have that right,

00:30:50 ◼   ► and they'll spread out a little bit, so to speak,

00:30:52 ◼   ► as you're focusing on something closer,

00:30:54 ◼   ► and that's vergence.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Then accommodation is basically,

00:30:57 ◼   ► hey, you have a lens inside your eye

00:31:01 ◼   ► that is used to focus things.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And Christopher writes that the discrepancy between the two

00:31:06 ◼   ► is one of the sources of discomfort in VR

00:31:08 ◼   ► because everything is at the same eye squish distance,

00:31:11 ◼   ► the same vergence, regardless of the binocular distance.

00:31:15 ◼   ► And so this creates what's called

00:31:17 ◼   ► the vergence-accommodation conflict, or VAC,

00:31:20 ◼   ► which is a visual phenomenon that occurs

00:31:22 ◼   ► when the brain receives mismatching cues

00:31:24 ◼   ► between vergence and accommodation of the eye.

00:31:26 ◼   ► This commonly occurs in virtual reality devices,

00:31:28 ◼   ► augmented reality devices, 3D movies,

00:31:30 ◼   ► and other types of stereoscopic displays.

00:31:33 ◼   ► The effect can be unpleasant and can cause eye strain.

00:31:36 ◼   ► We'll put links to all of this stuff in the show notes.

00:31:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, last week I was talking about

00:31:40 ◼   ► the two different things that we focus,

00:31:42 ◼   ► and it was the moving and the squishing,

00:31:44 ◼   ► and these are the actual names for them, right?

00:31:45 ◼   ► And to be clear, the squishing, in mammals anyway,

00:31:48 ◼   ► the squishing is tiny little muscles in our eyes

00:31:50 ◼   ► are squishing the lens of our eye.

00:31:52 ◼   ► There's like a little lens that you can make flatter

00:31:56 ◼   ► to change how the light is focused on the back of your eye,

00:31:58 ◼   ► where the retina is.

00:32:00 ◼   ► And that's, as your lens gets less squishy as you get old,

00:32:04 ◼   ► you have trouble focusing as much.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Basically, there's a measurement of like,

00:32:07 ◼   ► how much can you squish the lens in your eye?

00:32:09 ◼   ► It's like really round or really flat.

00:32:11 ◼   ► And that distance, like how much you can squish it

00:32:13 ◼   ► is measured, it's like measured in diopters or whatever.

00:32:16 ◼   ► As you get older, you have less range of squishing.

00:32:19 ◼   ► So the squishing thing is the accommodation

00:32:22 ◼   ► and the vergence is like Casey said,

00:32:24 ◼   ► the cross-eyed type thing.

00:32:25 ◼   ► If something's real close to you,

00:32:25 ◼   ► your eyes kind of point towards the bridge of your nose,

00:32:28 ◼   ► if something's far away, your eyes point straight out.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Now, here's some stuff I don't actually know.

00:32:33 ◼   ► Everyone who has sent in information about this has said,

00:32:36 ◼   ► "Hey, I use VR stuff."

00:32:38 ◼   ► And in VR stuff, the vergence distance,

00:32:43 ◼   ► the vergence is the same.

00:32:44 ◼   ► Like there is no pointing your eyes straightforward

00:32:48 ◼   ► to look at things that are far away

00:32:49 ◼   ► or going cross-eyed to look at things that are close.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Every single thing that is seen on the screen

00:32:53 ◼   ► in most VR headsets is at the same vergence level.

00:32:58 ◼   ► And that's this, you know,

00:32:59 ◼   ► vergence-accommodation-conflict type of thing.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Because you think you're looking at something farther away,

00:33:04 ◼   ► but your eyes, I might've got it backwards

00:33:06 ◼   ► that it's the same accommodation.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Anyway, the discrepancy between the vergence

00:33:09 ◼   ► and accommodation, because one of those two things is fixed.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Now, is that how it is in the Apple Vision Pro?

00:33:16 ◼   ► Is everything at the same focal distance

00:33:18 ◼   ► to regardless of how far away it is?

00:33:20 ◼   ► Will the Apple Vision Pro suffer

00:33:22 ◼   ► from vergence-accommodation-conflict?

00:33:24 ◼   ► Here's what, again, session 10073,

00:33:29 ◼   ► designed for spatial influence,

00:33:31 ◼   ► had some things to say about it.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And I'm not sure what this means.

00:33:34 ◼   ► I can interpret this both ways.

00:33:36 ◼   ► So at four minutes, they said,

00:33:37 ◼   ► "We should also consider depth

00:33:38 ◼   ► when thinking about eye comfort.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Depth is a unique feature of spatial experiences.

00:33:42 ◼   ► Placing your content near or far away

00:33:45 ◼   ► creates different feelings in your projects."

00:33:46 ◼   ► Okay, that seems like a reasonable truth,

00:33:50 ◼   ► regardless of this whole vergence-accommodation thing.

00:33:53 ◼   ► They continue, "But our eyes focus on one distance at a time

00:33:56 ◼   ► and changing the focus depth frequently

00:33:58 ◼   ► can create eye strain."

00:33:59 ◼   ► Now, wait a second.

00:34:00 ◼   ► How would you change the focus depth

00:34:05 ◼   ► of anything inside the headset

00:34:07 ◼   ► if the focus depth is always fixed at a particular depth,

00:34:12 ◼   ► no matter how far away anything is?

00:34:14 ◼   ► Because they're trying to say this,

00:34:14 ◼   ► "Hey, you know, don't bring things close and far

00:34:17 ◼   ► and make the person focus at different distances."

00:34:19 ◼   ► But if the Apple Vision Pro is just like most headsets,

00:34:24 ◼   ► no matter how close or far the objects are from you

00:34:27 ◼   ► in the virtual world, your eyes never have to refocus.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And to be clear, like we said last week,

00:34:32 ◼   ► the screens are fractions of an inch from your eyeball,

00:34:34 ◼   ► but the focal distance due to lenses in the headset

00:34:38 ◼   ► is not inches from your eyeball, right?

00:34:40 ◼   ► The focal distance is like, I don't know,

00:34:41 ◼   ► like six feet in front of you or something, or nine feet,

00:34:43 ◼   ► whatever it is.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Like, in most headsets, there is a fixed focal distance

00:34:47 ◼   ► and that focal distance is far in front of you.

00:34:49 ◼   ► That's why we were saying, like,

00:34:50 ◼   ► you're not gonna get myopia from looking at screens

00:34:52 ◼   ► that are a fraction of an inch away,

00:34:53 ◼   ► because the focal distance is farther.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And how is the focal distance farther?

00:34:56 ◼   ► There are lenses in the Apple Vision Pro,

00:34:58 ◼   ► even if you don't wear glasses.

00:34:59 ◼   ► There are additional lenses that you add onto that

00:35:01 ◼   ► if you wear glasses,

00:35:02 ◼   ► but even if you have perfect 20/20 vision,

00:35:04 ◼   ► the Apple Vision Pro has lenses inside of it

00:35:07 ◼   ► that set the focal plane of, you know,

00:35:09 ◼   ► hey, if you wanna see the images on that screen,

00:35:11 ◼   ► focus your eyes as if they're looking at something

00:35:13 ◼   ► six feet in front of you,

00:35:14 ◼   ► or whatever the focal distance plane is.

00:35:17 ◼   ► So Apple continues,

00:35:18 ◼   ► "Look to keep interactive content at the same depth

00:35:21 ◼   ► to make it feel effortless to switch between UI.

00:35:23 ◼   ► By maintaining the same Z position,

00:35:25 ◼   ► your eyes don't need to adapt to the new distance."

00:35:28 ◼   ► Again, I am confused.

00:35:29 ◼   ► Z distance, by the way, is like,

00:35:30 ◼   ► how far is it from your face?

00:35:31 ◼   ► Like, is it really far in the distance,

00:35:32 ◼   ► or is it really close to your nose?

00:35:34 ◼   ► And they're saying,

00:35:35 ◼   ► hey, don't make things different Z distances.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Keep things close together

00:35:39 ◼   ► so your eyes don't need to adapt to a new distance.

00:35:41 ◼   ► They could be talking about

00:35:43 ◼   ► a vergence-accommodation conflict, saying,

00:35:44 ◼   ► hey, when you put things closer and farther away,

00:35:46 ◼   ► people's eyes will instinctively try to refocus on them,

00:35:50 ◼   ► but unfortunately in our headset,

00:35:51 ◼   ► everything is at the same focal distance,

00:35:53 ◼   ► and that will cause vergence-accommodation conflict.

00:35:55 ◼   ► So don't make people do that.

00:35:56 ◼   ► You could also interpret it as saying,

00:35:58 ◼   ► wait a second, it's possible to focus my eyes

00:36:00 ◼   ► at different distances inside this headset.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Now, there is technically a way they could do that.

