Myke and Jason answer your questions about Vision Pro, catch up with some new beta details, saddle up for a new Rumor Roundup, process the Reddit debacle, and detail our summer plans.
Usually WWDC week is for new OS features. But this year, WWDC was stuffed full of new Macs and an entirely new Apple platform, so I’m slowly digging out of that and starting to dig into the new OS features announced last week. In the “Create a More Responsive Camera Experience” video, there are some exciting new features that should improve the experience of taking iPhone photos.
A lot of the secret sauce Apple uses to generate iPhone photos involves taking multiple images and then fusing them together. The most high-profile of these features is Deep Fusion (often jokingly referred to as “sweater mode,” referring to Apple’s demo images of detailed images of the weave in a sweater). Deep Fusion can generate great results, but it takes time to run. If you take a Deep Fusion photo, you may end up having to wait before taking your next shot—and you might miss something great in the meantime.
In iOS 17, a new deferred photo processing feature allows camera apps to push off image processing until after your camera session is complete. The result is that the shutter button becomes active almost immediately, so you can take more pictures—which is a good thing. The system saves a temporary, unprocessed image to your photo library as a placeholder, and when your phone is no longer busily shooting photos, it will fuse the image captures in the background and then replace the proxy with a full-fledged Deep Fusion photo.
The other update to camera-capture features in iOS 17 is designed to reduce shutter lag, which is the unfortunate effect where your camera captures an image a few fractions of a second after you pressed the shutter button. The iPhone camera is capturing images at 30 frames per second and can use multiple images to fuse together something nice, but it can’t go back in time—or can it? In fact, in iOS 17 the camera buffer can capture all the time during a shooting session, so when you press the shutter, it is able to capture the moment you intended—and use previous frames to help generate the final images, not just future ones. The result, according to Apple, is true “zero shutter lag.”
The iOS 17 responsive capture and fast capture features will work on iPhones with an A12 Bionic chip or newer.
Get our your notebooks because we’re about to learn a valuable lesson in the relationship between output and cost. It will be on the final. Speaking of textbook cases, Reddit provides another while Apple continues to struggle with greasing the wheels of the game business.
Startling revelations about economies of scale
Wait! Don’t buy the Apple Vision Pro yet!
First of all, you can’t, so if you think you’re buying one right now you’re probably being scammed. Is it Carl? It’s probably Carl. Tell him I told you to tell him to call me because he has my Dead Milkmen CD.
Second, WERE YOU AWARE that a cheaper version will be coming later?!
Huge. If true.
Yes, according to Mark Gurman (why haven’t I already set up a shortcut for that attribution?), a cheaper Apple Vision something will be coming before 2026. Which leads to the question: what could they take out to make it cheaper?…
I love Audio Hijack. I use it almost every day. I use it for podcasts, yes, but it’s far more than a recording tool. Yes, it can capture audio from different input devices and apps on your Mac, and record them. It can also live stream them, broadcast them to YouTube, or re-route them to a different audio output device. It can apply a manual EQ, automatically boost quiet audio, filter out hums, dynamically duck one signal under another, and use any other Audio Unit effects you might have installed.
And it’s automatable, with a built-in JavaScript library of commands and support for Shortcuts. I’ve buit complex automations that let me switch between multiple states for a podcast production, all by pressing a single button on a Stream Deck, using Audio Hijack and Shortcuts.
Basically… if you need to do just about anything with audio involving your Mac, Audio Hijack will let you do it. It’s updated regularly with great new features, like the new Speech Denoise feature that uses machine learning to dynamically remove background noise.
Through the end of June, Six Colors readers can save 20% when you purchase with coupon code COLORS20. Learn more and download a free trial on the Audio Hijack site.
Christina Warren, writing at Inverse, has a good overview of Apple’s impressive Game Porting Toolkit:
It turns out that Apple added DirectX 12 support via something it is calling the Game Porting Toolkit, a tool Apple is offering to developers to see how their existing x86 DirectX 12 games work on Macs powered by Apple silicon. That toolkit largely takes place as a 20,000 line of code patch to Wine, a compatibility layer designed to bring support for Windows games to platforms such as Linux, BSD, and macOS. Wine, which is primarily supported by the company CodeWeavers (which also makes a commercial version called CrossOver), works by converting system calls made to Windows APIs into calls that can be used by other operating systems. It isn’t emulation, but translation (an important semantic difference).
