One of the greatest strengths of Apple’s product line is its ability for interplay. Not only do its devices work closely with each other, but features that begin life on one platform often make their way to others. Touch ID, for example, started on the iPhone before jumping to iPad and Mac models. The same goes for Retina and True Tone displays. Heck, Apple silicon began as part of Apple’s mobile efforts and now powers its entire lineup.
As demonstrated by the proceeding, this shift tends to happen especially with devices at the more cutting-edge end of Apple’s portfolio. No surprise, really, given that those tend to be the places that the company is investing the most time, money, and resources in pushing the technological envelope.
Of course, the latest in cutting-edge tech from Apple these days is none other than the Vision Pro. It’s chock-full of expensive, complex technology and frankly, it would be a bigger shock if none of its advancements ever made their way to other Apple products. Now that the Vision Pro has been in the wild for a couple weeks, it’s a bit easier to figure out which applications might actually make sense on Apple’s other products.
By now the reviews are out, the first adopters have received their devices, and anybody who wants a demo of the future of spatial computing can walk into an Apple Store and try Apple’s headset.
But it’s worth remembering throughout all of this that the Vision Pro is—hopefully—more than just a gimmicky device; it’s a brand new platform that’s going to evolve and change as it makes contact with the real world. There are bound to be shortcomings, places where third-party apps will eventually fill in gaps, and areas where Apple will continue to innovate and improve, even before a new version of the hardware inevitably comes out.
Case in point: there are a handful of places where Apple has spent very little time talking about the Vision Pro’s capabilities—in some cases because those capabilities are limited or simply aren’t present at all. If you look closer, there’s often a very clear reason why that’s so, but it also means that there’s clearly room for Apple to make forays into new arenas as the platform develops.
But though I’ve continued to use the Bolt since then, I’ve become keenly aware that its reliance on Bluetooth as its wireless connectivity of choice is letting down the side. Fundamentally, Bluetooth just isn’t the right choice for a smart lock: it’s not inherently designed for proximity and it’s always been temperamental. For better or worse, that lack of reliability meant that, for me, the Bolt has ended up being little more than a lock of average intelligence.
In the meantime, smart lock technology has moved on. Fortunately, Level hasn’t been standing still either. Enter the Level Lock+, an upgraded version of Level’s flagship smart lock which, in addition to Bluetooth, has added NFC, enabling support for Apple’s home key standard. That felt like a good enough reason for me to check it out, and Level kindly provided me with a review unit to put through its paces.
The Lock+ essentially replaces both the Level Lock and Level Lock – Touch Edition, providing a single model with all the bells and whistles. No surprise, all those bells and whistles come at a price: the Level Lock+ retails for $349, though that includes the Connect Wi-Fi bridge as part of the package (more on which in a bit).
Unlike the Bolt, the Level Lock+ is a complete replacement for your existing deadbolt, complete with keyway and turn paddle. But like the Bolt, the Lock+ excels by not standing out: if you don’t tell anyone that it’s a smart lock, literally nobody will ever know. Level offers the Lock+ in four finishes to match those of common door hardware: Matte Black, Satin Chrome, Satin Nickel, and Polished Brass. I opted for the last, which blends in nicely with my existing door hardware.
In addition to the lock and installation hardware (which includes two strike plates of different sizes and a longer cap for the bolt to adjust to different door sizes), the Lock+ package bundles a CR2 battery to power the motor, a pair of keys, and a pair of NFC key fobs.
A corollary to this point to keep in mind is that Apple is making these changes because it has to under EU law. It’s clear from the tone of the company’s press release and our conversations with its representatives that they strongly believe the changes are bad for the security and privacy of its users. By extension, it’s also clear that Apple doesn’t think the benefits to users imposed by the EU’s regulations outweigh those privacy and security tradeoffs. And that, right there, is where reasonable people can differ and what will continue to fuel this debate for a long time.