00:36:05 ◼   ► Because they know where your eyes are pointing individually,

00:36:09 ◼   ► they could tell where, like how, you know,

00:36:12 ◼   ► what your vergence is.

00:36:13 ◼   ► Like, you know, if two laser beams

00:36:15 ◼   ► came out of both of your eyeballs,

00:36:16 ◼   ► where would the laser beams meet?

00:36:18 ◼   ► And that is the distance where you're looking,

00:36:20 ◼   ► like, you know, the vergence distance that you're looking.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Because they know where your eyes are looking

00:36:24 ◼   ► and which direction they're pointing,

00:36:26 ◼   ► they could calculate that,

00:36:27 ◼   ► and then they would have to mechanically move the lenses

00:36:30 ◼   ► inside the headset to refocus at the new focal distance

00:36:33 ◼   ► where your eyes are.

00:36:34 ◼   ► But I don't think they're doing that,

00:36:36 ◼   ► because A, they would have bragged about it a lot.

00:36:39 ◼   ► And B, focusing and refocusing in response

00:36:42 ◼   ► to where the vergence of your eyes

00:36:44 ◼   ► would have to be really fast, like, you know,

00:36:47 ◼   ► super expensive, like, you know,

00:36:49 ◼   ► super expensive mirrorless camera fast,

00:36:51 ◼   ► and would make noise and would have motors

00:36:53 ◼   ► and would destroy battery life or whatever.

00:36:54 ◼   ► So I don't think they're doing that.

00:36:56 ◼   ► So my interpretation of this, my best guess is,

00:36:58 ◼   ► there is a fixed focal distance inside the Apple Vision Pro.

00:37:02 ◼   ► Everything, no matter how far away it is from you,

00:37:05 ◼   ► is at that focal distance.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And that means that this headset does suffer

00:37:10 ◼   ► from vergence-to-combination conflict,

00:37:12 ◼   ► because your eyes will expect things farther away,

00:37:15 ◼   ► they will expect you to focus on them

00:37:17 ◼   ► at a different distance, but you won't have to, right?

00:37:19 ◼   ► And then this whole session is trying to say,

00:37:21 ◼   ► hey, don't do that, don't put one thing really far away

00:37:23 ◼   ► and then one thing close, then far away, then close,

00:37:25 ◼   ► because people's eyes will constantly be trying

00:37:26 ◼   ► to focus on them and they don't need to do that

00:37:28 ◼   ► in our headset.

00:37:29 ◼   ► If we actually had a headset or were able to try it,

00:37:31 ◼   ► this is a thing that we might look into,

00:37:34 ◼   ► but for now we're just speculating.

00:37:35 ◼   ► But I thought this was fascinating because it's a topic

00:37:37 ◼   ► that Apple pretty much entirely didn't touch on.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I didn't hear anybody who tried the headset

00:37:43 ◼   ► talk about this either.

00:37:44 ◼   ► And I personally don't have any experience with headsets

00:37:47 ◼   ► to say how bad vergence-to-combination conflict is,

00:37:50 ◼   ► or if it's tiring or eye-straining or whatever,

00:37:52 ◼   ► but that's definitely something we will follow up on

00:37:54 ◼   ► when Marco gets his headset in case he maybe gets his.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Are you not in for one, John?

00:38:00 ◼   ► - Maybe. - We'll see.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - Oh, come on, okay. - Boo.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - No, I think when you look at the design of VisionOS,

00:38:07 ◼   ► how it seems to be structured so far,

00:38:10 ◼   ► so first of all, I think people have,

00:38:11 ◼   ► I forget whether Apple said this

00:38:13 ◼   ► or whether people have analyzed it,

00:38:14 ◼   ► but it seems like the default physical,

00:38:16 ◼   ► like fixed focus distance of the Vision Pro

00:38:20 ◼   ► seems to be something like two meters in front of you,

00:38:22 ◼   ► so two to three meters in front of you, something like that.

00:38:24 ◼   ► If you look at the design of VisionOS,

00:38:26 ◼   ► when new windows are shown

00:38:28 ◼   ► or when the home screen icons are shown, et cetera,

00:38:30 ◼   ► they all seem to be shown at about that distance from you.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It seems like what VisionOS is doing

00:38:36 ◼   ► is kind of having a default distance from your face

00:38:39 ◼   ► that it renders things at,

00:38:40 ◼   ► and that is almost certainly

00:38:42 ◼   ► the actual accommodation distance

00:38:44 ◼   ► that the optics are designed to simulate.

00:38:45 ◼   ► And so if you leave things at that distance from your eyes,

00:38:50 ◼   ► that the default distance is placing things from you,

00:38:52 ◼   ► I'm guessing you don't get VAC,

00:38:54 ◼   ► or at least it's as minimized as it could be.

00:38:57 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, the problem in AR mode

00:38:59 ◼   ► is the whole rest of the room also exists,

00:39:00 ◼   ► and the wall is farther and the coffee table is closer,

00:39:03 ◼   ► and so if you do choose to look at them

00:39:05 ◼   ► and try to quote-unquote focus on them,

00:39:06 ◼   ► it will feel weird because--

00:39:08 ◼   ► - That's true, yeah. - You don't have to focus

00:39:10 ◼   ► on them because it's, you know,

00:39:11 ◼   ► that's part of the unreality of it,

00:39:13 ◼   ► like does it look like the room

00:39:14 ◼   ► or does it look like a screen?

00:39:15 ◼   ► Well, if you're looking at the room

00:39:16 ◼   ► and you're looking at the coffee table,

00:39:17 ◼   ► you will have vergence and accommodations

00:39:20 ◼   ► such that you can focus on the coffee table

00:39:21 ◼   ► that's a foot and a half and away.

00:39:23 ◼   ► In the headset, with a fixed focal distance, you won't.

00:39:26 ◼   ► It'll, you'll just put your eyes over there,

00:39:28 ◼   ► you'll point your eyes at it,

00:39:29 ◼   ► and it'll already be in focus,

00:39:31 ◼   ► except if your eyes try to adjust

00:39:33 ◼   ► with the expectation that it will not be, or anyway.

00:39:35 ◼   ► So, but yeah, you're totally right about where,

00:39:37 ◼   ► like even when you put the windows to the side,

00:39:40 ◼   ► it tilts them, it's trying to maintain that radius

00:39:42 ◼   ► of like this is the non-VAC region.

00:39:45 ◼   ► If you're anywhere in here, there is no conflict,

00:39:48 ◼   ► and anything that is closer or farther away

00:39:50 ◼   ► is potentially conflicting.

00:39:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think, I'm not an expert in this,

00:39:54 ◼   ► I've just read some of the same articles

00:39:56 ◼   ► that you probably have, but it seems like this effect,

00:40:00 ◼   ► like the eye strain and discomfort that can result from VAC,

00:40:03 ◼   ► it seems like it's magnified more when stuff,

00:40:06 ◼   ► when you're holding or looking at stuff

00:40:07 ◼   ► that it's simulating to be too close to you,

00:40:09 ◼   ► rather than too far away.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Like it seems like the closer the thing is,

00:40:13 ◼   ► it magnifies the problem.

00:40:15 ◼   ► So it wouldn't surprise me if that's the case

00:40:18 ◼   ► to see VisionOS not give you lots of ways

00:40:21 ◼   ► to pull things that close to you,

00:40:23 ◼   ► and instead try to stick with stuff like more

00:40:26 ◼   ► at this distance and a little bit further from

00:40:28 ◼   ► or a little bit closer, but not a lot closer.

00:40:30 ◼   ► And there's all sorts of things that go into that too.

00:40:33 ◼   ► I kinda had this funny thought a minute ago,

00:40:34 ◼   ► like what if, like we keep seeing all these simulated rooms

00:40:39 ◼   ► in Apple's demos or simulator and everything,

00:40:41 ◼   ► like everyone has all these rooms

00:40:44 ◼   ► that have a good amount of empty space

00:40:46 ◼   ► a few meters ahead of where you're sitting.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And I was thinking like, if this actually becomes

00:40:51 ◼   ► like a really meaningful computing platform

00:40:54 ◼   ► that lots of people are using to get a lot of work done,

00:40:56 ◼   ► can you imagine people possibly starting to like rent out

00:40:59 ◼   ► offices that are just circles,

00:41:03 ◼   ► like the wall is just a circle

00:41:04 ◼   ► that is like a three meter radius around you?

00:41:07 ◼   ► - Just go in VR at that point.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Just turn on the Yosemite, you know what I mean?

00:41:12 ◼   ► - But then you could just,

00:41:15 ◼   ► if you're sitting inside your three meter donut room,

00:41:17 ◼   ► you could place anything on any of the walls.

