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By Jason Snell

June 25, 2024 6:00 AM PT

Preparing for the era of orchestrated apps

App Intents
Apple’s App Intents slide from WWDC 2024.

It’s going to be years before we can really see the impact of Apple embracing systemwide AI features via Apple Intelligence. Many of the features announced at WWDC 2024 won’t even ship until next year, and the keynote’s Siri segment alone was so full of future-tense descriptions and metaphors about the beginning of a journey that it’s quite clear this is going to take some time.

But let’s try to look out into the future. Let’s consider what the iPhone, in particular, might look like once Siri gets smart and Apple Intelligence takes hold. It’s a future that may dramatically change what we think of as apps—and that holds some serious threats (as well as opportunities) for app developers.

Tuning the orchestra

Over the next few years you’re going to be hearing a lot more about a concept that Apple started to discuss at WWDC this year: orchestration. Broadly, the idea is that the machine-learning models on your Apple devices are going to be able to understand what you want to do, based on your commands and current context, and make it happen by using the combined resources of your device’s system software and third-party apps.

When everything is orchestrated properly, all the capabilities of all your apps are put into a big soup, and the AI system at the heart of your device can choose the right capabilities to do what you need it to do—without you having to specify all the steps it needs to take to get there.

This is, in many ways, the ultimate promise of user automation. For years I’ve been a fan of tools that let users create scripts or automations or workflows that connect up different aspects of their computing lives in order to save time and end busywork. Computers have eliminated countless sorts of drudgery, but if you use a computer every day, you probably still frequently find yourself doing some 21st-century drudgery, pasting this thing over here, clicking that thing over there, often in a mindless, repetitive sequence.

I can automate you out of that with some combination of AppleScript or Shortcuts or Keyboard Maestro or shell script or some other macro language… and I have done so for myself, friends, and family. But the truth is, most people are never going to build even a simple Shortcut for themselves.

But… what if they don’t have to? In a world of properly orchestrated apps, they wouldn’t. They’d just say what they wanted, and their device would do all the work. If they needed to do the same task repeatedly, they could just tell Siri that, and at that point, you’ve basically built an automation workflow in zero steps.

That’s the holy grail of user automation, honestly. Tell your device what to do, and it does it—you don’t need to be involved at all. The drudgery evaporates. How civilized.

Intents and purposes

Okay, so the automation utopia may be upon us soon. But it’s easier said than done, and that’s because the functions in our apps on all our devices aren’t all magically known to Siri and Apple Intelligence. App developers have to specifically mark out the key functionality of their apps and bundle it up in a specific way so that it’s accessible to the broader system.

This is how AppleScript worked back in the day, and in today’s Shortcuts era, it’s enabled by something called App Intents. App Intents aren’t new—as I said, they’re what powers Shortcuts—but as of 2024, they’re much more meaningful than they used to be, because they’re how apps integrate with Apple Intelligence.

What Apple’s asking app developers to do is put in extra work in order to allow their apps to offer up their unique functionality to the system in an organized way. The result will be that the system will know those capabilities exist and will be able to use them as needed, based on whatever the user wants to do. If I’m looking at a photo and say I want to share that with Myke and Stephen in Slack, Apple Intelligence needs to understand what I’m looking at, export that photo in a format that’s reasonable for sharing in Slack, and then use Slack to choose the right venue for me to share with Stephen and Myke. (Oh, and based on context it also needs to intuit that I mean Stephen Hackett and Myke Hurley—two people who are frequently connected—and not people I know separately like Steven Schapansky and Mike Gordon.)

It’s all tricky, but the potential is enormous. Apps are mostly islands unto themselves, and it can be a real effort to get them to work together the way you want them to. I once built a wild system that basically connected my email client to a database1—the apps didn’t know about each other, and they didn’t need to—but by connecting them, I got a huge productivity boost. With Apple Intelligence and App Intents (so many AIs!), the potential is there for your device to connect your apps with one another in all sorts of ways… without you even breaking a sweat.

The potential here is huge. Now, the big question: Will app developers buy in?

App self-esteem

On a device operated by Apple Intelligence and full of apps all tricked out with App Intents, what does “using an app” mean, anyway? I’m dubious that we’re not going to ever want to scroll through lists and tap things and perform other tactile acts on our phones, even if we can drive a lot of work with a voice assistant. But if you’re an app developer, there’s a real risk of feeling like your app is no longer a destination for users but a box of parts that will occasionally be rummaged through by the system while it’s passing through to a different destination. That’s scary.