This issue is complex and far from over: the EU still has to respond to Apple’s proposal before we know exactly what the final rules will look like. John’s examination is very thorough and a must-read for understanding exactly what’s going on here from an Apple strategic level, as well as the dust and bolts of what the company is proposing.
If you’re going to take away anything from this whole episode, I think the most important point is this isn’t a case where either Apple or the EU are wholly on the side of right. Apple may very well care about the security of its users, but it also wants to protect its profit cut from the App Store and the use of its platform. The EU may want to curtail the reach of big technology companies when it comes to their citizens’ best interests, but it also is a large organization that doesn’t entirely understand what’s feasible from a technological perspective and has its own ideological axes to grind. It’s always imperative to interrogate where an argument stems from and who stands to gain.
However, I think Apple needs to go one step further in their next step and add timestamps to Apple Podcasts, a long-overdue feature that’d enable users to share links to individual moments within a podcast, directly to a specific point in the transcript.
Similar to what’s already now available for Transcripts, listeners could tap on a paragraph, seek to the beginning of a sentence, and the use the Share sheet to not only “Copy” the text, but “Copy link at timestamp” – something I’m surprised didn’t come along with this feature.
This is a great idea and frankly, I’m kind of surprised that Apple hasn’t offered this feature already. As Matt points out, it’s in a couple of the company’s other apps, and third party options like Overcast provide this kind of functionality. Sharing a podcast episode is good, but sometimes you want to tell somebody “Hey, listen to this part right here.” Having a way to quickly and easily send that excerpt to someone seems like a no-brainer.
There’s a lot to unpack in Apple’s announcements about its changes for the European Union, and we’ll certainly be digging into that, but the company actually announced another big change that will apply across the globe:
Today, Apple is introducing new options for how apps globally can deliver in-app experiences to users, including streaming games and mini-programs. Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog.
Apps will also be able to provide enhanced discovery opportunities for streaming games, mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins that are found within their apps.
Additionally, mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins will be able to incorporate Apple’s In-App Purchase system to offer their users paid digital content or services for the first time, such as a subscription for an individual chatbot.
As you might recall, this was a source of contention between Apple and Microsoft back in 2020, when the latter was working on an iOS version of its GamePass service, but ended up not being able to release it because of App Store rules.
It certainly seems as though that (along with competing services from Sony and Nvidia) will now be possible, though so far I haven’t seen any comment from those companies about whether or not they plan to bring them to market.
Forty years. In the world of technology, where many devices seem to evaporate after only a matter of months, lasting for a decade is an accomplishment—but four of them? It’s nearly unheard of.
And yet today marks the fortieth anniversary of the Macintosh, a device that—while it has certainly seen its ups and downs over the intervening years—has nevertheless been in constant production since that day Apple co-founder Steve Jobs first took the wraps off it back in 1984.
In that time it’s run on four different processor architectures and two major operating systems, making it bit of a computer of Theseus. It’s seen challengers rise and fall, been threatened with extinction more than once, and yet for all of that has emerged in recent years revitalized and stronger than ever.
Amongst Apple’s products, the iPhone may be more popular, the iPad more futuristic, and the Apple Watch a more impressive feat of engineering, but none have the emotional resonance of the 40-year-old pioneer of the personal computer. Ask any user who’s been around long enough, and no doubt their own personal story is intertwined with the Mac.
There’s been talk inside the paper even further back about the possibilities of expanding into games. About a decade ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave Mark Thompson, then CEO of the Times, and David Perpich, now publisher of The Athletic, some advice. The Times executives were in the Apple boardroom, demoing the NYT Now app—a short-lived attempt to attract young readers—NYT Cooking, and the new NYT Crossword app. The Times, said Cook, should really be the leader of digital puzzles, according to a source familiar with the discussion. (The Times declined to comment on this meeting.)
I’m an avid player of the Mini, Wordle, and Connections, but at the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I think of those as my daily puzzle appetizers: the Times crossword remains the entrée.
—Linked by Dan Moren
By
Dan Moren
January 19, 2024 6:07 AM PT
Order up: Vision Pro storage tier and accessory options
Happy Vision Pro pre-order day to all who celebrate!