00:41:20 ◼   ► You can even have like your coffee sitting three meters

00:41:22 ◼   ► away from you over here and like a picture of your family

00:41:25 ◼   ► sitting three meters away over there.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - That works with three meter long arms,

00:41:29 ◼   ► I don't know if that quite works.

00:41:30 ◼   ► You know, in the simulator,

00:41:32 ◼   ► I was playing with the Vision OS simulator in Xcode,

00:41:35 ◼   ► it just came out like, I don't know, hours before we recorded

00:41:38 ◼   ► so I didn't have that much time to play with it.

00:41:39 ◼   ► But you can fly the camera around

00:41:41 ◼   ► and one of the first things I did was I flew the camera

00:41:43 ◼   ► around to the side of a window to see if it had depth

00:41:46 ◼   ► and I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Like I looked at it edge on and it basically disappeared.

00:41:50 ◼   ► The other thing I tried to do was take windows

00:41:52 ◼   ► and bring them right up to my nose.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And I think maybe I just don't know how to do that

00:41:56 ◼   ► in Vision OS, obviously everything in the simulator

00:41:58 ◼   ► is weird, have you ever tried to use an iPhone app

00:42:00 ◼   ► in the simulator, it's weird and this is 10 times weirder

00:42:02 ◼   ► because you're using like a mouse and a keyboard

00:42:04 ◼   ► and a scroll wheel to substitute for eyeballs and pinching,

00:42:07 ◼   ► it's super weird.

00:42:08 ◼   ► But I couldn't like, it wasn't conducive to that.

00:42:13 ◼   ► I could zoom in, I could zoom the camera in

00:42:16 ◼   ► but I was like just flying the virtual camera

00:42:18 ◼   ► like in the simulator, I don't think you'd be able

00:42:19 ◼   ► to fly the virtual camera that way in when you're wearing it

00:42:22 ◼   ► because when you're wearing it,

00:42:23 ◼   ► you'd have to push your head closer to the thing.

00:42:25 ◼   ► But this is another thing to try.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Like again, with the idea of the things,

00:42:29 ◼   ► the floating rectangles or whatever,

00:42:31 ◼   ► trying to look like they're positioned in space,

00:42:34 ◼   ► there's that button, whatever it is,

00:42:36 ◼   ► I forget which button it is,

00:42:36 ◼   ► whether it's the digital crown one or the other button

00:42:38 ◼   ► that like re-centers all your crap in front of you.

00:42:40 ◼   ► And I think if you were sitting on the couch

00:42:42 ◼   ► and had the windows in front of you at the intended,

00:42:44 ◼   ► you know, focal distance, and then just got up

00:42:47 ◼   ► and walked forward two steps and shoved your face

00:42:50 ◼   ► into Safari, it would let you get as close as you want,

00:42:53 ◼   ► but it would be useless because now you're,

00:42:55 ◼   ► now all you can see is three letters of the Safari window.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And if you press whatever button that is,

00:42:59 ◼   ► it would re-center things nine feet away from

00:43:01 ◼   ► or six feet away from where your head is now.

00:43:04 ◼   ► So that re-centering and re-distancing thing,

00:43:06 ◼   ► you know, makes sense.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And it's also why everyone that you see

00:43:08 ◼   ► in one of these demos, they're not using,

00:43:10 ◼   ► they're not like, again, they're not walking through

00:43:12 ◼   ► their house, walk and talk Aaron Sorkin style,

00:43:15 ◼   ► and using 17 apps while they walk and talk.

00:43:17 ◼   ► They're sitting on a couch, they're sitting in a chair,

00:43:19 ◼   ► they're stationary so that the things can be placed

00:43:21 ◼   ► into the real world with them,

00:43:23 ◼   ► but also maintaining that focal distance.

00:43:26 ◼   ► I don't know if there even is a mode where,

00:43:28 ◼   ► like, as you walk, your windows follow you, you know,

00:43:33 ◼   ► maintaining the six feet distance or whatever,

00:43:35 ◼   ► because you're probably walking to a wall

00:43:36 ◼   ► or do something terrible.

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00:45:34 ◼   ► - So the Vision SDK is out, there is, at a glance,

00:45:38 ◼   ► some really frickin' good documentation.

00:45:42 ◼   ► I think hell may have frozen over, my friends,

00:45:46 ◼   ► because Apple's been like firing on all cylinders

00:45:49 ◼   ► about documentation, it's been very strange.

00:45:51 ◼   ► But we'll link to, dive into featured sample apps,

00:45:54 ◼   ► where they have a series of sample apps,

00:45:56 ◼   ► including Happy Beam, where you shoot hearts

00:45:59 ◼   ► at grumpy clouds, if I understand this properly.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Anyways, but it's a full-on walkthrough of the code.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Not only here's what we did, but why we did it.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Like, brav frickin' oh, no sarcasm.

00:46:12 ◼   ► This is excellent.

00:46:13 ◼   ► So I'm gonna have to dig into this at some point

00:46:15 ◼   ► when I'm not well over my head deep in call sheet stuff.

00:46:19 ◼   ► But yeah, this looks really, really good,

00:46:22 ◼   ► and it's worth checking out.

00:46:24 ◼   ► And then it's also worth noting, I think John had noticed,

00:46:27 ◼   ► Jonathan White, I believe former Apple employee,

00:46:30 ◼   ► pointed out that if you have a PlayStation 5

00:46:32 ◼   ► or Xbox controller hooked up to your Mac,

00:46:33 ◼   ► that you can use that to navigate

00:46:35 ◼   ► in the Vision OS simulator.

00:46:37 ◼   ► - Which is vastly preferable to trying to use

00:46:39 ◼   ► the tiny little camera controls they have

00:46:41 ◼   ► in a little floating pallet.

00:46:42 ◼   ► Again, it's very awkward to use,

00:46:43 ◼   ► to try to use a VR headset simulator

00:46:47 ◼   ► with the mouse and keyboard.

00:46:48 ◼   ► The main reason I put this post in here

00:46:50 ◼   ► is because he posted like an animated GIF

00:46:53 ◼   ► of like one of the little, you know,

00:46:55 ◼   ► they have virtual rooms for you to be in in the simulator,

00:46:57 ◼   ► 'cause obviously there's no headset looking at your room,

00:46:59 ◼   ► so they have a bunch of virtual rooms for you to try.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And it's just a box floating in space.

00:47:03 ◼   ► And he takes the PlayStation controller or whatever

00:47:05 ◼   ► and just flies the camera in and out of the room

00:47:07 ◼   ► and you can see there's just a giant black void

00:47:09 ◼   ► with a living room sitting in it.

00:47:10 ◼   ► Neat.

00:47:12 ◼   ► - Going back a second, when Casey was talking about

00:47:13 ◼   ► all their good documentation of this,

00:47:15 ◼   ► which I'm very happy, I haven't seen it yet,

00:47:16 ◼   ► but I'm very happy to hear that, that's fantastic.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And then explaining why, you know,

00:47:20 ◼   ► I think what's very important here is that

00:47:23 ◼   ► they want us to develop apps for this platform

00:47:27 ◼   ► that fit and make sense and are good,

00:47:31 ◼   ► but we not only have never tried this platform,

00:47:33 ◼   ► but we also won't have a chance

00:47:35 ◼   ► to try this platform for a while.

00:47:38 ◼   ► - Well, that's half true.

00:47:39 ◼   ► Did you see, you might not have seen,

00:47:41 ◼   ► but I think it was Underscore that pointed out

00:47:43 ◼   ► that somewhere, I don't know where,

00:47:45 ◼   ► there was Apple documentation that said,

00:47:47 ◼   ► starting next month, you can do the lab thing

00:47:51 ◼   ► that they have at like five or 10 locations

00:47:53 ◼   ► around the world.

00:47:54 ◼   ► So that is, I mean, I still think your point, Marco,

00:47:58 ◼   ► is fair, but breaking news, apparently it is as early

00:48:01 ◼   ► as July, if we all read this right,

00:48:03 ◼   ► that one could go to Cupertino, London, et cetera, et cetera,

00:48:07 ◼   ► and actually try your stuff on Vision Pro.

00:48:09 ◼   ► - I mean, that helps, but that's a very limited,

00:48:13 ◼   ► like, you know-- - Oh, sure, totally.

00:48:14 ◼   ► - When you look, you know, when the iPhone App Store

00:48:17 ◼   ► came out, we had already had iPhones for a year.

