Month: June 2024

The headset is already changing disabled users’ lives.

CompuScoop Staff June 13, 2024 1

In her childhood bedroom, Maxine Collard had a PC connected to a cathode-ray tube monitor so massive it bowed her desk into a smile that grew deeper every year. Collard has oculocutaneous albinism, which means that her hair is naturally bleach white, her complexion maximally fair, and she has uncorrectably low visual acuity with limited depth perception. In order to see the screen, she had to crane her neck until her face was two inches from the monitor.

When Collard was in middle school, her mother bought an iMac for the family. Collard spent hours messing around on the new machine, her nose pressed almost to the glass. One day, deep in the computer’s accessibility settings, she discovered that if she held down the control key while spinning the mouse’s scroll wheel, she could instantaneously zoom the entire screen to whatever magnification level she wanted. There was a rudimentary magnifier app on her Windows computer, but she found the interface difficult to use, and the low-res image on the zoomed-in PC screen, she said, was pixelated, hard to read, “disgusting.” Her experience on the iMac, which allowed her to magnify the entire screen into a much clearer image, came as a revelation.

Earlier this year, Collard had a similar aha moment when she tried the Apple Vision Pro for the first time. Some critics of the AVP were skeptical of a device that pressed two high-resolution micro-OLED screens within millimeters of one’s eyes for hours at a time. But to Collard, the ability to (as she put it) “strap an iPad to my face” was instantly appealing.

Collard is now in her sixth year of a combined Ph.D.-M.D. neuroscience degree at UC San Francisco. When I visited her at her lab in late May, she showed me her workspace: a standing cubicle in a small hive of carrels she shared with her colleagues, a pair of 27-inch monitors on her desk. Zooming her entire screen has its liabilities in a social setting like this: One day she was reading her DMs on Slack, magnified so much that the words were two inches tall. A co-worker sent her a spicy message, something she would have preferred to keep private, or at least in 11-point type, but instead it was broadcast for all her colleagues to see.

After she got an AVP, she had unprecedented control over her visual environment. She took her lab’s Slack channels and enlarged them to the size of a refrigerator, and set them off to her right. Then she opened her code editor and set it in front of her — inches from her eyes, like usual, but five times the size of her external monitors, and her posture was ramrod straight — no more craning. Finally, she opened a browser window, stretched it to the size of a door frame, and loaded the documentation for a tricky data-analysis function she could never remember, and set it off to her left.

Collard has strabismus — her eyes don’t align the way typical eyes do — which would confuse most eye-tracking algorithms, but in the AVP’s accessibility menu, she turned on “single-eye tracking,” so the device wouldn’t get confused by eyes that point in different directions. The device can lessen the effects of her nystagmus — involuntary eye “wiggles” that have confounded eye-tracking devices she’s used in the past.

The AVP has a range of accessibility features for other disabilities as well: Blind users can use VoiceOver, a screen reader that will speak text, using a custom set of hand gestures to navigate through apps. People with mobility disabilities can make selections through a variety of alternative methods: with their voice, or using a switch or joystick (easier for some users with motor disabilities), or with a feature called Dwell Control, which allows a user to make a selection simply by “dwelling” their gaze on an item. With sound actions, a user can make a selection with a custom noise (like a cluck or a pop). In lieu of eye gaze, the pointer can be controlled with one’s head, wrist, or finger, and most of the accessibility features users are familiar with from other Apple products — reduced motion, color filters for color-blindness, and hearing-device support — are included.

Because of her reliance on large monitors, Collard could never comfortably join her colleagues to debug code in a coffee shop or in the shared kitchen one level down from their sixth-floor lab. That’s all changed with the AVP. “As a disabled person,” she wrote in a blog post, “the ability to finally sit back with my feet up on a bench out in the sun while working on my laptop — or more accurately, while working on a 30-foot-wide 4K screen floating in exactly the perfect ergonomic position, one that I can reposition anywhere I want it to be in any moment — is the answer to decades of prayers to the accessibility gods.”

Mission Bay was warm and breezy in late May, and Collard led me down to Koret Quad, where she now loved to sit and work. Inside her headset, a code editor the size of a garden shed floated above the grass. As she worked, she saw the window begin to shimmer and a shadowy figure troubled the lines of code. Then a man, smiling and looking right at her, strode through the window of her workspace and stopped. This sort of thing happens to Collard whenever she takes her AVP out in public — she has caught numerous people taking surreptitious selfies with her in the frame.