I’ve been meaning to write something about the significance of this game porting toolkit, but Christina has done a great job of summing up not only why it’s technically impressive, but also what the possible ramifications are.
Gaming on the Mac has been a fraught experience for decades, and it’s certainly possible that this toolkit will follow in the footsteps of other failed appeals to the gaming market. But one significant difference is that all of this technology is here, now and already works. You can, as numerous YouTube videos prove, download and run a recent Windows title and have it play surprisingly well. Will this entice developers to the previously untapped Mac market? Unclear, of course, but you can’t say Apple hasn’t made it easy for them.
Whether we’re installing Apple betas, Tim Cook offers us a free product, how the Reddit blockout have affected us, and what we were disappointed not to see at WWDC.
Hardware was by no means in short supply at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference—not only did Apple launch three new Mac model, but there was also that little matter of a revolutionary spatial computer. But just as the company uses its annual gathering to show off what software features are coming down the road for its platforms, it turns out that it’s also the ideal occasion for Apple prognosticators to read between the lines and see what additional hardware devices might lie just beyond the horizon.
This year, more than most, shed some light on a few places that Apple might be looking to expand its footprint—notably in the home. That’s a market where Apple has staked a few meager claims in the past, but hasn’t really invested in expanding over the past several years. But if this year’s software news is any indication, that may be about to change.
I’m going to be direct with this story. My 30-minute demo with Vision Pro last week was the most mind-blowing moment of my 14-year career covering Apple and technology. I left the demo speechless, and it took me a few days to articulate how it felt. How I felt.
It’s not just that I was impressed by it, because obviously I was. It’s that, quite simply, I was part of the future for 30 minutes – I was in it – and then I had to take it off. And once you get a taste of the future, going back to the present feels… incomplete.
I spent 30 minutes on the verge of the future. I have a few moments I want to relive.
Apple has an ambitious view on what the baseline user experience for this device must be and then built a device which is able to meet those expectations. As a result it is more expensive than many folks would like or expect, but that price is justified by the user experience it can deliver. In this case a lesser/cheaper version of this product would likely cross a point where it becomes pointless. If you can’t perfectly recreate reality in minute detail and responsively let the user navigate their new world, the whole product feels meaningless. It has to be this good in order to be useful at all, so the price is high.
This was the blending of AR and VR in a way that I’ve not experienced before. I don’t think anyone else can do it. You feel like this dinosaur’s in the room with you, because it looks like the dinosaur is in the room with you. We don’t need to make you feel like you’re in this VR experience, completely immersed in this lava field, because we’re able to show you this blending of these two things.
It was unbelievable. The quality of the visuals was so good. This is one of those things I will remember, that feeling of that dinosaur trying to bite me—it was just mind-blowing. And then they sit me down, and they’re like, “we’re done now,” and I take it off and I was speechless. I was flabbergasted. Then they take you out [and tell you to] ask questions to this person from the product team. And [I said], I have no questions. I’m not even in the real world. I realized halfway through the conversation that I left my backpack in that room, because I just stood up and left it there. I was on another planet at that moment….
It was magical. They’ve nailed it. This thing costs $3500, and if they put out a card machine I’d buy it. I’m in. I cannot wait for this thing. I’ve now tasted the future and I can’t shake it.
Or if you’d prefer a more cynical take, Wired published a thing literally slugged “apple-vision-pro-doomed.”
Of course, Stephen Hackett at 512 Pixels has the details about Apple’s re-use of the “Apple Vision” name:
Apple has had other products with “vision” in their names over the years. Seven products, to be exact, and all of them are long-forgotten CRT displays:
This was very early in my Mac career, but I do remember these monitors. Apple has proven remarkably adept at re-using names from its past when it suits them. This is the perfect opportunity for AppleVision—sorry, Apple Vision—to ride again.
Jason and Myke discuss their experiences using the Apple Vision Pro and what they’re thinking about the product now that they’ve used it. Also there’s a lot of WWDC follow-up, and Jason reviewed new Macs! And it’s all coming to you live from Jason’s garage.
The M1 Mac Studio arrived last year with a shock, an entirely new class of Mac that debuted as the fastest Mac around. But with the Mac Pro presumably coming down the road, what role (if any) would the Mac Studio fill in the long-term future of high-performance Mac desktops?