Whether or not you’re virtually lining up to buy one of Apple’s fancy new spatial computers, you may be wondering what choices will come up during the process. So, purely for science, I went through it to see all the options and tell you exactly what you’ll need to think about.
Put it in storage
As reported last week, the Vision Pro does have storage tiers, and now we know what they are and how much they’ll cost.
Storage
Price
256GB
$3499
512GB
$3699
1TB
$3899
Those are roughly on par with Apple storage tier increases on the iPhone and Macs1, and frankly, when you’re already paying $3500 for a device, a few hundred extra dollars doesn’t seem like quite the same percentage jump. (It’s also worth noting that Apple is, as usual, offering 0 percent financing, meaning you can also pay a low low monthly cost of $324.91 for 12 months for that 1TB model.)
The real question is why you’ll need all that storage. Apple helpfully details its rationale below the tiers:
How much storage you need depends on how you use Apple Vision Pro. More room means you can store more documents, spatial photos and spatial videos, music, and apps, as well as extensive video libraries and large data files.
Over time, you may add more content to Apple Vision Pro, so you’ll want to think about how your storage needs may change.
So, think apps and files that you want to download to the device—spatial photos, spatial video, and movies (especially 3D ones) probably being among the most likely things to eat up data if you’re downloading them to store locally. Good news, though, you won’t have to worry about storage for Netflix downloads.
Keep calm and add on
Once you’ve picked your storage tier, you’re not quite done yet. Apple is, of course, offering AppleCare+ for the Vision Pro, which will set you back a hefty $500 for two years or $24.99 per month until you decide to cancel it. But again, if you’ve paid $3500 for this cutting-edge product, the insurance may provide some peace of mind: It offers “unlimited repairs for accidental damage protection” (at a cost of $29 for accessory damage and $299 for “Other Accidental Damage”) and an Express Replacement Service, so you won’t be without a Vision Pro while yours is getting fixed.
Apple’s also selling a few accessories for the Vision Pro. Though a cover for the headset is included with the purchase, if you’re taking it on the go, you may well want the travel case, which provides a padded shell in which to put the Vision Pro, a strap for the external battery and a cozy little pouch of for your optical inserts. That will set you back a significant $199 (though I imagine it’s one place where third-party competitors will be more cheaply available).
There’s also the $49.95 Belkin Battery Holder clip, which lets you attach the Vision Pro’s external battery to a belt or pants, as well as a cross-body strap if you don’t have a convenient clipping location.
Speaking of external batteries, we know the Vision Pro’s battery life is rated for about 2 hours of general use or 2.5 hours of video watching, but don’t worry: Apple’s more than happy to sell you an additional battery pack for $199.
You can also buy a few of the other included accessories on their own, such as the Solo Knit Band ($99), the Dual Loop Band ($199). You can also buy a Light Seal package ($199), which includes two Light Seal Cushions; you’ll need to use the face-scanning process to get the right size. Light Seal Cushions ($29) are also available separately and come in four sizes: N, N+, W, and W+. (Good news: the cushion attaches magnetically and is machine washable.)
In addition to all those Vision Pro specific accessories, Apple’s also pushing other existing products that it thinks Vision Pro users might want: the Bluetooth Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, a Sony DualSense game controller, the USB-C AirPods Pro, the 30W USB-C power adapter and USB-C charge cable, and, of course, AirTags.
Top of the line or end of the line
Which may of course set you thinking: sure, $3499 is expensive, but just how pricey can I make this thing?
Again, I’m not one to shy away from science, so let’s check it out. (I’m not including extra bands, Light Seals, or cushions, since it should be a while before you wear those out. And, of course, if you need optical inserts, you’ll be adding another $99-$149.)