“Hi there,” she said preemptively to the smiling man, who was clearly drawn by the novelty of seeing an Apple Vision Pro en plein air. He looked at Collard and said, in a lightly mocking tone, “How’s that working out for you?”

Collard has struggled with her identity as a disabled person, resisting alien-seeming assistive tools like the monocular lenses that low-vision specialists tried to get her to use in school. But she sees the AVP as a liberatory device, and no arch tech skeptic on the quad could dampen that feeling. She fixed his gaze with her digital SeeThrough avatar eyes and answered him with emphatic cheer: “Really great, in fact!”

To read the rest of the New York Magazine article, click here.

77% of all active iPhones are now running iOS 17

CompuScoop Staff June 13, 2024 1

How’s iOS adoption going? On the App Store on June 9, the day before WWDC, 77% of all active iPhones were found to be now running Apple’s current iOS 17.

• 77% of all iPhones were running iOS 17.
• 68% of all iPads were running iPadOS 17.
• 86% of all iPhones introduced in the last four years were updated to iOS 17.
• 77% of all iPads introduced in the last four years were updated to iPadOS 17.

On May 30 of last year, Apple published iOS 16 adoption figures, saying 81% of all iPhones had been updated to iOS 16 at that time, so iOS 17’s adoption peak of 77% of all iPhones as of 10 days later this year indicates that iOS 17 adoption is a bit lacking when compared to iOS 16.

Apple TV+ unveils trailer for all-new sci-fi coming-of-age series ‘Me,’ premiering July 12th

Apple Inc June 12, 2024 1

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Today, Apple TV+ released the trailer for the upcoming live-action sci-fi family series “Me,” an elevated cinematic coming-of-age story from Barry L. Levy (“Vantage Point”) premiering globally on Friday, July 12th.

“Me” follows a 12-year-old kid named Ben who is in the throes of middle school (complete with bullies, crushes and school dances!) as he adjusts to a newly blended family AND the realization that he has super powers. Throughout the 10-episode season, Ben goes on a journey of self-discovery and learns what having super powers truly means. He finds an ally in his stepsister, Max, who helps him harness these powers and uncover the secrets behind the mysteries and tragedies of his community … all while he tries to come to terms with what it means to be Ben.

The series stars Lucian-River Chauhan (“Encounter”) as Ben Vasani, Abigail Pniowsky (“Arrival”) as Max Davis, Dilshad Vadsaria (“Second Chance”) as Elizabeth Vasani, Amanda Reid (“Miss Juneteenth”) as Carter Kennedy and Jessy Yates (“Pulse”) as Morgan, with guest stars Kyle Howard (“Orange County”) as Phil Davis and Sharif Atkins (“NCIS: Hawai‘i”) as Darren Kennedy.

“Me” is an Apple Original created by Levy, who also serves as showrunner, executive producer and series writer alongside Michael Dowse, Amy Welsh-Hanning and Eben Russell. Aaron Carew is the supervising producer. Dowse also directs all 10 episodes.

“Me” joins an exciting slate of new offerings for all-ages on Apple TV+ this summer, featuring animated adventure trilogy “WondLa,” hailing from Skydance Animation and based on the New York Times bestselling book series “The Search for WondLa” by Tony DiTerlizzi, premiering June 28; the first-ever television adaptation of the cult classic film, “Time Bandits,” starring Lisa Kudrow, premiering July 24; the all-new star-studded revival “Yo Gabba GabbaLand!” inspired by the celebrated Emmy-nominated cultural phenomenon “Yo Gabba Gabba!” premiering August 9; and the second season of beloved animated series “Frog and Toad,” based on the Caldecott and Newbery Honor-winning books, which premiered on May 31; with additional titles to be announced.

