Invites went out with the “Code New Worlds” tagline
WWDC is right around the corner, literally tomorrow as I record this, and it’s largely suspected Apple will finally show of their work on an AR/VR headset.
Apple has specifically sent invites to AR / VR developers and journalists for the event
Norman Chan from “Tested” and Ian Hamilton a VRJournalist from “UploadVR”
Shipments of the possibly $3K headsets are expected to be low
Estimates from sources like TrendForce suspect Apple might ship as few as 100,000 units the first year.
Apple themselves have reportedly capped first year production at 300K units.
In December Ming-Chi Kuo downgraded his first year estimates for Apple’s headset from 1.5M units in the first year to just 500K. Mark Gurman has claimed Apple hopes to sell 900K in the first year.
But Gurman has also guesstimated one unit per retail store per day which would be just 180K units.
For perspective Sony has reportedly sold only 270,000 Playstation VR 2 units since the announced that product in February of 2023 (they were hoping to sell 2 million this year)
The high price tag lis likely due to the design and hardware specs:
Analyst Wayne Ma claims it’s, “the most complicated hardware product Apple has ever created
Compact size, curved components (including the first bent motherboard), light weight, etc. Very difficult assembly. Curved glass could also be more delicate
Aluminum frame and soft fabric. Strap is said to use an Apple watch band like material
“Ski-goggle” like design with a “digital crown” to transition between AR / VR modes
Expected to have an M2 level chip
Dual high-resolution 4K micro OLED displays with up to 3,000 pixels per inch
Specs according to Ross Young
Micro OLED screen technology
1.41-inch display (measured diagonally)
4000 pixels per inch (target)
More than 5000 nits of brightness (target)
Eye and had tracking through dozens of cameras and sensors.
Look at an item on the screen and “pinch” to “click”
Will offer the ability to purchase prescription lenses that will magnetically clip to the headset
Word separate battery pack that is attached via a MagSafe style connector to the headset
Specialized apps and multi-tasking. iPad apps may be adapted to work, though likely a stop-gap until developers create dedicated version
Expected to have a focus on “experiences” for video watching and health and fitness. Also a special version of FaceTime.
Also expected to focus on gaming.
Hello Games’ founder Sean Murray, the company that makes “No Man Sky”, sent out a couple cryptic Apple tweets.
The game was finally just released for Mac, but also does support VR
There was also a cryptic tweet the week from Beat Games co-founder Jaroslav Beck. Makers of the VR game Beat Saber
There have reportedly been several contenders for the name of the OS
As far as we know there are at least five different names trademarked through shell companies
xrOS, realityOS, realOS, realityProOS, and xrProOS
Apple, according to Bloomberg and other sources, has supposedly decided on xrOS, for eXtended Reality OS
xrOS is believed to have an iOS-like interface
The “other” WWDC stuff
All the OS updates. iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, macOS
There could be several new Macs including the first M3 Macs
It’s possible we could see the rumored 15-inch MacBook Air, but it will likely come with the same CPU options (M2 Pro / M2 Max) as the current MacBook Air line.
iMacs could be a candidate, rumors Apple wants M3 in those, but I think they might wait.
A MacPro seems like a ways off still, if ever.
Strongest contender, for WWDC anyway, IMHO would be an M2 Max / M2 Ultra update to the Mac Studio, something hinted at by Mark Gurman
The Ultra will have support for 24 processing cores,6 high-performance cores and eight efficiency cores
Up to 60 graphics cores
Support 64, 128, and 192GB of memory
Apple could drop the “Hey” part of Siri’s trigger mechanism according to Mark Gurman
Apple is also working on deeper Siri integrations with third-party apps and services
New OS features expected at WWDC
According to Mark Gurman iOS 17 could have a new "smart-home display” when docked and powered and in a horizontal orientation
Similar to the Apple Watch’s “nightstand mode”, but with more functionality
It would display updated data from widgets on the display, like calendar appointments, weather data, notifications, and more
The report seem to indicate this is for iPhone at first and Apple is working on similar functionality for iPadOS but it might not be ready for a reveal at WWDC.
Could go along with rumored that Apple is working on a low-cost tablet that specifically functions as a HomeKit hub and smart-home control surface that could be magnetically attached to your wall.
iPhone 16s go vertical
There are a couple of new rumors surrounding the iPhone 16 models and both are related to the “verticality” of the device.
First we have the height of the Pro models possibly increasing due to new display sizes according to analyst Ross Young
He claims the displays in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be 6.3 inch and 6.9 inch respectively
Leaker Sonny Dickson told 9to5Mac that Apple could brand the larger 6.9-inch Pro Max the “Ultra” (so not lear if this would mean a 3rd “Pro” model)
The larger of the two displays is said to be about 5mm taller and 0.5mm wider than the current iPhone 14 Pro Max
This would allow Apple to fit a periscope lens on both Pro models, where only the iPhone 15 Pro Max is expected to have that feature this year.
Then there’s a rumor that starting with the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus models net year Apple could change the two camera lenses to a vertical orientation, vs the current diagonal design.