I do think that if Apple’s idea of an orchestrated future comes into being, the importance of any individual app might be reduced. But there’s also huge potential here for different apps to work together, for them to amplify each other so that they’re far more important for individual users than they could possibly be now.

For some apps, though, the future might be more about supplying great actions and data sources to the big Apple Intelligence soup—presumably for a subscription price. It seems a little bit weird, but the future of iOS apps might be services that just tie into Apple Intelligence, with little to no interface of their own. I don’t know if you could even call them apps.

That’s all years away, but I think it’s already time for app developers to consider what makes their apps unique and useful in a world where a smart machine-learning model is taking user commands and then getting results. If competitors offer the same functionality, they should presumably be motivated to offer App Intents so that the system will use them, and they’ll become crucial, irreplaceable portions of a user’s workflow.

For some apps, that might mean becoming less of a bright, shiny interface in the face of users, and more of a behind-the-scenes workhorse that just makes life better. Developers who are used to having the spotlight may be disquieted by that notion, but it doesn’t mean that their software doesn’t have value—and won’t be able to command an appropriate subscription price.

Existential threats

Apps and the App Store have been very, very good for Apple. I’m sure the company wants that to continue for as close to forever as possible.

But if the future of the devices that keep Apple in business is about to be transformed by AI models that orchestrate our software to do our bidding, there’s a serious risk that it could disrupt Apple’s standing in all of those device categories. That’s why the rise of AI is clearly an existential threat for Apple and why the company spent so much time talking about AI features at WWDC 2024.

It’s worth keeping that fundamental existential threat in mind. While it’s easy to say that apps and the App Store helped make Apple what it is, and therefore, the company will always be inclined to maintain the status quo… the fact is that if Apple thinks the best way for it to survive and flourish is to atomize app functionality into App Intents and drive it all with a user-driven AI assistant, it’ll do that. And it won’t think twice about it, no matter the consequences for app developers.

  1. Because it was the 90s, it was an AppleScript that connected Eudora and FileMaker Pro. ↩

Upgrade 518: Having Lots of Money Doesn’t Make You a Bank

Apple backs away from some financial services and changes its Vision hardware approach, and there’s a new phase in the company’s relationship with the EU. For the Summer of Fun, we look at our current iPhone home screens.

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by Dan Moren

June 24, 2024 5:56 AM PT

Preliminary ruling from the EC declares Apple is violating the DMA

The European Commission has issued a preliminary ruling in one of its DMA non-compliance investigations launched in March:

Today, the European Commission has informed Apple of its preliminary view that its App Store rules are in breach of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), as they prevent app developers from freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers and content.

At the root of this decision is the EC’s contention that Apple is overly limiting the way developers are allowed to send potential customers to their own storefronts. That includes both the actual design restrictions of external links, as well as Apple’s fee structure (the company takes a cut of any digital good or service up to seven days after the customer follows the external link). Such moves would seem to be in violation of the DMA regulation that developers can advertise and direct users to their own sites without cost.1

Given that this is a preliminary ruling, Apple has time to respond to the finding before the final decision is put into effect in March of 2025.

Simultaneous to this decision, the EC has also announced a new non-compliance investigation, its third into Apple. This action specifically looks into Apple’s developer terms in the EU, including alternative app stores and distribution methods. At the heart of this matter are three issues: whether the process for users taking advantage of alternative app distribution is too onerous, whether Apple is too restrictive in its eligibility terms (such as the rule that developers must be “of good standing” to qualify), and the existence of the Core Technology Fee.

That is…a lot. Should the EC find Apple to not be in compliance in these areas, it would require a substantial reworking of much of Apple’s EU terms. As with the previous investigations, it will likely take some time for a final ruling to be issued, though we may get a preliminary ruling such as the one above in a matter of months.

Apple’s business in the EU continues to be a thorn in its side as both Europe and Apple hash out exactly what the implication of the far-reaching DMA is. Most recently, Apple said that several of its new features, including Apple Intelligence, would not come to the EU this year due to implications of the DMA, potentially taking this battle to a new level.