Award-winning offerings for kids and families now streaming globally on Apple TV+ include celebrated live-action animated hybrid special, “The Velveteen Rabbit,” the Academy Award and BAFTA Award-winning animated short film “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” Oscar and BAFTA Award-winning animated film “Wolfwalkers,” BAFTA Award and Humanitas Prize-winning “El Deafo,” BAFTA Award-winning “Lovely Little Farm,” “Duck & Goose,” “Get Rolling With Otis,” Spin Master Entertainment’s “Sago Mini Friends,” GLAAD Media Award-nominated “Pinecone & Pony,” “Frog and Toad,” The Jim Henson Company’s Emmy Award-winning “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock,” “Harriet the Spy” and “Slumberkins,” Sesame Workshop’s “Helpsters,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt, HITRECORD and Bento Box Entertainment’s “Wolfboy and the Everything Factory,” Jack McBrayer and Angela C. Santomero’s Emmy Award-nominated “Hello, Jack! The Kindness Show,” Peanuts and WildBrain’s Emmy Award-nominated “Snoopy in Space,” “The Snoopy Show,” Scholastic’s “Eva the Owlet” and Peabody and Emmy Award-winning series “Stillwater.” Live-action offerings include Bonnie Hunt’s DGA and WGA Award-nominated “Amber Brown,” DGA Award-winning “Best Foot Forward,” “Surfside Girls,” WGA Award-winning “Life By Ella,” Sesame Workshop and Sinking Ship’s Emmy Award-winning “Ghostwriter,” Emmy Award and Environmental Media Association Award-winning “Jane,” and Scholastic’s “Puppy Place.”

Also included are “Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth,” the Emmy Award-winning television event based on the New York Times bestselling book and TIME Best Book of the Year by Oliver Jeffers, and specials from Peanuts and WildBrain including Emmy Award-nominated “Snoopy Presents: It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown,” “Snoopy Presents: Lucy’s School,” Humanitas and Emmy Award-nominated “Snoopy Presents: To Mom (and Dad), With Love,” “Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie,” “Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin,” Emmy Award-winning “Snoopy Presents: Who Are You, Charlie Brown?” and “Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne.”

Apple TV+ offers premium, compelling drama and comedy series, feature films, groundbreaking documentaries, and kids and family entertainment, and is available to watch across all of a user’s favorite screens. After its launch on November 1, 2019, Apple TV+ became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service in its debut. To date, Apple Original films, documentaries and series have earned 494 wins and 2,163 award nominations and counting, including multi-Emmy Award-winning comedy “Ted Lasso” and historic Oscar Best Picture winner “CODA.”

watchOS 11 brings powerful health and fitness insights, and even more personalization and connectivity

Apple Inc June 11, 2024 1

June 10, 2024

PRESS RELEASE

watchOS 11 brings powerful health and fitness insights, and even more personalization and connectivity

Introducing the Vitals app, training load, new ways to tailor Activity rings, intelligent customization of the Smart Stack and Photos face, and the Translate app on Apple Watch

Cupertino, California Apple today previewed watchOS 11, with features for Apple Watch that build on its leading sensor technology, advanced algorithms, and science-based approach to offer breakthrough insights into users’ health and fitness, and more personalization than ever. The new Vitals app surfaces key health metrics and context to help users make more informed day-to-day decisions, and the ability to measure training load offers a game-changing new experience when working out for improved fitness and performance. Activity rings are even more customizable, the Smart Stack and Photos face use intelligence to feature more individualization, and Apple Watch and the Health app on iPhone and iPad offer additional support for users who are pregnant. Check In, the Translate app, and new capabilities for the double tap gesture come to Apple Watch for added connectivity and convenience.

“watchOS is the world’s most advanced wearable operating system, supporting Apple Watch users throughout their day to stay healthy, active, and connected,” said David Clark, Apple’s senior director of watchOS Engineering. “This fall, watchOS 11 makes Apple Watch an even more essential companion by offering users additional actionable insights into their health and fitness, more personalization to fit their unique needs, and new ways to stay connected while on the go.”

The Vitals App Surfaces Greater Insights into Key Health Metrics

Apple Watch allows users to measure important health metrics during sleep: heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, sleep duration, and blood oxygen. With watchOS 11, the new Vitals app gives users a way to quickly view these key health metrics and gain better context when it comes to their health. Apple Watch analyzes these metrics so users can now check in on their daily health status and explore noteworthy metrics at a glance, and easily see when they are out of a user’s typical range. When two or more metrics are out of their typical range, users can receive a notification, along with a message detailing how the changes in these specific metrics may be linked to other aspects of their life, such as elevation changes, alcohol consumption, or even illness.