Item
Cost
Vision Pro 1TB
$3899
AppleCare+
$499
Travel Case
$199
Magic Keyboard
$99
Magic Trackpad
$129
Battery Clip
$49.95
Sony DualSense
$69.95
AirPods Pro
$249
Extra Battery
$199
Extra Power Adapter
$39
Extra Charging Cable
$29
AirTag
$29
Total
$5489.90
Hey, still well shy of a maxed out MacStudio or a base-level Mac Pro, not to mention a gold first-edition Apple Watch. So there are definitely Apple products you could spend more money on, albeit perhaps ones with a more proven track record.
Apple’s not likely to detail exactly how many Vision Pros it sells, but it will be interesting to see if it provides any further information at the company’s quarterly financial call in a couple weeks.
I’d forgotten that while it’s only $200 to go from a 256GB 11-inch iPad Pro to a 512GB model, it’s a whopping $600 between the 256GB configuration and the 1TB. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
As it turns out, it’s possible to tell if a developer has opted out by using App Store API endpoints. So, with a little help, we built a shortcut to check some of the most popular apps on the App Store.
Short answer: not a lot of native apps at present, and a lot of developers have opted out of even letting their iPad apps work in compatibility mode.
As John points out, this list is neither exhaustive nor necessarily perfectly reflective of ultimate app availability, as we’re still a few weeks away from the Vision Pro launch, and many apps have not been updated on the Store yet (including some known to have a Vision Pro app, such as Disney+).
Still, on the heels of news that Netflix won’t have a native Vision Pro or compatibility for its iPad app, there is definitely some question as to how many developers—and perhaps especially those at big companies—are planning on building apps for Apple’s spatial computing platform, at least at launch. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem in the making: developers don’t want to commit until they know there’s a market there, and the market may not develop if the apps aren’t there.
Among the content that will be available at launch is a catalog of 150 3D movies, including recent releases like Dune and *Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; if you buy or have already purchased a movie that has a 3D version, you’ll get that for free. Apple also says some third-party services, including Disney+, will offer 3D versions of movies at launch.
It also provided specific information about content available as Apple Immersive Video, a 180-degree video format that puts users in the middle of an experience. At launch, that will include an Alicia Keys rehearsal session, a series following athletes including a tight-rope walk over the fjords, close encounters with wild life, and an immersive film with dinosaurs from Jon Favreau. That last one is also the launching point for an app called Encounter Dinosaur that will let you interact with three-dimensional models of the creatures. (At least some of these experiences were demoed for press last June.)
Unsurprisingly, the primary third-party partner mentioned for Vision Pro content is Disney, whose CEO Bob Iger also appeared during the keynote introducing the device. Apple confirms that Disney+ subscribers get access to their own immersive environments for watching content, including a theater inspired by Hollywood’s El Capitan, Monster, Inc.‘s Scare Floor, the Avengers Tower, and—in a shot no doubt aimed directly at me—Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder on Tatooine.
With just three days before the Vision Pro goes up for pre-order, and about two and a half weeks from release, Apple is clearly making a push to drive home the value of the Vision Pro, in an attempt to forestall criticism that the device is expensive and doesn’t have a clear use case.
—Linked by Dan Moren
By
Dan Moren
January 16, 2024 5:43 AM PT
AirDrop security weakness exploited by China
You might have seen a story making the rounds last week that the Chinese government was cracking down on people sending anti-government materials via Apple’s AirDrop feature, having compromised the security of the system.
I wondered, given the transient nature of these interactions, how exactly that was happening—sometimes these stories can be a bit overblown, especially when entities like the Chinese government—which certainly has a vested interested in looking omniscient—are involved.
In 2021, researchers at Germany’s Technical University of Darmstadt reported that they had devised practical ways to crack what Apple calls the identity hashes used to conceal identities while AirDrop determines if a nearby person is in the contacts of another.
The exploit involves the use of colorfully named rainbow tables and relies at least somewhat on the Chinese government’s ability to pre-hash every single phone number in the country, thus making it trivial to use a given identifier and link it to a person.