Basically returning to the way it was back on the iPhone 12 models
iPhone 15 models are expected to be Apple’s first to use USB-C ports instead of lightning
There’s also news that they will likely be the first to support the new Qi2 wireless charging standard, which is based on Apple’s MagSafe
This means, that you will be able to use ANY Qi2 charger with iPhone15 models and get full 15W speeds, something currently limited to Apple’s MagSafe chargers only on iPhone 14 models.
Apple “My Photo Stream” shuts down
Emails went out to customers who still use the service and they will need to transition to iCloud Photos before July 26th, 2023
The service allowed you to upload the last 30 days of images (up to 1,000) to iCloud and sync those across all your devices
Apple recommends users who want to have their images on a particular device save them to the Photo Library on that device prior to July 26.
Just go into the Photo Stream album on your Mac or device
Select the images you want to save to that device and use the share button to save them to your library. On Mac, you can drag them to the main Photo Library
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Feedback, commentary, opinions
Controlling iOS while running
A number of you mentioned just using Siri
George wrote in to mention the “Voice Control” accessibility settings
Settings Accessibility > Voice Control
I’d recommend a couple of settings at first
Show Confirmation ON
Show Hints ON
Set-up an overlay. I like item numbers or item names
Attention Aware ON (will only be active when looking at your device)
You can tap on “Customize Commands” to view all the commands.
You can do simple ones like “Tap” and the name of the element or “Go Home”
But there are advanced commands to go things like start a drag and drop or make advanced text selections and edits.
You can add your own commands
These can be specific to an app, so you can attach a custom gesture to a specific app
I would also recommend you set this up and only enable it when you need to, say like during your workout, and then disable it after.
Adding “Voice Control” to the Accessibility Shortcut is an easy way to toggle this feature
Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut
Tap on “Voice Control” to add it.
You can reorder the menu how you want it.
Now a triple-click of the side button will bring up the Accessibility Shortcut menu and you can easily toggle Voice Control on or off.
The death of LISA
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of history. And loving both Apple and history, combining the two is even better
Not sure how much you may or may not know about the predecessor to the Mac, the LISA
It was the first project under Steve Jobs that was using the GUI technology that they got from XEROX PARC.
It was a $10K business computer and also a flop
During development, Steve was kicked off the project and it was then he took over the Macintosh team and, allegedly sabotaged the LISA project.
When Apple officially killed the LISA, which only sold about 80K units, they had about 7000 left in inventory
Those were given on consignment to a Apple Authorized Dealer in Logan Utah call, Sun Remarketing, Inc. run by Bob Cook
They refurbished them, developed a new OS based on the Mac Plus, HD interface cards for larger hard drives, support for 800 K floppies, and screen modification ROMs to make them look more Mac like in the GUI.
They remarketed it as the Lisa Professional and sold them starting at under $1000 in 1988
He had about 3K machines left in 1989 when Apple called and said they wanted their machines back.
They secretly sent out trucks and collected them, drove them to the local landfill and buried them
They tried to hide it from the press, but a local paper got tipped off. There were representative from Apple at the site said to be there to keep things secret (allegedly ex-military personnel)
Sort of feels like the Atari ET cartridge burial in New Mexico in 1983
The reason Apple gave was that it was cheaper to do that and take the tax loss write off.
Apple likely just wanted the whole embarrassing chapter of their history wiped out.
I had always heard this story as sort of Apple “lore” and no one at Apple has ever officially commented on it.
The Verge posted a short [Lisa Documentary](https://youtu.be/rZjbNWgsDt8) film about it on YouTube and it’s a great 30min watch for Apple fans.
Time Machine format confusion
Jose wrote in to ask a question about an anomaly surrounding the formatting of his Time Machine backup drive,
He has a 2TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini SSD and used Disk Utility to format it as APFS Encrypted
After checking the Time Machine drive later in Disk Utility he noted that it’s format was listed as “APFS Volume • APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted)”, but he had not selected “Case-sensitive”
He also checked another Time Machine drive and it too was “case-sensitive”
It’s not 100% clear, but from my research, I think that Time Machine may force “case-sensitive” formatting.
The reason is to protect backup files from inadvertently being overwritten if Time Machine backup a drive that is formatted as “case-sensitive”
Say you had a drive that was formatted as “case-sensitive” but the Time Machine was not case-sensitive. If the case sensitive origin drive has files called File.txt, file.txt, and FILE.txt when the Time Machine backup ran it would only backup one of those files. The other versions would be overwritten.
A couple quick tips
Robert has one for iOS screen recording
Once you start a screen record on iOS it is typically stopped by tapping the red recording icon at the top of the screen, or the dynamic island if you have that.
The issue is, that ends up in your recording. You can edit it out, but that adds steps.
Robert discovered that if your iPhone goes to sleep during the screen recording that recording stops, but the file is still saved to your Photos.
So to stop recording you can simply press the side button and put your device to sleep.
Eric does a lot of screenshots on his Mac that he shares to help folks with their Macs.
If you do a lot of these on the Mac you can end up with a lot of extra screenshot files on your desktop.
If you don’t want to “save” the file you can add the “Control” button to the screenshot shortcut and it will save the file to clipboard instead of your save screenshot location
Click “Options…” and you can select various “default” save locations. You also have “Other locations…” (I setup a “Screenshots” folder in my Home folder).
There are a ton of other cool screenshot options, like changing the timer delay, showing the cursor, etc.