00:48:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And we already,

00:48:21 ◼   ► and before that, we had had smartphones for a while.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Yeah, they sucked, but we had other, you know,

00:48:25 ◼   ► so like, the concept of a smartphone

00:48:26 ◼   ► and what smart software should be was fairly known,

00:48:30 ◼   ► and then we all had iPhones for a year,

00:48:32 ◼   ► and so we knew how iPhone software should behave

00:48:35 ◼   ► and how it should be designed, and yeah,

00:48:37 ◼   ► it was a learning process, you know,

00:48:38 ◼   ► we didn't get it all right right at the start,

00:48:40 ◼   ► but we had a huge head start.

00:48:42 ◼   ► When the iPad came out, we didn't have a chance

00:48:44 ◼   ► to use them before it launched to the world.

00:48:47 ◼   ► However, we kind of assumed, like,

00:48:49 ◼   ► this is probably like a giant phone,

00:48:51 ◼   ► and just kind of use that as a starting point,

00:48:53 ◼   ► and yeah, our initial apps sucked,

00:48:55 ◼   ► but they weren't that far off, you know,

00:48:58 ◼   ► and again, it was a learning process.

00:49:00 ◼   ► With this, every other major, you know,

00:49:04 ◼   ► VR, AR kind of headset that's had any success at all,

00:49:07 ◼   ► besides like very, very specialized, you know,

00:49:10 ◼   ► narrow markets, has been gaming focused,

00:49:13 ◼   ► and so we kind of have some idea,

00:49:15 ◼   ► like hey, if you wanna make a VR game,

00:49:16 ◼   ► here are some principles that you might wanna follow,

00:49:18 ◼   ► or here are some things that work and don't work.

00:49:20 ◼   ► That's fine, but the idea of a spatial computing environment

00:49:25 ◼   ► of like using an AR environment

00:49:27 ◼   ► for general purpose computing,

00:49:29 ◼   ► that is still really in its infancy

00:49:32 ◼   ► in the rest of the world, and most of us have not used that,

00:49:35 ◼   ► and none of us have used specifically the Vision Pro

00:49:38 ◼   ► for this purpose yet, and so to try to make software

00:49:40 ◼   ► for this platform that we have no experience with,

00:49:45 ◼   ► and that can't really be simulated very well,

00:49:49 ◼   ► and even if it was, you know,

00:49:51 ◼   ► even if the simulator was really good,

00:49:54 ◼   ► and this could get into like, you know,

00:49:55 ◼   ► they said they're gonna offer dev kits at some point,

00:49:57 ◼   ► and you know, we mentioned like we don't really know

00:50:00 ◼   ► what that means or what the dev kits will be able to do,

00:50:03 ◼   ► but if the dev kit is anything less

00:50:06 ◼   ► than a full-blown environment that has all of Apple's

00:50:10 ◼   ► built-in apps already working and everything,

00:50:11 ◼   ► which it probably will be, like I can't imagine

00:50:13 ◼   ► that those will all be ready yet, you know,

00:50:16 ◼   ► I expect the dev kit to be basically like the simulator,

00:50:19 ◼   ► in terms of what it has and what it doesn't have,

00:50:22 ◼   ► like in terms of other apps and everything,

00:50:23 ◼   ► and you're not gonna be able to like install stuff

00:50:24 ◼   ► really, besides your own app, so you're not gonna get

00:50:27 ◼   ► a good experience of like, what it's like to actually

00:50:30 ◼   ► really use this thing for computing,

00:50:33 ◼   ► and because it's so radically different

00:50:36 ◼   ► from what we've used before, Apple needs to really step up

00:50:41 ◼   ► above and beyond to, with things like documentation

00:50:45 ◼   ► and tooling and you know, explaining the, you know,

00:50:48 ◼   ► human interface guidelines, explaining why they're doing

00:50:51 ◼   ► things, explaining how things should be designed,

00:50:53 ◼   ► why things should be structured this way,

00:50:56 ◼   ► because we don't know, because we can't use this platform

00:50:58 ◼   ► yet, and the good thing is, it sounds like that's

00:51:00 ◼   ► what they're doing, and it's gonna take a whole lot

00:51:03 ◼   ► of like immersing ourself in this documentation

00:51:06 ◼   ► and in the simulator and in the tools and reading up

00:51:09 ◼   ► and experimenting with things for us to get stuff right,

00:51:11 ◼   ► and it's still not gonna quite be right when we get it,

00:51:14 ◼   ► because we will have no experience actually really using

00:51:17 ◼   ► the hardware and using the software and figuring out

00:51:21 ◼   ► how things work and how things should behave,

00:51:23 ◼   ► how things should feel, how things should look,

00:51:25 ◼   ► you know, there's so much of that.

00:51:27 ◼   ► When you look at the iPhone, there's so much kind of

00:51:30 ◼   ► built in, like, you know, here's how things should be

00:51:32 ◼   ► laid out on the screen, here's how navigation works,

00:51:34 ◼   ► here's how things should be structured,

00:51:36 ◼   ► here's the different conventions that we use.

00:51:39 ◼   ► We know none of that with VisionOS, and until we're

00:51:42 ◼   ► actually able to use it with real apps, with our real data,

00:51:46 ◼   ► with, you know, really in our actual world trying to get

00:51:48 ◼   ► things done in our real lives, we're not gonna have

00:51:51 ◼   ► those feelings kind of naturally inherent to us.

00:51:54 ◼   ► So it's gonna be a learning process, but in the meantime,

00:51:58 ◼   ► Apple really has to step in, and so I'm very glad

00:52:00 ◼   ► that it seems like they are doing that.

00:52:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, very much so.

00:52:04 ◼   ► All right, John, tell me about the John Turnus external

00:52:08 ◼   ► GPU question that was surfaced at the talk show.

00:52:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, we talked about it last week, I think.

00:52:14 ◼   ► I asked about external GPUs, and Turnus said, like,

00:52:17 ◼   ► he doesn't quite see how they would incorporate that

00:52:20 ◼   ► into their system of built-in GPUs or whatever,

00:52:22 ◼   ► it was kind of closing the door on external GPUs,

00:52:25 ◼   ► and also saying that it just didn't even seem

00:52:27 ◼   ► to make sense to him.

00:52:28 ◼   ► It occurs to me, thinking about that question and other,

00:52:32 ◼   ► you know, and the talk show in general, that maybe that

00:52:36 ◼   ► is also a question that could have been asked to Craig

00:52:38 ◼   ► Federighi, because Turnus is the hardware dude, right,

00:52:41 ◼   ► and you think, oh, external GPUs, like, that's a question

00:52:43 ◼   ► for him, right, because if he's like, oh, you're gonna make

00:52:45 ◼   ► a Mac Pro, are we gonna support external GPUs or not,

00:52:48 ◼   ► and how can we incorporate those,

00:52:49 ◼   ► that's the hardware guy, right?

00:52:51 ◼   ► But there is a software component to this.

00:52:55 ◼   ► As far as I'm aware, there's nothing inherent about any

00:52:59 ◼   ► of the M whatever SOCs that precludes the idea of,

00:53:03 ◼   ► for example, using an external GPU for compute,

00:53:07 ◼   ► like setting aside the video stuff, I don't know what

00:53:09 ◼   ► the deal with that is, but just like, just doing it

00:53:11 ◼   ► for compute if you're trying to do, like, you know,

00:53:13 ◼   ► AI model training or something, like using GPUs for a

00:53:15 ◼   ► compute or whatever, especially in the Mac Pro,

00:53:18 ◼   ► where you actually have card slots and all that other thing,

00:53:19 ◼   ► right, so the hardware may be capable, but you can't

00:53:23 ◼   ► actually use any of those GPUs to do anything unless

00:53:27 ◼   ► you have a driver for it, and that is a software question

00:53:31 ◼   ► that Turnus doesn't really control, that's on the

00:53:33 ◼   ► Federighi side, it's like, hey, are we going to support

00:53:37 ◼   ► on Apple Silicon, you know, Apple Silicon native drivers

00:53:41 ◼   ► for, let's say, AMD graphics cards, and it's not like,

00:53:44 ◼   ► you know, Craig Federighi, like his organization maybe

00:53:47 ◼   ► writes all those drivers or whatever, but certainly it falls

00:53:49 ◼   ► under the umbrella of what kind of things does Mac OS

00:53:51 ◼   ► support, because, you know, in my Mac right now, I've got

00:53:55 ◼   ► a bunch of drivers for my AMD graphics cards, and they

00:53:57 ◼   ► came with the operating system, and the operating system,

00:54:01 ◼   ► that's Craig, so it would have been interesting to pose

00:54:04 ◼   ► the same question to, obviously, you know, not gonna make

00:54:06 ◼   ► the whole talk show just to be the giant Mac Pro show,

00:54:09 ◼   ► that would be what it would be like if I was hosting it.

00:54:11 ◼   ► - I was gonna say.