With the release of the new M2-based Mac Studio, we have our answer, and it’s a pretty good one: At least for now, even with the arrival of the first Apple silicon Mac Pro, the Mac Studio is the fastest Mac around. Or, at the very least, in a dead heat with the Mac Pro. In the long run, it seems hard to believe that most pro-level Mac users will need a Mac Pro, with its high price tag and large set of PCI slots. With its M2 Max and M2 Ultra processor options, the Mac Studio provides enormous processing power to serve almost any pro user’s needs.
For this review, I was able to spend a few days running an M2 Ultra Mac Studio with 24 CPU cores, 76 GPU cores, and 128GB of memory. And what can I say? This new Mac Studio has all the benefits of the M1 model but with boosted performance. As someone who has spent the last year using an M1 Max Mac Studio as my primary Mac, I highly recommend the Mac Studio lifestyle to anyone who needs pro performance on (or, in my case, just beneath) the desktop.
Presenting the M2 Ultra
The new M2 Ultra chip is, like its predecessor, essentially two Max chips connected by Apple’s UltraFusion technology. The result is that it’s got twice of everything the M2 Max has—24 cores instead of 12, a maximum of 76 GPU cores instead of 38, and 32 Neural Engine cores instead of 16.
As with the last generation, choosing Ultra over Max will not necessarily double the speed of the computer—the M1 Ultra Mac Studio was between 50 and 90 percent faster than a comparable M1 Max Mac Studio. And while I couldn’t test a Mac Studio with the M2 Max processor, the speed gap between the M2 Ultra and a MacBook Pro with an M2 Max processor was pretty similar.
Of course, you’ll pay for the privilege. A base-model Mac Studio with an M2 Max processor costs $1999. The M2 Ultra versions start at $3999. Twice the chip, twice the price.
Overall, the M2 generation of Ultra takes advantage of extra processor cores, each of which is also a bit faster on its own, to be a bit faster than the last generation. If you already have an M1 Ultra Mac Studio, it’s probably not worth the upgrade—the improvement is real, but it’s incremental. The M2 Mac Studio is a much better buy for people who have a slower M1-based Apple Silicon device or who are very patient types still waiting to jump from Intel. I also know several people who bought MacBook Pros recently, mostly leaving them docked to displays—and those people should think very hard about selling those underused laptops and embracing the Mac Studio desktop life.
A sound decision
One of the more puzzling aspects of the design of the M1 Mac Studio was the fact that it had a new cooling system that seemed to make noise even when the system was idle. As I wrote last year:
It’s very quiet, throwing out low-level white noise that I couldn’t hear unless I sat in my office when it was completely quiet. But the sound is very much there, in a way my iMac Pro fan never was, and if you’re ultra-sensitive to fan noise in quiet environments, you will notice it.
In the end, I solved the problem of the audible fan noise by mounting the M1 Mac Studio underneath my desk, where it’s completely inaudible. (Yes, I liked the M1 Mac Studio so much that I bought one.)
I’m happy to report that Apple has rejiggered the cooling system in the Mac Studio. I could only hear the fan blowing when I turned the Mac Studio around so that its vents were pointing right at me, and even then, it was pretty quiet. When I properly oriented the computer on my desk, I couldn’t hear the fan. I placed my M1 Mac Studio on a nearby table and could still hear it blowing, in fact.
I wouldn’t call the M2 Mac Studio silent, but it’s noticeably quieter than the M1 model, and if you were to keep it on top of your desk, you probably wouldn’t hear it.
The ultimate Mac
So here we are. The Mac Studio is still the fastest Mac you can buy, though it’s now tied with the Mac Pro for that honor. While people who want the absolute best that Apple offers will want the M2 Ultra configuration, I can say from personal experience that the lower-cost Max-class chip configuration is a pretty great combination of speed and value.
I’m thrilled that Apple has embraced the Mac Studio and updated it for a new chip generation. For users who have more expansive needs than the Mac mini can fulfill, the Mac Studio offers the two fastest chips in Apple’s current Mac offerings—and it still does so in a compact package. Yes, there’s an Apple silicon Mac Pro now, but the Mac Studio is still the champion.
The 15-inch MacBook Air (bottom) is larger than its 13-inch sibling, but otherwise almost entirely identical.
One of the lessons to be taken from the Apple silicon era is that the chips are what they are. An M2 performs more or less the same whether it’s in a Mac mini or MacBook Air or iPad Pro. So when I say that Apple’s new 15-inch MacBook Air is more or less identical to the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, I really mean it—at least in terms of how it works.