  1. For reference, the relevant portion of the DMA (Article 5(4)) reads in full: “The gatekeeper shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions, to end users acquired via its core platform service or through other channels, and to conclude contracts with those end users, regardless of whether, for that purpose, they use the core platform services of the gatekeeper.” ↩

DMA FOMO, OS Betas, and Apple Photos

Apple’s second wave of DMA compliance in Europe; we detail our OS beta strategies for the summer; and a first crack at beta Apple Photos features. [More Colors and Backstage members get an extra 20 minutes of interactive discussion of Photos, discoverability, and forcing features on users.]

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By John Moltz

June 21, 2024 2:00 PM PT

This Week in Apple: The Apple Vision vision

John Moltz and his conspiracy board. Art by Shafer Brown.

In this AI-less weekly update we will discuss other fun topics like, uh, regulation. Meanwhile, Apple is sticking a paperclip in the Apple Vision Pro to reset it and is also shutting down one product completely.

Still figuring out this “store” thing

We take a brief break in our 24-hour-a-day AI coverage to turn to… Oh, seriously? Back to App Store stuff? Ugh. Fine. At this point I’ll take anything that’s not AI.

Remember when talking about technology meant fun new gadgets and how to set up an AppleTalk network to play Strategic Conquest stuff? Well, forget it, because Apple’s in all kinds of trouble again.

“Apple has ‘very serious’ issues under sweeping EU digital rules, competition chief says”

Indeed, Apple does seem to be having a little trouble not overplaying its hand.

“iPhone PC emulator block called confusing, inconsistent, and probably illegal”

Apple’s within its rights to block a PC emulator from its App Store but it can’t block it from being notarized for distribution by other app stores allowed by the DMA.

“Japan Passes Law to Allow Third-Party App Stores on the iPhone”

If you’re in the U.S. and wondering how much of the world needs to get third-party app stores before it’s just easier to make it global, be careful what you wish for.

“Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring to Mac, and SharePlay Screen Sharing won’t be available in the EU at launch”

According to Apple, it would have to compromise privacy and security in order to implement them in a way that would satisfy the DMA.

Maybe that’s a perfectly legitimate argument but for some reason I’m reminded of a teenager who, when you ask them to take out the trash, just puts it right outside the back door and not into the trash bin. Not sure why.

Visualize an Apple Vision

Prepare to set phasers to “histrionic” as Apple changes course on the Vision Pro.

“Apple Reportedly Suspends Work on Vision Pro 2”

But before you craft your Betteridge-baiting “IS THE VISION PRO DEAD?!” headlines, read the fine print. Which is to say the lede. I won’t expect you to read the whole article before coming to an opinion, though. I’m not a monster.

Apple has suspended work on the second-generation Vision Pro headset to singularly focus on a cheaper model, The Information reports.

And how much would this Apple Vision cost?

The objective is to sell this model for around the same price as a high-end iPhone, which retails for up to $1,600.

More than 50-percent-off would be a substantial difference, leading us to wonder exactly what you’d be left with when you strip out certain components.

“What if we took off the strap and users just held it to their faces?”

It’s possible the Apple Vision might just be sold as more of a concept—a figurative Vision, if you will—instead of something tangible. That could really drive the component cost down.

How about you pay now instead?

If you have “rare reversal” on your Apple news bingo card, please fill in that space, as Apple is ending a somewhat controversial payment option that it only introduced last year.

“Apple discontinuing Apple Pay Later, ahead of new features launching this fall”

Apple Pay Later was always a bit of an odd offering coming from Apple. “You want this thing now and we want you to pay us forever. It’s like we were made for each other.”

Don’t worry, though. You can still fulfill your dream of going into debt to Apple.

Apple emphasizes in its statement that its focus is on the new installment loan features coming to Apple Pay later this year.

The new installment features may or may not include visits from beefy gentlemen who say “You got a nice place here. Be a shame if somethin’ were to happen to it.” before idly knocking a tchotchke off your mantel.

[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]

by Jason Snell

June 21, 2024 11:55 AM PT

Apple: Some new features won’t come to EU due to the DMA

Apple has announced that some features it recently announced at WWDC won’t be coming to the EU this year because of European regularions. Bloomberg’s Samuel Stolton and Mark Gurman report:

Apple Inc. is withholding a raft of new technologies from hundreds of millions of consumers in the European Union, citing concerns posed by the bloc’s regulatory attempts to rein in Big Tech.