But, as Goodin points out, Apple has been aware of this vulnerability since 2019 and despite there being options to improve the anonymity, has not made changes to the privacy of this feature. (Apple’s software also apparently keeps logs of prior AirDrop contacts, which is ripe for exploitation if someone gets hold of the physical device—a fact that some security researchers only learned in the course of this story.) Combined with previous AirDrop changes that had negative effects on dissident activity in the country1 and Apple’s complicated relationship with the Chinese government, it certainly presents an unappetizing picture.
To a certain degree, Apple relies on stories like this staying under the radar. Inaction can be presented as either ignorance or tacit compliance, whereas taking steps to improve the privacy of AirDrop might be construed by Beijing as a challenge to its authority—a stick situation for Apple, given how much it relies upon its relationship with the country for the production of its devices. But Apple also makes privacy a huge selling point of its devices—a subject of ad campaigns, a highlighted section in virtually every keynote—and the company surely doesn’t want to have to append an asterisk to all of those claims with the footnote “Except in China.”
I still wouldn’t argue that change is a net negative, since it also prevents people from getting spammed with unwanted content, but it was first deployed in China, which certainly merited an eyebrow-raise. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
Nearly eight months after its introduction at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the Vision Pro is poised to go on sale: Apple has said that preorders for the device will begin on January 19, with the Vision Pro expected to be available in stores starting on February 2.
Despite being the company’s first new major platform in almost a decade, though, the fanfare for the Vision Pro’s arrival has been decidedly muted. Apple didn’t hold another event, opting instead for a press release and teaser ad, and the company didn’t add much in the way of new information about the product and its capabilities.
That’s not entirely surprising though: while we may have been accustomed to a certain style of product launch from Apple, the Vision Pro is a very different type of device, and that necessitates a very different kind of release.
By
Dan Moren
January 8, 2024 2:34 PM PT
Cutting out the RSS middleman
Way back when Google Reader went the way of all Google products (RIP), I ended up switching to Feedly, a web-based RSS service that had good integration with third-party clients. But this past week I decided to ditch it for good.
The truth is, I never really used Feedly’s web-based offerings, or its first-party apps on iPhone or the Mac (the latter of which was apparently quietly retired last year). Instead, I mainly used Feedly as the back-end for my RSS app of choice, Reeder.1
Lately, though, I’d noticed that certain feeds—especially those on smaller sites—just didn’t seem to update very quickly. That’s apparently by design: in part because those who paid for Feedly (which I never have) get faster updates, and in part because the polling interval seems to vary from site to site.2
Specifically I noticed that a post on my personal blog didn’t seem to be showing up, which a few people subscribed to my RSS feed let me know. That turned out to be mainly because of an issue in WordPress where my own RSS feeds were being cached, but even once I remedied that it still took a solid day for the post to show up in my own reader.
That seemed silly to me: I only subscribe to thirty-some feeds, probably about half of which are actually updated regularly, and I’d prefer for the control over when I get my items delivered to be in my own hands, not that of a middleman.
Fortunately, Reeder (like other RSS readers) at some point added the ability to subscribe to feeds within the app and have them synced between devices via iCloud. All I had to do was export the feeds from my Feedly account as an OPML file and import them into the iCloud account, something that took probably less than a minute.
It was really the simplicity of that last part that struck me: the fact that feed readers still rely on an open format that’s easily portable between apps and services. I’ve relied on RSS to do my job since I first started writing about the Mac back in the mid 2000s, and even in a world that’s become dominated by social media it’s still pretty effective. I kind of wish that other services made this kind of portability so easy and painless—after all, we should be in control of our own data, not some middleman.
I don’t want to knock Feedly here: I found their service stable and reliable for more than a decade, and not only did I not pay a dime for it, they didn’t put roadblocks in my way to leave. That’s actually pretty great, as far as service goes, and frankly I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t throw some money their way. But as the year starts off, I like the idea of removing some of the little tech annoyances that I just take as a given and seeing if I can make my life a little smoother.