00:54:12 ◼   ► - But, and that's why Apple does not give you executives

00:54:15 ◼   ► to interview.

00:54:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, but anyway, that's, you know, it's just an

00:54:19 ◼   ► interesting thing to think about, that there's more to it

00:54:22 ◼   ► than just like, oh, you know, when you design the Mac Pro

00:54:24 ◼   ► hardware, you didn't make it support this, or you're,

00:54:26 ◼   ► you know, because the SOC has the GPU on it, it can't do

00:54:28 ◼   ► that, as I think we've talked about many times in the past,

00:54:31 ◼   ► Intel GPUs, Intel CPUs had integrated graphics for years

00:54:35 ◼   ► and years, and Macs with Intel CPUs with integrated

00:54:39 ◼   ► graphics also supported discrete graphics, in fact,

00:54:41 ◼   ► Apple had this wacky thing in the OS where it would use

00:54:44 ◼   ► the discrete versus using the integrated and go back and

00:54:46 ◼   ► forth and all that stuff, and of course, in the Intel Mac

00:54:48 ◼   ► Pro, actually the Xeon I don't think does have an

00:54:50 ◼   ► integrated GPU, but anyway, you could have put, like,

00:54:53 ◼   ► instead of a Xeon, put like an i9 or whatever, or i7,

00:54:56 ◼   ► or whatever the most recent one, you know, put something

00:54:57 ◼   ► with an integrated GPU and still use the external GPUs.

00:55:01 ◼   ► Apple did all that work for Intel, but that work is a

00:55:04 ◼   ► software work, that is not hardware work, so that would be

00:55:08 ◼   ► an interesting thing to muse on as we go in the next round

00:55:12 ◼   ► of the Mac Pro to see if Apple changes course on this,

00:55:16 ◼   ► to see if it would even be technically possible to change

00:55:18 ◼   ► course, for example, with just a new version of macOS

00:55:21 ◼   ► with a bunch of drivers that suddenly let you plug in,

00:55:24 ◼   ► you know, GPUs, and I don't think it's gonna happen,

00:55:26 ◼   ► obviously, on the M2 Ultra Mac Pro because all of their

00:55:29 ◼   ► slots have, are banned with Star, and they would need

00:55:32 ◼   ► external power connectors to power a big GPU and yada, yada,

00:55:35 ◼   ► yada, but I was just thinking about this, that it, you know,

00:55:39 ◼   ► it's not just a hardware question, it's also a software

00:55:41 ◼   ► question.

00:55:42 ◼   ► - That's fair.

00:55:43 ◼   ► All right, Apple has added passkeys to Apple ID and iCloud

00:55:47 ◼   ► logins, so they are dogfooding this, or allowing us, I guess,

00:55:51 ◼   ► to dogfood it.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I haven't really messed with passkeys at all, so I don't

00:55:56 ◼   ► really have much to say about this, but I applaud Apple

00:55:58 ◼   ► for actually making it possible.

00:56:01 ◼   ► - They say this from a Six Color story, they said that

00:56:03 ◼   ► the future has been rolling out as of yesterday and can be

00:56:05 ◼   ► tested on devices running iOS, iPadOS 17, or Sonoma betas,

00:56:10 ◼   ► and some other people have said if you run, if you're running

00:56:13 ◼   ► Ventura and you use Chrome, because Chrome, the latest

00:56:15 ◼   ► versions of Chrome know about passkeys, that you could

00:56:17 ◼   ► actually do it on Ventura with Chrome.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - That's funny.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - But they say it's rolling out, and that must, it must not

00:56:23 ◼   ► have rolled out to me because I tried for a while earlier

00:56:25 ◼   ► today to get to the point where it would let me use a passkey

00:56:28 ◼   ► or prompt me, like by going to the iCloud login page, and I

00:56:31 ◼   ► just don't have access to that feature yet, so it's coming.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Eventually, but I wasn't able to try it.

00:56:37 ◼   ► I have used passkeys with other things, like in Chrome,

00:56:40 ◼   ► because again, Chrome supports them, but with other services

00:56:42 ◼   ► that support passkeys, and it's fun, and it's nice.

00:56:44 ◼   ► I use them in addition to names and passwords.

00:56:47 ◼   ► I haven't yet had the guts to take any of the services that

00:56:49 ◼   ► support them and say, you know what, forget about my

00:56:52 ◼   ► password and do everything with passkeys.

00:56:53 ◼   ► Although honestly, I shouldn't really, it shouldn't really

00:56:56 ◼   ► be that scary because, you know, we all know how the world

00:57:00 ◼   ► works, like oh, well what if passkeys break or don't work

00:57:03 ◼   ► or whatever, it's exactly the same thing you do when you

00:57:06 ◼   ► forget your password, which happens to all of us.

00:57:08 ◼   ► In the end, your email address is the ultimate key to your

00:57:10 ◼   ► stuff because people forget their passwords.

00:57:11 ◼   ► You'll never forget your passkey, but say there was a bug

00:57:14 ◼   ► and the computer screwed up and the computer, you know,

00:57:16 ◼   ► forgot your, quote unquote, forgot your passkey.

00:57:19 ◼   ► You're just gonna use the forgot password link and have

00:57:22 ◼   ► them email you something, yada yada, which is not great,

00:57:25 ◼   ► but in theory, once the passkey feature is worked out and

00:57:28 ◼   ► all the bugs are ironed out and it basically works reliably,

00:57:32 ◼   ► you don't have to worry about forgetting anymore and I think

00:57:34 ◼   ► humans forgetting is going to happen way more often than

00:57:37 ◼   ► iCloud Keychain, like deleting stuff accidentally.

00:57:40 ◼   ► - Tell me, with regard to passkeys and passwords and things

00:57:44 ◼   ► like that, tell me what's going on in Sonoma.

00:57:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, so there's an app on Mac OS that's been around for,

00:57:49 ◼   ► I don't know, a decade or two, called Keychain Access,

00:57:52 ◼   ► that gives you a view of your Mac OS keychain.

00:57:55 ◼   ► It started off looking at just your local keychain and

00:57:57 ◼   ► eventually iCloud Keychain was introduced and they put that

00:57:59 ◼   ► into the app.

00:58:00 ◼   ► It's a pretty nerdy app, it hasn't been updated in a really

00:58:02 ◼   ► long time, it's scary and confusing and in general, people

00:58:05 ◼   ► should not mess with it because it's very easy to screw

00:58:07 ◼   ► yourself up because you'll say, I don't know what this is,

00:58:10 ◼   ► do I need this?

00:58:11 ◼   ► I'm gonna delete this.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Sometimes you need it.

00:58:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:14 ◼   ► Don't, like, don't, it's like people used to go into a

00:58:16 ◼   ► library folder on the early versions of Mac OS X being like,

00:58:19 ◼   ► library, what the hell is this crap?

00:58:20 ◼   ► And just delete everything.

00:58:21 ◼   ► It's not a good idea.

00:58:23 ◼   ► So on Sonoma, when you launch Keychain Access, it throws a

00:58:26 ◼   ► dialogue in your face that says, manage your passwords in

00:58:29 ◼   ► system settings.

00:58:30 ◼   ► Go to passwords in system settings to manage your passwords

00:58:33 ◼   ► in pass keys, set up verification codes and view your

00:58:35 ◼   ► security recommendations.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And it has a big button that is the default button that says

00:58:38 ◼   ► open passwords and the non-default button is open

00:58:42 ◼   ► Keychain Access with a checkbox to say don't show this

00:58:44 ◼   ► message again.

00:58:45 ◼   ► So for users who are used to using Keychain Access because

00:58:48 ◼   ► they're nerdy and that's the place where they go for

00:58:50 ◼   ► passwords, they're trying to tell them, hey, we have a

00:58:53 ◼   ► significantly more friendly interface to passwords over here

00:58:56 ◼   ► in system settings that you might not know about because

00:58:57 ◼   ► it's buried.

00:58:59 ◼   ► Please use that one instead.

00:59:00 ◼   ► If only that friendlier interface to passwords could be a

00:59:05 ◼   ► standalone application that could replace Keychain Access.

00:59:08 ◼   ► Maybe not replace it, 'cause Keychain Access does much more

00:59:10 ◼   ► fancier stuff.

00:59:11 ◼   ► So I hope they keep Keychain Access around, but I do like

00:59:14 ◼   ► the idea that they are trying to herd users towards the

00:59:17 ◼   ► nicer friendlier interface that is in a totally

00:59:19 ◼   ► different place.