Apple’s health features are grounded in science and developed with input from clinical experts. To inform out-of-range classifications and notifications, Vitals uses an algorithm developed using real-world data from the Apple Heart and Movement Study, research that aims to advance the understanding of heart health and physical activity.

Additional Support During Pregnancy

watchOS 11, iOS 18, and iPadOS 18 offer additional support for pregnant users to reflect changes in their physical and mental health during this important time. When users log a pregnancy in the Health app on iPhone or iPad, the Cycle Tracking app on Apple Watch will show their gestational age and allow them to log symptoms for things frequently experienced during pregnancy. They will also be prompted to review things like their high heart rate notification threshold, since heart rate tends to increase during pregnancy.

In the Health app on iPhone or iPad, pregnant users can also choose to be reminded to take a mental health assessment on a monthly basis, as people can be at a higher risk for conditions like depression during and after pregnancy. Walking Steadiness, measured by iPhone, can also alert users more quickly of potential fall risk during the third trimester of pregnancy, since the risk often increases during that stage.

A Powerful New Understanding of Training Load

watchOS 11 introduces training load, an insightful new way to measure how the intensity and duration of workouts is impacting a user’s body over time. Training load helps users understand the strain on their body from workouts over the last seven days compared to the last 28 days. These insights can help users make informed decisions about their training each day, particularly when preparing for an event — whether it is their first 5K, a bike race, or a marathon.

To measure intensity, a new effort rating will be available after each workout to track how difficult it was on a scale from 1 to 10. Popular cardio-based workout types will employ an innovative new algorithm to automatically generate an estimated effort rating, using a combination of data sources like age, height, and weight, alongside workout data like GPS, heart rate, and elevation. Users can also manually adjust this estimate to take into account other factors such as stress or soreness. For workouts where an automatic estimate is not provided — like strength training — users can still enter an effort rating at the end of each workout.

Apple Watch will establish a 28-day training load, a weighted average taking into account both the effort ratings and duration of users’ workouts over this period. In the Activity app, users can see how their training load for the most recent seven days compares to their 28-day training load, classified as well below, below, steady, above, or well above. This helps indicate if the current strain on their body is ramping up, staying the same, or easing off so they can adjust their training for the best results. Additional information in the Fitness app on iPhone further details the possible impact on their fitness if they continue to train at that current level, like potential changes in fitness or risk of injury.

A user’s daily health status and ability to train can be intertwined, so training load can be viewed alongside information from the Vitals app in the Activity app on Apple Watch or the Fitness app on iPhone. Users can also view their training load within the Vitals app.

More Customizable Activity Rings and Fitness App

Every day, Activity rings keep Apple Watch users motivated to sit less, move more, and get some exercise — and with watchOS 11, they’re even more customizable. Whether users are planning a rest day during their training, have an injury, or just need a day off, they now have the ability to pause their rings for a day, week, month, or more — without affecting their award streaks. Users can also customize their Activity ring goals by the day of the week, so the rings provide the right amount of motivation at the right moments.

Additionally, the Fitness app on iPhone offers users the ability to customize the Summary tab to see exactly what they want to see, including new metrics for workouts like running, hiking, swimming, and mindfulness.

Apple Fitness+ has been redesigned in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and tvOS 18 to help users make the most of its robust library, stay motivated, and keep consistent with their fitness routine. Updates include a personalized For You space, Explore and Library spaces, search features, and enhanced awards.

The Smart Stack and Photos Face Add Personalization

Apple Watch offers a variety of ways for users to customize their experience, and updates in watchOS 11 make Apple Watch more personalized and convenient than ever.

The Smart Stack is designed to help users quickly access important information from any watch face, and in watchOS 11, it is even more intelligent. New widgets including Shazam, Photos, Distance, and more are now available. Additionally, the Smart Stack can suggest widgets based on time, date, location, daily routines, and more so it is even simpler to access features on Apple Watch when a user needs them. For example, the new severe weather alerts widget can appear before a thunderstorm. New interactive widgets allow users to interact with an app directly from the Smart Stack, and Live Activities is also now available on Apple Watch within the Smart Stack.

In watchOS 11, the Photos watch face can help a user select their best photo options by quickly analyzing thousands of photos using machine learning and making recommendations based on aesthetics, composition, and even facial expressions. Then, a custom algorithm finds the best composition by optimizing for the subject’s position within the frame and creating a sense of depth. Users can further personalize the face with time sizes, layouts, font choices, and more, and the Photos face now offers Dynamic mode so users can be delighted by a new image every time they raise their wrist.