I was a longtime NetNewsWire user, and I still really like the app, but I’ve now been using Reeder for so long that it’s just the way my brain works. ↩
Presumably this is a sort of caching system, as I imagine it doesn’t want to hit the same site x number of times for everybody in Feedly subscribed to it? ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
Game designer Sean Bates found an iPhone in a bush Sunday that had fallen from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 when it lost a part of its fuselage shortly after takeoff. The phone was undamaged, still on, and had the end of a sheared-off charging cable plugged in. Bates posted pictures of his discovery that afternoon, one of which included the screen showing a still-open email with a baggage receipt.
Apple Vision Pro launches on February 2, preorders next week
The goggles do…something? Well, you’ll find out soon enough: Apple announced on Monday that the Vision Pro will be available in the U.S. starting on February 2, with preorders starting next Friday, January 19.
Unsurprisingly, the spatial computer will be available at all Apple Stores in the U.S., but it’ll also be available via the online store as well—there’d been some speculation in recent weeks about whether or not that would be the case at launch, given the need for fitting particular accessories.
While we’re all plenty aware of the Vision Pro’s $3499 price tag, Apple’s also added some additional information. For one, the Vision Pro has 256GB of onboard storage (and, as far as we can tell, no options for more). For another, those users who need vision correction will be able to pick up optical inserts that attach magnetically: $99 for readers, and $149 for prescriptions, though the company doesn’t go into further detail about which prescriptions will be available or how you’ll convey that information.
And we now know exactly what’s in the box: in addition to the Vision Pro, it’ll include two different bands, a Solo Knit Band and Dual Loop Band; a Light Seal and two Light Seal Cushions; a cover for the front of the device; the battery and USB-C charging cable; a USB-C Power Adapter (for $3499, I’d hope so); and, most importantly, a Polishing Cloth.
The press release, which happens to drop on the same day that CES opens on Las Vegas and no doubt is intended to steal some thunder there, also suggests that the company won’t hold any further events to talk up the Vision Pro before its launch. Given that supplies are expected to be constrained, and the addressable market is on the smaller side, Apple’s no doubt banking on the fact that people who want to buy one already know all about it.
One big question mark is the retail experience, which Apple Store employees are being trained on now, according to reports from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and others. The Vision Pro is perhaps the most challenging product from a store experience perspective, and it will be fascinating to see exactly how the company handles the sales and fit process—especially for physical stores versus online. But we’re sure to find out in short order.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
Look, the simple truth is that when you get to be a company the size of Apple, you can’t help but butt up against certain other entities, whether they be competitors, nation states, or the occasional megalomaniacal social-media purveyor. We’ve come to expect it—frankly, it’s built into Apple’s cost of doing business.
But while most of these conflicts may be predictable, every once in a while you run into one that’s most decidedly not on anybody’s radar. The good news is that it’s my job to expect the unexpected; I’ve consulted my patented heirloom, Jony Ive-designed jet black polycarbonate spherical oracle1 and it’s provided five fracases awaiting Apple that neither you, nor I, nor Tim Cook’s council of seers are going to see coming.
Apple farmers: It was only a matter of time, but after almost half a decade of existence, Apple Inc. will end upin the crosshairs of apple inc…ome.…
Our friend and colleague Joe Rosensteel has perhaps one of the best perspectives on the “Amazon Prime is adding ads” story:
Then investors wanted profit, not growth — The Netflix Correction — now it’s about generating money. So Prime Video, which was run as some “do whatever” business that basically amounted to brand advertising, and did weird stuff like buy MGM for way more than The Rings of Power and Citadel cost, now has to turn a profit.
Ads, ads as far as the eye can see.
More to the point, as Joe says, Prime is largely about the shipping benefit, with everything else as ancillary point. I know that when my wife and I were auditing our streaming subscriptions the other week, Prime was one of the ones that will basically never get cut, because free two-day delivery saves us money in the long run.1
Apple One is also currently in that department, because of Apple Music and iCloud predominantly, but I can see a path to going à la carte there—not an option with Prime really. ↩
—Linked by Dan Moren
By
Dan Moren
December 21, 2023 12:42 PM PT
Zoom on tvOS: Big screen video chatting needs some work
Your author, looking a bit like he’s trapped in a Wes Anderson movie.