The company announced Friday it would block the release of Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay Screen Sharing from users in the EU this year, because the Digital Markets Act allegedly forces it to downgrade the security of its products and services.

For shipping features, Apple needed to amend them to get them to work in the EU. This is the first shot in a new phase of Apple’s battle with regulators: withholding some highly promoted features from the EU and blaming it on regulations.

I’m curious if Apple intends to eventually ship the features, amended to work in the EU. This approach also gives Apple the opportunity to induce regulators to declare that Apple’s interpretation of the DMA is incorrect and that announced features aren’t restricted and could be shipped.

The European Commission ultimately serves and reports to citizens of the EU, and this is Apple telling Europeans that under the DMA, they will not get some of Apple’s best new features. Instead of the DMA granting Europeans new features like third-party marketplaces, it will reframe the DMA as something that limits what they get. I don’t know if that’ll make a difference in perception in the EU, but Apple’s going to give it a try.

By Joe Rosensteel

June 19, 2024 1:38 PM PT

How Sandwich streamed The Talk Show Live in 3D on Vision Pro

During last week’s WWDC festivities, John Gruber interviewed Apple executives on stage for The Talk Show Live, as he’s done for years. This time it was different because people at home with a Vision Pro could watch the event live from the Theater app by Sandwich Vision, streamed by SpatialGen. (The stream is still available to watch after the fact in the Theater app.)

Sandwich is Adam Lisagor’s media empire specializing in commercial production, and Sandwich Vision is the Vision Pro development arm. I had the chance to talk to Adam, Andy Roth, and Dan Sturm. Andy is the developer for Sandwich Vision’s Television and Theater apps. Dan is the visual effects supervisor for Sandwich.

Disclosure: I am friends with Dan, and have worked for Sandwich as a freelance compositor on some projects, but I am not connected to Television, Theater, or The Talk Show Live in any capacity. The following was lightly edited for clarity and length.

For those that haven’t watched it in a Vision Pro, how would you describe the experience of viewing The Talk Show Live in the Theater app?

Adam: The experience is entirely unique. It’s a blend of different immersive styles and definitions that combine to create a unique kind of immersion that’s more than the sum of its parts.

  • The user is immersed in an immersive space within visionOS (the theater inside the app, surrounded by theater seating, with a sense of scale and perspective—and the equivalent of a 76′ screen in front of them, so it’s the feeling of a typical huge AMC style multiplex theater with few enough cues from lighting, shape, and texture to break the illusion.

  • The user sees a human-scaled “portal” to the stereoscopic capture of humans on a stage, separated forward from the big screen in z-depth about the same distance as the actual humans would be in a real theater environment. So the human scale is immersive, and the stereo capture is immersive.

  • The user hears spatialized audio of the humans on stage combined with the audience captured in a stereo image, creating a sense of immersion in sound within the environment (as well as a sense of place in the community). This is a real psychological effect that happens when a person sits within a large group that’s having a communally similar reaction—we get a sense of overwhelm from the uncommonly emergent scale of the group of which we’re now a member.

  • The user experiences the event in real time, which, in combination with the other immersion styles, is almost never experienced—we watch broadcast TV of live events all the time, but we never experience live events in real time with multiple styles of immersion.

All of this combined leads to a sense of nowness and thereness that is, as some social media users described, “magical.”

Continue reading “How Sandwich streamed The Talk Show Live in 3D on Vision Pro”…

Clockwise 559: This Is a Powerful Emoji

Apple’s planning a cheaper Vision Pro, how we feel about covering CG advertising, managing subscriptions, and our favorite emoji.

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The Rebound 500: Episode 1000

Five for 500.

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By Jason Snell for Macworld

June 19, 2024 6:30 AM PT

Apple’s failures show the limits of its ambition

Apple is a colossus. Some of us might remember back when it was doomed and nearly bankrupt, but these days, it generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every day and has a market capitalization of more than three trillion dollars.

And yet even the most powerful companies are fallible. Often they have a hubris that suggests that their success in one area means they can easily extend it to others—often with disastrous results.