00:59:20 ◼   ► - Also, can I take this moment to thank the Xcode team or

00:59:26 ◼   ► whatever part of the Xcode team is responsible for

00:59:28 ◼   ► automatic certificate management and in particular,

00:59:31 ◼   ► whoever at Apple made that work for CarPlay apps as of a

00:59:34 ◼   ► few years ago or a year ago, I have not had to go into

00:59:38 ◼   ► Keychain Access for probably two or three years now.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I used to on a regular basis because I used to have to do

00:59:44 ◼   ► all the provisioning certificates and everything and all

00:59:46 ◼   ► that management and everything and inevitably something

00:59:49 ◼   ► would mess up and I'd have to go in there and clean up

00:59:51 ◼   ► some garbage and I haven't had to do that in like two years.

00:59:54 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:59:55 ◼   ► - So thank you, whoever did that, thank you.

00:59:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, go team.

00:59:59 ◼   ► John, there's good news about Notification Center,

01:00:01 ◼   ► we're being told anonymously.

01:00:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I said last week, two things I had to say

01:00:05 ◼   ► about Sonoma was that my weird bug seems to be fixed,

01:00:09 ◼   ► but also that the notification interface actually has

01:00:12 ◼   ► buttons that you can click that don't disappear when you

01:00:14 ◼   ► try to click them.

01:00:15 ◼   ► So here's some anonymous feedback on that in Sonoma.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Notification Center has been significantly re-engineered

01:00:21 ◼   ► for macOS Sonoma, probably in big part because it's

01:00:23 ◼   ► responsible for hosting widgets, which can now be added

01:00:25 ◼   ► to the desktop, so it wouldn't surprise me that the

01:00:27 ◼   ► notification hover bug is finally fixed.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Before Sonoma, the Notification Center process would be

01:00:31 ◼   ► responsible for all things related to widgets, including

01:00:34 ◼   ► when to update them, the running of extensions and

01:00:36 ◼   ► archiving of views.

01:00:38 ◼   ► With Sonoma, they brought ChronoD, the Chrono demon,

01:00:42 ◼   ► to macOS, so now all Notification Center has to worry about

01:00:45 ◼   ► is actually placing views on the screen.

01:00:47 ◼   ► So here's to rewriting a part of the system that had been

01:00:49 ◼   ► broken for three years.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I don't know what ChronoD, I think it's some internal thing

01:00:54 ◼   ► or whatever, but this matches with my experience.

01:00:58 ◼   ► The Notification Center, the interface looks the same.

01:01:00 ◼   ► It's the same stupid, like, oh, we can't show you the

01:01:02 ◼   ► buttons until you mouse over them because we're afraid your

01:01:04 ◼   ► little brain will explode.

01:01:05 ◼   ► But now, when you mouse over them, you can actually

01:01:07 ◼   ► click on them.

01:01:08 ◼   ► So there is some support for the idea that it's not just my

01:01:11 ◼   ► imagination that they actually made this particular user

01:01:15 ◼   ► interface work.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Now we can get back to complaining that this

01:01:17 ◼   ► particular interface is dumb, but at least it's dumb and

01:01:20 ◼   ► working as designed.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Hurray!

01:01:23 ◼   ► All right, there's a couple of tidbits that we wanted to

01:01:25 ◼   ► share with regard to iOS 17.

01:01:29 ◼   ► First of all, if you recall, Apple has done for the last

01:01:32 ◼   ► year or two a semi-private Slack for WWDC.

01:01:37 ◼   ► I was going to say attendees, but that's not really true.

01:01:39 ◼   ► People who are interested in WWDC.

01:01:41 ◼   ► And in there, somebody caught, and then it was eventually

01:01:45 ◼   ► posted to MacRumors, that somebody from Apple said, as

01:01:50 ◼   ► of iOS 17 and MacOS Sonoma, disabling the iCloud Drive

01:01:54 ◼   ► switch will no longer disable syncing in your app.

01:01:58 ◼   ► It'll be controlled by the individual switch for your

01:02:01 ◼   ► app, which means, Marco, that you can still sync with

01:02:06 ◼   ► CloudKit and iCloud stuff, even if iCloud Drive is turned

01:02:09 ◼   ► off because of some sort of work provisioning.

01:02:11 ◼   ► This is critical for Marco today, but not a small amount

01:02:15 ◼   ► of call sheet also rides on CloudKit.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And so this is critical for me soon.

01:02:19 ◼   ► So I am very excited about this.

01:02:22 ◼   ► This is very good news.

01:02:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm very curious to see, once I get running on 17 and

01:02:28 ◼   ► get some real user data out there, because right now, as a

01:02:32 ◼   ► quick reminder, and I just verified, if I look at my

01:02:38 ◼   ► CloudKit state of whether I can save data in CloudKit, I

01:02:42 ◼   ► track this in Analytics so I can make a decision in the

01:02:44 ◼   ► future about whether to switch to that for sync.

01:02:46 ◼   ► And right now, I got 12 and 1/2% of my user base saying no

01:02:50 ◼   ► account.

01:02:51 ◼   ► And I believe that's the result you would get in iOS 16

01:02:55 ◼   ► and below when iCloud Drive was just disabled, in addition

01:02:58 ◼   ► to not actually being logged into an iCloud account.

01:03:01 ◼   ► And in that case, you can't use CloudKit.

01:03:03 ◼   ► So right now, I'm at 12 and 1/2%.

01:03:05 ◼   ► As my iOS 17 adoption goes up, which is already at 2%, as

01:03:12 ◼   ► that goes up, I'm curious to see if this number goes down.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And my analytics system is not advanced enough that I could

01:03:18 ◼   ► say, what is this value just for iOS 17 people?

01:03:22 ◼   ► I'm kind of curious to see how that tracks.

01:03:24 ◼   ► Maybe I'll add something separate for that.

01:03:25 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Right now, this doesn't help me, because that's still way

01:03:31 ◼   ► too many people to not be able to use iCloud

01:03:34 ◼   ► with iOS 16 and below.

01:03:36 ◼   ► And maybe in a year from now, that'll be different.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Right now, I still can't use this.

01:03:42 ◼   ► I can't rely on iCloud Drive being universal enough, or

01:03:46 ◼   ► rather, CloudKit being universal enough.

01:03:48 ◼   ► But maybe next year, I will.

01:03:50 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:03:51 ◼   ► I hope so.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Either way, this is a very, very important step towards

01:03:56 ◼   ► that possibility that might enable this

01:03:58 ◼   ► possibility next year.

01:03:59 ◼   ► So looking forward to that.

01:04:01 ◼   ► And also, with regard to iOS 17, apparently there's now a

01:04:05 ◼   ► crossword puzzle, like MiniApp, within Apple News+.

01:04:09 ◼   ► I don't even remember hearing rumblings of this until today.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Maybe I missed it.

01:04:12 ◼   ► But starting with iOS 17, Apple's taking a page from the

01:04:15 ◼   ► New York Times and integrating crossword puzzles into the

01:04:17 ◼   ► News app.

01:04:18 ◼   ► And puzzles will be available to Apple News+ and Apple One

01:04:21 ◼   ► subscribers.

01:04:22 ◼   ► This is from 9to5Mac.

01:04:23 ◼   ► We'll link it in the show notes.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Again, news to me.

01:04:27 ◼   ► It makes sense to be in the News app.

01:04:28 ◼   ► But this is just sort of raising the bar for

01:04:30 ◼   ► everybody else.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Like, we're complaining when Apple adds functionality to be

01:04:34 ◼   ► built into the--

01:04:35 ◼   ► if they make a News app, and part of News is the New York

01:04:37 ◼   ► Times, and part of the New York Times is the New York

01:04:39 ◼   ► Times crossword, you can see how they got there.

01:04:41 ◼   ► I still think there's plenty of room for better third-party

01:04:43 ◼   ► crossword apps.

01:04:44 ◼   ► But it just goes to show that you never know when Apple's

01:04:47 ◼   ► going to come for your little section of the market.

01:04:49 ◼   ► That being said, if it's limited to News+ subscribers,

01:04:53 ◼   ► I'm not sure that's a huge threat to the market.

01:04:57 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, again, there's third-party opportunity there

01:05:02 ◼   ► for sure, because A, you got all the free crossword apps.

01:05:05 ◼   ► And B, what if people don't want Apple News or Apple One?

01:05:08 ◼   ► They just want crosswords.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Well, they just go to the App Store and find one.

01:05:12 ◼   ► And Marco, we have news with regard to why Apple isn't

01:05:17 ◼   ► allowing third-party watch faces in WatchOS 10.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Do we--

01:05:20 ◼   ► This is as per-- well, not really.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Does this actually say anything?

01:05:23 ◼   ► No.

01:05:24 ◼   ► It does say something, but what it says is BS.