Ever since the announcement earlier this year of Continuity Camera for tvOS, I’ve been looking forward to giving Zoom a try on the Apple TV. The app dropped with little fanfare earlier this month, and I finally got to give it a whirl, but the result was underwhelming, to say the least.
First, some background on my particular (and perhaps unique) situation. I play a few regular Dungeons & Dragons games with my wife and several friends via Zoom. Since my wife and I are both in the same room, it’s convenient to be able to display both the video call and our map (using Roll 20) on the big screen of our living room TV, rather than peering at a small laptop display. So I use my M1 MacBook Air, extend the desktop to my Apple TV, and then run the Zoom call and Chrome in split screen on the Apple TV.1
This approach has its downsides; for one thing, we’re looking at the TV, but since we still need to reach the trackpad and keyboard, the MacBook (and its camera) is usually on an ottoman in front of us. For another, neither the MacBook microphone nor camera are great, and it requires some awkward positioning to get everything framed up (and audible).
Offloading the call onto the Zoom app on the Apple TV while using my iPhone as the camera and mic seemed like it might simplify matters, but as so often happens with new technology, this is where things started to get sticky.
Not a joiner
The initial version of Zoom’s app on tvOS is bare-bones to say the least. Once you launch it and get your camera connected, you only have a few options: there are buttons for New Meeting and Join Meeting, and a tab that lets you view your contacts.
Here’s the thing: the way 90 percent of my Zoom calls work is by being sent a link, usually via email or Slack. Those links generally include the meeting ID and password, which are each strings of random numbers and letters.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to open those links on the Apple TV. So, instead, I have to enter the codes manually. The easiest way to do that is to use the TV Remote feature of Control Center on iOS to bring up a software keyboard, rather than laboriously entering those random characters via the Apple TV’s hardware remote. But of course, I’ve already got my phone acting as a camera and mounted atop the TV, so I have to use my iPad instead.2 When I tried this, I ran into a bug where the contextual pop-up menu with the Paste command would appear off the screen.
I eventually gave up and entered the eleven-digit meeting code via the hardware remote. And then finally, after a lot of wrangling, I eventually got the password to paste in as well.
(As a note, it seems as though once you’ve joined a meeting, it does show up in your Meeting History in the Zoom app for tvOS, so that may simplify matters in the future, but for those of us who rely on Zoom links, it’s still a definite annoyance.)
Meet not-so-cute
Once I was able to join the meeting, the UI of the Zoom app is at least familiar, with little squares of video and a toolbar at the bottom. But even there, the tvOS is certainly far simpler than its counterpart on the Mac (and probably even than iOS).
Unfortunately, my problems hadn’t ended yet. The first issue I ran into was having the people on the other end of the call note that our audio was very quiet and muffled. Unfortunately—and this may be down to Apple—there was no way that I could find to boost the gain of the iPhone microphone. It may be that Continuity Microphone simply isn’t designed when people are sitting several feet away from the TV, though one would think that would be an issue on FaceTime on tvOS as well. In a subsequent test call with Jason, the audio quality was definitely lacking, and we were both able to hear our own audio coming through the other person’s speakers until we switched to AirPods. It definitely seems like Zoom’s vaunted noise cancellation doesn’t work nearly as well (if at all!) on tvOS, though it’s unclear whether that’s a limitation of the hardware or the software.
Your intrepid authors Zooming from their living rooms, with mixed results.
In one attempt to deal with the muffled audio, I disabled the Noise Cancellation features via the app’s Settings menu, and that seemed to help make things louder at least. I also thought that perhaps changing Apple’s Continuity Microphone settings to one of the other options it now offers might help matters, but it turned out that Zoom on tvOS either doesn’t offer those options, or there’s a bug in tvOS’s Continuity Microphone system: I couldn’t change the mic mode off Standard, even though FaceTime on tvOS does offer both Wide Spectrum and Voice Isolation modes.