This week, Apple got another reminder that even its mighty power might not be able to make it succeed at all its ambitions. Don’t be embarrassed, Apple — even the world’s most beautiful models still get pimples from time to time.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦

by Jason Snell

June 18, 2024 9:32 AM PT

Apple refuses to notarize emulator apps

This apparently happened just before WWDC, so I missed it, but it deserves everyone’s attention. Apple has rejected the UTM emulator app, not just from the global App Store, but from all third-party App Stores in the EU by refusing to notarize it. Michael Tsai’s site has the details:

This also seems inconsistent with the fact that the Delta emulator is allowed to be notarized outside the App Store. It doesn’t make much sense for the rules to be more lax within the App Store.

Steve Troughton-Smith put it more succinctly:

Apple needs to read the terms of the DMA again; Apple can’t reject UTM from distribution in third party marketplaces, in just the same way it can’t prevent Epic from building an App Store. App Review is going to land them yet another clash with the EU, and potential fine-worthy rule violation.

In other words, parts of Apple apparently think that they can enforce inconsistent and arbitrary rules even outside the App Store, which is contrary to the entire regulatory process that led to the DMA and the concept of alternative App Stores in the first place. (This also happened to the iDOS emulator.)

On top of all that, it took Apple two months to come to the decision. (AltStore developer Riley Testut has said that Apple is taking ages to notarize any apps for his marketplace.)

The whole point of the DMA is that Apple does not get to act as an arbitrary approver or disapprover of apps. If Apple can still reject or approve apps as it sees fit, what’s the point of the DMA in the first place?

[Hat tip to ATP 592.]

Upgrade 517: Maybe It’s Catchier in Japanese

The Summer of Fun has arrived, but we’ve still got a lot of catch-up work to do after a huge WWDC. So this week we share more thoughts about Apple’s new AI strategy and discuss a lot of the feedback we got about what happened last week.

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by Dan Moren

June 17, 2024 12:18 PM PT

Apple Pay Later where later means never

Chance Miller at 9to5Mac reports that Apple has shelved its “buy now pay later” feature:

The change goes into effect starting today, Apple says. Existing users with open Apple Pay Later loans will still be able to manage them via the Wallet app.

In its place, Apple is focusing on new features coming globally to Apple Pay later this year, including the ability to access installment loan offerings from eligible credit or debit cards, as well as Affirm.

Miller has a full statement from Apple in his piece, but what I wondered was whether this was the fastest a feature had been shipped and then canceled. The feature was first announced in March 2023, meaning it’s been around for just fifteen months.

It seems likely this feature was not much used, especially since it competes with lots of other similar (and more well established) features. Also worth noting, the loans were backed by Apple itself, via a subsidiary called Apple Financing, LLC—which at the time seemed to only handle this “buy now pay later” feature.1

Apple also recently announced during its WWDC keynote that it will incorporate loyalty/reward programs into Apple Pay as well as installment programs through your own bank. Perhaps the writing was on the wall at this point.

In any case, while Apple may have fancied itself a more reasonable purveyor of this particular service, I also can’t fault them for perhaps not wanting to be in a business that can feel a bit troublesome.

  1. Fun fact: while digging around in corporate records, I discovered that Apple Financing LLC is listed as a branch of “Bespin Capital LLC.” I can only assume they specialize in financing tibanna gas mines. ↩

Downstream 71: Mountain of Mishegas

Vulture’s Josef Adalian joins Jason to discuss the fate of Paramount after the latest deal has fallen through, Warner Bros. Discovery moves to plan B on sports rights, and Joe walks us through his Vulture streamer rankings.

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By John Moltz

June 14, 2024 2:00 PM PT

This Week in Apple: All In

John Moltz and his conspiracy board. Art by Shafer Brown.

It’s official! Apple has AI! (Coming later.) Its other new operating system features also made an appearance at the WWDC keynote and if you see a Microsoft employee this week, give them a hug. They might need it.

Bandwagon = joined

OK, yes, we’re going to have to talk about AI again, but I’m pretty sure this is the last time we’ll have to.

Apple unveiled a range of AI offerings starting with Apple Intelligence—a collection of features done via both on-device learning and through secure cloud-based processing—and ending with the ability to pass queries off to ChatGPT when only a demonstrably wrong answer will do.

Reaction to Image Playground, a feature that provides AI-generated images in response to prompts, seems to be a unanimous blech, largely based on the generic DALL-E-looking output, but also on the input. Hope you don’t use “the open web” because, like so many other AI companies, Apple appears to have helped itself to whatever works you might have put out there in order to train its system. Don’t worry, though. You can opt out now, after all the five-legged AI-generated horses have bolted.