Instead, this new Air expands the definition of what a MacBook Air can be. With a 15.3-inch diagonal Liquid Retina display, it’s got the biggest screen of any consumer-targeted laptop in modern Apple history1. For the first time in ages, potential buyers won’t be forced to choose between a smaller screen and a much more expensive pro-level laptop.
Until now, if you wanted to buy a Mac laptop with a screen larger than 14 inches, the starting price was $2499 (for the 16-inch MacBook Pro). Now it’s almost half that price because the 15-inch Air starts at $1299. Of course, if you buy an Air you lose a lot of the high-end features of the MacBook Pro: more ports, a spectacular screen, and a more powerful processor. But if all you care about is the size of the display and perhaps weight—at 3.3 pounds, the Air is 70 percent of the weight of the MacBook Pro—you can save $1200. That’s a spectacular change in the economics of buying a Mac laptop.
Apple clearly thinks that the 15-inch MacBook Air will appeal to PC-using switchers who haven’t previously considered buying a Mac for this very reason. If they choose to pop into an Apple Store and look at one, they’ll find all the things that made the original M2 MacBook Air so great. It’s got an adorable curved flat design (available in the same color options of Silver, Space Gray, Starlight, and Midnight). The M2 processor is powerful enough for almost everyone. It’s thin and light, with no cooling fan required. It’s just got a bigger screen! That’s it.
Well… that’s almost it. To counteract the extra power draw of the bigger screen, Apple has increased the size of the Air’s battery, but all that does is make the battery life of the two models identical. There’s also a bit extra space in the 15-inch model’s case for a more expansive speaker system. (When I compared it to the 13-inch model, I noticed some differences, but they were extremely subtle.)
There are a few other tiny differences between the new models. The base-model 15-inch Air’s M2 chip has ten graphics cores. The base-model 13-inch Air only has eight graphics cores. When the two models are configured identically, the difference in price between them is $100, not $200.
Similarly, the $1099 13-inch Air comes with a pretty plain 30-watt power adapter. The 15-inch Air, like the more expensive configurations of the 13-inch model, comes with the 35-watt adapter with two USB-C ports that Apple introduced last year, but online orders can opt to swap it for a single-port 70-watt adapter that enables fast charging, at no extra cost.
Still no vibrant colors, alas.
I wish I had more to say about the new 15-inch MacBook Air, but really, the best compliment I can give it is that it’s just as great as the 13-inch model I reviewed last summer. I liked that laptop so much that I bought one for myself. Now Apple sells that same computer but with a 15.3-inch display. If you’ve hesitated to consider buying a MacBook Air because its screens always seemed a bit too cramped, you now have another option. If you’ve always wanted a bigger display but didn’t want to pay more than $1000 for the privilege, your time is now.
This laptop has literally everything that made the M2 MacBook Air great. It’s just bigger. Sometimes, bigger is better.
Apple’s last foray into this world was the 14-inch iBook, which offered a bigger display than its 12-inch counterpart, but with the same resolution! The new 15-inch Air offers more than a million extra pixels than the 13-inch model. ↩
The Apple Vision Pro is here! Well, not yet. And you can’t afford one. So is it really here? No. But the new Macs are! And soon the feature we’ve all been waiting for.
Zuckerberg aside, there seems no doubt that Vision Pro is incredibly well made and an amazing experience. It’s also really expensive and is making people as uncomfortable as a pair of well-starched underpants.
Many people thought Apple really missed a step in its demo, particularly the part where it showed a father recording a precious family moment while wearing Vision Pro… and then watching it later by himself. Presumably this was after his family has left him.…
My thanks to BZG Apps for sponsoring Six Colors this week. BZG makes Unite 4, which allows you to turn any Website into a Mac app. Using a lightweight, WebKit powered browser as a backend, you can easily create isolated, customizable apps from any site.
Unite 4 includes dozens of new features, including support for native notifications, new customization options, and M1 support. Unite apps also serve as a great alternative for resource-hogging Electron apps or half-baked Catalyst apps.
Six Colors readers get 20% off this week when you purchase Unite 4 at bzgapps.com/sixcolors or when using the promo code SixColors at checkout. There’s also a 14 day free trial, and the app is included in Setapp for subscribers.