Similarly, when my wife asked me to turn off Center Stage because the constant motion was bugging her, I was pleased to discover that I could use the camera controls on tvOS to reframe the shot, centering us both…only those settings would not stick when I returned to Zoom. Instead, we were both cropped out of the image, with just the tops of our heads visible. On my subsequent call with Jason, this did seem to work, and in my test the option works just fine in FaceTime on tvOS, so it may have been a transient bug.3
Bigger picture
There are some other issues that make this setup less than ideal, though they aren’t really Zoom’s fault. For one, the Belkin display mount I used, intended for external displays, doesn’t quite play nice with my TV—either that, or the TV itself isn’t totally steady, because I get a very minute (but still distracting) vibration of my camera image. Could I move the phone closer? Sure! But that would return us the issue of having the camera in one place while we’re looking another. Doable, but not as much of an improvement over my current situation.
Don’t adjust your computer monitor, I’m not moving.
Secondly, though having Zoom on the TV and using Chrome on my laptop is a fine workaround, I would really love it if there were still some sort of split-screen support on tvOS for running multiple apps at a time (or, at least, for AirPlaying a screen to the Apple TV while also making a video call). I realize that may be kind of a niche usage, and possibly very intensive, but a man can dream.
Overall, though, what this experience really makes me long for is a holistic Apple device that is designed for video conferencing on a big screen. Even though such a device was reportedly in testing at some point, I think there’s even less of a chance of it coming to fruition now that Continuity Camera is supported on Apple TV. Even the idea of having an external mic or camera that you could connect somehow would be nice, but again, I think unlikely—the current Apple TV models have removed the USB port found on earlier versions.
So, in terms of improvements that could be made in the here and now, I’m hopeful that a future version of the Zoom app for tvOS will take better advantage of the platform features, bringing it on par with the FaceTime app. But until then, I’m going back to my functional—if sadly janky—MacBook setup.
For those who, like me, came up with the brilliant solution of using my iPhone for Continuity Camera on the Mac while AirPlaying the Mac display to the Apple TV…sadly, Apple doesn’t support this. I suspect AirPlay and Continuity Camera are using some of the same underlying mechanisms, and thus this setup—currently anyway—runs into conflicts. ↩
As far as I can tell, there’s no way to control an Apple TV from a Mac which, though I understand it’s probably a less frequent use case, still strikes me as a little odd. ↩
Taking a screenshot of Zoom on tvOS is surprisingly hard: you have to use your Mac with QuickTime Player to capture a movie, then pull a frame from that. However, I couldn’t get it to work at all when a Zoom call was active—QuickTime Player just showed a black screen, even though the Apple TV displayed red bars around the sides to let you know the picture was being recorded. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
Apple and The Athletic today announced that Apple News+ subscribers now have access to The Athletic’s unrivaled sports journalism. The Athletic provides best-in-class team coverage, as well as coverage of the biggest and most compelling stories in sports daily, across the major sports leagues. Additionally, Wirecutter will be available for free to all Apple News users beginning early next year.
Well, this just got interesting. I’ve long thought News+ to be the least compelling of Apple’s services, but adding both The Athletic and The Wirecutter—both top-tier brands owned by The New York Times—definitely makes it more of an appeal to me. Those are both sites that I frequently run into paywall issues (despite my wife having a subscription to the Times that, apparently, does not include either of those sub-sites).
Frankly, adding the Times itself would be even more of a draw, but it’s certainly a possibility that these two brands are being used as a test case to see what how well this works out for the paper. (Presumably Apple is paying well.)
I do think the Apple News app still needs some attention, though. Right now, I still find it a big overwhelming firehose that I have little idea how to tune to my needs, despite the claims that the algorithm selects stories just for me. These days I still use Google News for my basic newsreading, but I’d be happy to dump it for Apple if the experience were to improve a bit.