01:05:27 ◼   ► As per MacRumors, in an interview with Swiss newspaper

01:05:31 ◼   ► something or other published today, Apple's VP of

01:05:33 ◼   ► Technology, Kevin Lynch, and product marketing employee

01:05:35 ◼   ► Deirdre Kaldbeck explained--

01:05:37 ◼   ► and these quotes are machine translated from German--

01:05:40 ◼   ► Lynch said that Apple puts, quote, "a huge amount of

01:05:42 ◼   ► effort," quote, "into every watch face to ensure that they

01:05:45 ◼   ► work," quote, "uniformly and simply," quote, and said,

01:05:48 ◼   ► "Apple needs to plan ahead to make sure watch faces continue

01:05:50 ◼   ► to work if we want to change something or add new

01:05:52 ◼   ► possibilities." This is the most non-answer answer I've

01:05:56 ◼   ► read in a little while.

01:05:57 ◼   ► But what are you going to do?

01:05:58 ◼   ► Because you know Apple would never change how someone

01:06:01 ◼   ► integrates into their operating system, like, say, a different

01:06:03 ◼   ► system for writing widgets or an entirely different system

01:06:05 ◼   ► for writing apps for the watch.

01:06:08 ◼   ► This is-- yeah, so we don't want to do this because what

01:06:12 ◼   ► if we change our mind about how the watch faces work?

01:06:14 ◼   ► You change your mind about things all the time.

01:06:16 ◼   ► That's what WWDC is about.

01:06:18 ◼   ► That's what we're all doing when new OSes come out.

01:06:20 ◼   ► It's like, we can't give you watch faces because what if we

01:06:22 ◼   ► change our mind about the API?

01:06:25 ◼   ► Nothing has changed more than going from--

01:06:27 ◼   ► what was the previous one, the crappy one?

01:06:29 ◼   ► Is it WatchKit to non-WatchKit?

01:06:31 ◼   ► I don't remember.

01:06:32 ◼   ► They change stuff all the time on every OS.

01:06:34 ◼   ► That's the nature of what they do as a platform owner.

01:06:36 ◼   ► So that is not the reason why watch faces don't exist.

01:06:40 ◼   ► We have a huge-- put a huge amount of effort.

01:06:42 ◼   ► We want them to work uniformly and simple.

01:06:44 ◼   ► You can use this as an excuse for why you don't want to have

01:06:46 ◼   ► the App Store as well.

01:06:48 ◼   ► This is-- I mean, this may be the reason why they're not

01:06:51 ◼   ► doing it, which is basically saying, oh, it would be more

01:06:53 ◼   ► work if we did it.

01:06:54 ◼   ► I agree.

01:06:54 ◼   ► It would be more work, just like it's more work to run the

01:06:56 ◼   ► App Store.

01:06:57 ◼   ► But geez, please, third party watch faces.

01:07:00 ◼   ► First of all--

01:07:01 ◼   ► yes, I know this is a machine translation.

01:07:03 ◼   ► But first of all, Apple's own faces don't work

01:07:06 ◼   ► uniformly or simply.

01:07:08 ◼   ► So let's rule that out right now.

01:07:10 ◼   ► They don't.

01:07:11 ◼   ► So that's not a good reason.

01:07:12 ◼   ► But also, everything that we've seen from the way

01:07:17 ◼   ► widgets are rendered and the way Swift UI works suggests

01:07:20 ◼   ► that they could do a really good watch face kit using the

01:07:26 ◼   ► widget rendering system, where your process isn't even needing

01:07:29 ◼   ► to run all the time, just like complications,

01:07:31 ◼   ► just like widgets.

01:07:33 ◼   ► You can kind of use pieces.

01:07:35 ◼   ► And they could give you like, here's clock hands for the

01:07:38 ◼   ► current time, or here's a digital version of the time,

01:07:40 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:07:41 ◼   ► They can give you components.

01:07:42 ◼   ► And you can place them in your view and lay them out however

01:07:45 ◼   ► you need to and style them with a few custom ways.

01:07:49 ◼   ► They could do that so easily with what they've already

01:07:52 ◼   ► built and what they're already shipping, not even just brand

01:07:56 ◼   ► new this year, but what they've already been shipping

01:07:57 ◼   ► for a few years.

01:07:58 ◼   ► So there really isn't any technical

01:08:01 ◼   ► merit to this argument.

01:08:03 ◼   ► The reason we don't have third party watch faces yet is

01:08:06 ◼   ► because they don't want to.

01:08:08 ◼   ► That's it.

01:08:09 ◼   ► There is no technical justification.

01:08:11 ◼   ► There is no good argument.

01:08:12 ◼   ► It's simply they don't want to.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Apple has a new system for installing betas.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Anyone with a free Apple developer account can do it now.

01:08:21 ◼   ► You don't need to pay the $99 like you used to.

01:08:24 ◼   ► There's a write up in Ars Technico about this.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Basically, you go fiddling in settings and select which beta

01:08:29 ◼   ► train you want to be on.

01:08:31 ◼   ► And then you reboot, and you're on that train, which is

01:08:33 ◼   ► kind of neat.

01:08:33 ◼   ► It used to be able to go to the developer website and

01:08:35 ◼   ► download an installer, basically.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And you could still--

01:08:38 ◼   ► I think you can get a restore image for Apple Silicon only

01:08:41 ◼   ► to do that.

01:08:42 ◼   ► But that's not what they want you to do.

01:08:44 ◼   ► They want you to go to software update, which is

01:08:47 ◼   ► buried in system settings.

01:08:49 ◼   ► And you got to know to click on the little i in a circle.

01:08:51 ◼   ► Everything's about the little i in a circle.

01:08:55 ◼   ► That lets you pick, hey, I want beta updates.

01:08:57 ◼   ► And importantly, it lets you pick which Apple ID you want

01:09:01 ◼   ► to use as the Apple ID that has a developer account that is

01:09:05 ◼   ► being used to download the thing.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It doesn't have to be a paid developer account anymore.

01:09:08 ◼   ► So you don't have to pay $99 to get access to the betas.

01:09:11 ◼   ► You can have a free developer account.

01:09:12 ◼   ► But the question is, if you're like us old school Mac users

01:09:16 ◼   ► or developers, we have multiple Apple IDs.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Which Apple ID is the one that has a developer account?

01:09:22 ◼   ► And you want to configure that.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Because if you don't, if you're trying to use your real

01:09:26 ◼   ► Apple ID with a beta, but another Apple ID has a

01:09:31 ◼   ► developer account, you'll end up in your other developer ID

01:09:34 ◼   ► in the beta.

01:09:35 ◼   ► You'll be like, but this isn't my Apple ID.

01:09:37 ◼   ► I want to be in my real Apple ID.

01:09:38 ◼   ► But oh, I have to stay in this Apple ID because that's the

01:09:40 ◼   ► one that gets the updates from the beta.

01:09:42 ◼   ► They're two separate things.

01:09:43 ◼   ► You just have to-- again, it's the little tiny i in the

01:09:45 ◼   ► circle, and the stupid system setting interface lets you

01:09:47 ◼   ► pick which Apple ID you want to be the one

01:09:50 ◼   ► that gets the betas.

01:09:51 ◼   ► And that doesn't have to be the same Apple ID as the one

01:09:53 ◼   ► you're actually signed into in Mac OS or whatever.

01:09:55 ◼   ► So I don't know how this works outside of Mac OS, because

01:09:58 ◼   ► I've only done the Mac OS beta.

01:09:59 ◼   ► But I think the new system is a little bit confusing, but

01:10:03 ◼   ► it's better than installing dev profiles,

01:10:05 ◼   ► which is one option.

01:10:06 ◼   ► I think it's maybe not better than downloading installers,

01:10:09 ◼   ► but we'll see.

01:10:10 ◼   ► But just FYI, I don't feel like you're trapped to actually

01:10:13 ◼   ► using your developer Apple ID as your user's Apple ID.

01:10:17 ◼   ► - Indeed.

01:10:18 ◼   ► And then finally, very, very good news.

01:10:21 ◼   ► DP Review was purchased by Gear Patrol.

01:10:23 ◼   ► So they are not going away into the sunset.

01:10:26 ◼   ► They will live on, which is great news.

01:10:29 ◼   ► - Well, it was kind of a shame that they will live on after

01:10:32 ◼   ► like half of their employees bail to get new jobs, which who

01:10:34 ◼   ► could blame them.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Obviously, the price for Gear Patrol is probably lower if

01:10:39 ◼   ► you wait until after the site is declared to be shut down and

01:10:43 ◼   ► half the employees leave.

01:10:44 ◼   ► But they're also getting a less worthy asset, less valuable

01:10:48 ◼   ► asset, because some of the good people who are at DP Review

01:10:51 ◼   ► are no longer there.

01:10:53 ◼   ► All in all, probably not handled the best, but it's

01:10:56 ◼   ► better than it just actually literally dying inside Amazon

01:10:59 ◼   ► and nothing coming of it.