Even More Convenience and Ways to Stay Connected

To help users feel even more connected and safe, Check In is now available on Apple Watch, including during workouts. Whether users are heading out on an early morning run or to a late-night gym session, they can access Check In directly within the Workout app so a friend or family member can keep an eye out for their workout to end. Users can also start a Check In from Messages, like they can on iPhone.

The Translate app also comes to Apple Watch, so users can access translation for one of 20 supported languages directly on their wrist. With the new intelligence of the Smart Stack, Apple Watch can automatically offer a suggested Translate app widget when users are traveling to a location with a language that is different from their Apple Watch. And Translate now provides romanization, the pronunciation for languages using the Latin alphabet.

Additionally, the double tap gesture can now be used to scroll through any app — like Messages, Calendar, or Weather — making it even easier to interact with Apple Watch with one hand.

Additional updates in watchOS 11 include:

The Workout app offers even more workout types that can track distance using enhancements in GPS positioning, including Soccer, American Football, Australian Football, Outdoor Hockey, Lacrosse, Downhill Skiing, Cross Country Skiing, Snowboarding, Golf, Outdoor Rowing, and more. Users can also see their route maps for more workout types.

Custom Workouts can now be used for Pool Swims, allowing users to customize an interval-based workout with support for sets of work and recovery, and haptics to signal it is time to move on to the next interval. Across any Custom Workout, a new Up Next workout view can show what remains in the current interval and provide a snapshot of the upcoming interval.

Apple Maps offers hikes for all U.S. national parks, which can be saved to Apple Watch and accessed offline with turn-by-turn guidance, even without an iPhone nearby. Users can also create their own walking routes within the Maps app on iPhone and save the route, so they can later navigate it with just their Apple Watch.

Summarized notifications, powered by Apple Intelligence, will be forwarded from iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max to Apple Watch.¹

Enhanced ticketing improves information provided to users on tickets in Apple Wallet, such as when the venue opens and when the show starts. A Live Activity will start at the event so users can see their seats and other important information at the top of the Smart Stack.

With Tap to Cash, users will be able to send and receive Apple Cash by simply holding their Apple Watch near another Apple Watch or iPhone.

New Tools for Developers

watchOS 11 includes new APIs that allow developers to take advantage of the increased intelligence and capabilities of the Smart Stack, and the magical experience of the double tap gesture.

Developers can incorporate relevancy cues like time and date to have important information from their app appear at just the right time in the Smart Stack, and can now add capabilities like interactivity to their widgets. Live Activities will automatically show up in the Smart Stack, so users can see updates in the moment, like when an order is ready at Panera Bread or a flight’s gate has changed with Flighty. Developers can use an API to customize how a Live Activity surfaces on Apple Watch.

Additionally, the new Double Tap API allows developers to define actions within apps that users can complete with just one hand, such as logging their baby’s time asleep on Sprout’s Baby Tracker app.

Privacy

Privacy is fundamental in the design and development across all of Apple’s features. When a user’s device is locked with a passcode, Touch ID, or Face ID, all of their health and fitness data in the Health app — other than Medical ID — is encrypted. Any Health data backed up to iCloud is encrypted both in transit and on Apple servers. When using iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS with the default two-factor authentication and a passcode, Health app data synced to iCloud is encrypted end-to-end, meaning that Apple does not have the key to decrypt the data and therefore cannot read it.

Availability

The developer beta of watchOS 11 is available to Apple Developer Program members at developer.apple.com starting today. A public beta will be available to watchOS users next month at beta.apple.com. watchOS 11 will be available this fall as a free software update for Apple Watch Series 6 or later paired with iPhone Xs or later, running iOS 18. Some features may not be available in all regions or all languages, or on all devices. Features are subject to change. For more information, visit apple.com/watchos/watchos-preview.

About Apple Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV+. Apple’s more than 150,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth and to leaving the world better than we found it.

Apple Intelligence is free for users, and will be available in beta as part of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia this fall in U.S. English. Some features, software platforms, and additional languages will come over the course of the next year. Apple Intelligence will be available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPad and Mac with M1 and later. For more information, visit apple.com/apple-intelligence.

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