It’s currently not clear exactly how Apple is applying what its Applebot learned from reading the entire web. If it’s just teaching it how to talk, that’s less bad than teaching it what to say. But clearly something went into training Image Playground how to make those images no one seems to like very much.

A big question on many minds is, will Apple Intelligence hallucinate? Sure, it will. Don’t we all? I know I do. What? Who said that? But Apple says it did its best.

“How will Apple’s new AI change your phone? I asked Tim Cook.”

Cook: It’s not 100 percent. But I think we have done everything that we know to do, including thinking very deeply about the readiness of the technology in the areas that we’re using it in.

You can’t make an AI without breaking a few eggs, many of which come in cartons of 13 and have an unexpected number of yolks.

The much-rumored and oft sought-after AI-powered better Siri even made a brief appearance, if just a bit of a cameo.

Speaking of which, if you want to have the original Siri do a Cameo for you, you can.

Also present

Turns out Apple did announce things that were not related to AI, if you can believe it. Not sure why they bothered, but they did.

The new version of macOS will be Sequoia and one of its big new features is, uh, your iPhone. A new feature of Continuity actually lets you remote control your iPhone right from your desktop. Apple has asked people not to then run Screens from their iPhones to then control the Mac as it could collapse the space/time continuum.

In terms of other platforms, visionOS also got some smaller updates and the iPad finally has a calculator, which has a number of cool new features, such as the ability to solve handwritten calculations. If you never thought you’d use algebra after graduating, you’ll at least use it to try this feature. And then probably never again.

As foretold, iOS 18 has new options for icons, including the ability to not show app titles, for those who like to live on the edge.

“I’m pretty sure it’s one of these blue ones. Maybe this? Nope. This? Wrong again.”

Not great, Microsoft Bob!

But enough about Apple. How was Microsoft’s week?

Could have been better.

First the company had to walk back its recently announced Recall feature because it’s a security nightmare. Then ProPublica published a lengthy expose on the company’s lack of reaction to a security bug.

“Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and Left U.S. Government Vulnerable to Russian Hack, Whistleblower Says”

Well, how bad could it have been? Well, it allowed Russia to:

…vacuum up sensitive data from a number of federal agencies, including, ProPublica has learned, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the United States’ nuclear weapons stockpile…

OK, I’m not an expert on nuclear weapons (you’re thinking of my brother) but that seems bad.

To add insult to injury received by stepping on multiple rakes…

“Apple Passes Microsoft to Become World’s Most Valuable Company Again”

This change is probably less because of the Recall fiasco and the company dropping the nuclear football and more because Apple simply made AI announcements. Wall Street has signaled that Apple checked that box it wanted checked. Good job!

[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]

by Shelly Brisbin

June 14, 2024 12:34 PM PT

New York Magazine lauds Vision Pro’s accessibility

Author Andrew Leland, whose memoir, The Country of the Blind gained critical praise last year, is out with a feature for New York magazine on how the Apple Vision Pro is providing accessibility benefits for people with low vision, limb differences, and cognitive disabilities:

Neurodiverse users have also found value in the AVP. “I generally feel a lot better after having worn it for a while,” a user with autism and ADHD told me. “It’s like a reset for the brain.” When I chatted with them, they’d just drained their AVP’s battery by spacing out in the immersive lunar environment. “My brain just is hyperfocused on whatever stimulus comes in, so whatever I can do to manually cut those stimuli off helps me tremendously,” they said. “The Vision Pro is noise-canceling headphones for my eyes.”

Leland describes the joy a low-vision user finds with the headset, viewing windows the size of a garden shed, or not having to crane one’s to see a desk-mounted monitor. But he isn’t starry-eyed about Vision Pro, pointing out ways the people he profiled have struggled – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot – with the device. He was also treated to the Apple Park experience, and came away impressed by what he saw and heard from the accessibility team there.

Leland’s piece is most notable, though, for its thoughtful take on the nature of accessibility, and the way he contextualizes it for a wide audience without dumbing things down.

WWDC, Fiber disasters, and John Moltz

We recap WWDC until a truck harshly intervenes. Then John Moltz appears to save the day! [If you’re a More Colors or Backstage level member, this episode also contains our nearly hourlong monthly Q&A segment.]

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