01:11:00 ◼   ► So I'm rooting for its resurrection.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I do wonder if Gear Patrol is actually dedicated to it.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Will they try to hire back some of the people who left to

01:11:09 ◼   ► go elsewhere?

01:11:10 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:11:10 ◼   ► But apparently it will live on to fight another day.

01:11:14 ◼   ► - OK, so Safari 17 has a bunch of new features, a plethora

01:11:19 ◼   ► even, of new features.

01:11:20 ◼   ► But one in particular is very interesting, link tracking

01:11:23 ◼   ► protection.

01:11:24 ◼   ► So my executive summary of this is, you know how you get

01:11:28 ◼   ► those really heinously long URLs whenever you share

01:11:32 ◼   ► something from Instagram or Facebook or something or

01:11:35 ◼   ► Twitter or something like that.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Well, apparently Safari 17 will do its best to strip out

01:11:40 ◼   ► the query string entries that are clogging up those URLs and

01:11:43 ◼   ► leave only the ones behind that matter.

01:11:45 ◼   ► And I haven't tried this myself, but this sounds good.

01:11:49 ◼   ► I'm here for it.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - Like all these blocking and prevention things, it really

01:11:52 ◼   ► depends on how good a job it does.

01:11:54 ◼   ► So it's deleting stuff from your URLs.

01:11:57 ◼   ► So you take a URL and it's going to say like, no, some of

01:11:59 ◼   ► the stuff in this URL we think is being used to track you, so

01:12:01 ◼   ► we're just going to delete it.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Some websites are surely designed so that if you don't

01:12:05 ◼   ► have the tracking information, they don't work right.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And that's crappy.

01:12:08 ◼   ► But other times, I do worry that this thing is going to

01:12:11 ◼   ► delete something from the URL that it thinks is a tracking

01:12:13 ◼   ► parameter but is not.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Because the only way it has to tell is based on the names.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Apparently, Jeff Johnson found that there's a queryparam.wp

01:12:21 ◼   ► list file that contains a list of the URL query parameters

01:12:24 ◼   ► to be removed.

01:12:26 ◼   ► And it currently contains 25 of the usual suspects.

01:12:29 ◼   ► And he lists a bunch of query parameter names.

01:12:33 ◼   ► I do wonder if it can get specific, like, oh, and this

01:12:35 ◼   ► website, this parameter, or if it just looks for any query

01:12:38 ◼   ► parameter named GCLID, which is some Google

01:12:43 ◼   ► thing, apparently.

01:12:44 ◼   ► But yeah, I hate it when ad blocking, privacy, whatever

01:12:48 ◼   ► things cause a website not to work.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Because you're trying to do a thing on the web.

01:12:52 ◼   ► You're trying to order dinner.

01:12:54 ◼   ► You're trying to buy movie tickets.

01:12:55 ◼   ► You're trying to book a reservation.

01:12:58 ◼   ► You click a button to do a thing, and nothing happens.

01:13:02 ◼   ► You're like, is this web page broken?

01:13:04 ◼   ► Is one of my blockers screwing it up?

01:13:06 ◼   ► Same thing when someone sends you a URL and messages.

01:13:09 ◼   ► You click it.

01:13:09 ◼   ► You try to load the thing.

01:13:10 ◼   ► It says, I tried to load it, and it didn't work.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And they're like, well, it works for me.

01:13:13 ◼   ► And I'm like, well, it doesn't work for me.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And little do you know that Safari 17 stripped out a query

01:13:17 ◼   ► parameter that it thought it was for tracking.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And you can always turn off content blockers and blah,

01:13:21 ◼   ► blah, blah.

01:13:21 ◼   ► And I hate that dance.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But I also hate tracking stuff.

01:13:25 ◼   ► So I applaud the effort.

01:13:27 ◼   ► But this is an extremely hard problem,

01:13:28 ◼   ► especially since you have so little information.

01:13:31 ◼   ► You've got a string.

01:13:32 ◼   ► It's shaped as a URL.

01:13:33 ◼   ► It's got query parameters.

01:13:35 ◼   ► You know some names are commonly used for tracking.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Is it OK to delete this?

01:13:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Let's try it.

01:13:40 ◼   ► So I'm a little bit nervous about this feature.

01:13:42 ◼   ► But I'm sure you'll be able to disable it

01:13:44 ◼   ► if you don't like it.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Indeed.

01:13:46 ◼   ► I mean, I agree with everything you said.

01:13:48 ◼   ► But I'm excited.

01:13:49 ◼   ► This hopefully will work really well.

01:13:52 ◼   ► DocKit is a new thing that is coming with, I guess, iOS 17.

01:13:57 ◼   ► There's a WWDC session about it called

01:13:59 ◼   ► Integrate with Motorized iPhone Stands Using DocKit.

01:14:02 ◼   ► And the description begins, "Discover

01:14:04 ◼   ► how DocKit can help your camera app create incredible photo

01:14:06 ◼   ► and video experiences with motorized stands.

01:14:09 ◼   ► We'll show you how your app can automatically track subjects

01:14:11 ◼   ► in live video across a 360-degree field of view,

01:14:14 ◼   ► take direct control of the stand, and blah, blah, blah."

01:14:16 ◼   ► So this sounds pretty cool.

01:14:18 ◼   ► I haven't looked at the session yet.

01:14:20 ◼   ► This is one of those things where I don't personally

01:14:22 ◼   ► think I have a need for this at the moment.

01:14:24 ◼   ► But I could totally see how you could make, like,

01:14:26 ◼   ► an incredible sunrise video with you panning as the sun is

01:14:30 ◼   ► rising or something like that.

01:14:31 ◼   ► I think this could be very, very, very cool.

01:14:34 ◼   ► The integration of this is exactly the thing

01:14:36 ◼   ► they showed in the keynote, which is, hey,

01:14:38 ◼   ► you can use continuity camera and FaceTime with Apple TV now.

01:14:42 ◼   ► And it'll follow you around.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:43 ◼   ► So you're putting your camera by your TV.

01:14:46 ◼   ► I mean, imagine if Apple made a TV set.

01:14:49 ◼   ► But of course, the only tool it has to use

01:14:51 ◼   ► is the center stage, which is just, like, oh,

01:14:53 ◼   ► big, wide, fisheye lens.

01:14:54 ◼   ► And then we crop a portion of it.

01:14:55 ◼   ► But now, if you had one of these docket things integrated

01:14:58 ◼   ► with FaceTime, integrated with Apple TV,

01:15:00 ◼   ► and you had a bunch of kids in front of you

01:15:02 ◼   ► on the couch squirming around, it

01:15:03 ◼   ► could actually turn the camera and use, like, the good camera

01:15:06 ◼   ► and change how the picture is framed by literally changing

01:15:09 ◼   ► how the picture is framed.

01:15:10 ◼   ► Imagine if the docket didn't just rotate but also tilt it

01:15:14 ◼   ► and everything.

01:15:16 ◼   ► This is working towards the idea of just everyone

01:15:18 ◼   ► sits down in front of the TV.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And you can just do FaceTime with the whole family.

01:15:22 ◼   ► And it just makes sure everyone's in the frame

01:15:23 ◼   ► and zooms in on people when they talk.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And it all looks good.

01:15:26 ◼   ► This is a piecemeal way to do it,

01:15:29 ◼   ► supporting continuity camera, having an API

01:15:31 ◼   ► for these third-party things.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Could you actually find a TV that

01:15:35 ◼   ► supports Apple TV, that supports docket, that supports FaceTime,

01:15:38 ◼   ► that supports continuity camera, and put this all together

01:15:40 ◼   ► and in your living room with your iPhone

01:15:43 ◼   ► and your set of cameras so that it works?

01:15:45 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:15:45 ◼   ► It's not exactly an integrated Apple solution.

01:15:47 ◼   ► But it's more of the type of thing that people always

01:15:49 ◼   ► say they want from Apple, which is like a geeky-type endeavor,

01:15:52 ◼   ► where all the pieces are there to do something really cool.

01:15:55 ◼   ► You just got to assemble them yourself.

01:15:58 ◼   ► No, this sounds very, very neat.

01:16:00 ◼   ► And just to be clear, I don't know

01:16:02 ◼   ► what it sounded like when I said it.

01:16:03 ◼   ► But it sounded like Jon was saying docket.

01:16:06 ◼   ► It is dock-kit.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And I might have made the same mistake when I introduced this.

01:16:10 ◼   ► So just to be absolutely clear.

01:16:11 ◼   ► It's two Ks in a row.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Yes.

01:16:12 ◼   ► It's not hover.

01:16:14 ◼   ► It's hover, apparently.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Don't start with that again.