$3500, creepy eyes, either the most disruptive thing on the planet or a really inconvenient way to edit documents. All of it taking the sheen out of the more prosaic important things.
Whether the Apple Vision Pro is going to usher us into a new future where our beloved screens are replaced with visors is for the future to tell. That being said, it is sobering to note that Apple has a nasty habit of making superficially stupid ideas work brilliantly. But in the meantime, the things I was more interested about all circle around software. Weird how that’s the meat of the Worldwide Developers Conference.
Top of the list on those is developments to Siri, the poor beleaguered virtual assistant who I swear is actually getting worse at recognizing what I have to say as time goes by. The headline is that the voice command is losing one of the words to simply become “Siri”, something more people end up screaming anyway as the device just sits there happily ignoring them. In case it doesn’t, get ready for it to actually be able to do more than one thing at once. With any luck the days of screaming at your phone looking like a complete nutcase to the world are over.
Not all of it was software though. Mostly because of the launch of the highly anticipated 15" Macbook Air. At this moment apologies are in order for the people who absolutely despise large tech objects. You know them, the ones that long for the sub 5" flagship phone or the 11" Macbook air. Sadly, the market has spoken on this one, and they have decided that bigger is indeed better. Especially nowadays, when the weight penalty is negligible for general purpose devices. Fortunately, I happen to side with the masses on this one. Bigger is better, and not having to shell the $2500 for a pro is best of all. Even if you’re still looking at at least $1700 before tax for what I would consider a decently long-lasting configuration (16/512).
MacOS Sonoma is also out, bringing unpleasant flashbacks to Windows Vista, much in the same way Windows 11 looks like an unfortunate fever brain of an old version of MacOS. At least the desktop widgets should be useful, especially for the forgetful soul with a second monitor and a fear of looking at their phone for their day plan.
Naturally, the more power-user oriented features for iPadOS, like root-level file access or the ability to install a web browser that isn’t just a customized GUI over WebKit, but that is one of those things that one wishes for rather more in hope than Expectation. After all, controlling every single aspect of everything was Jobs’s old prerogative. More than a decade after his passing and they’re finally in a position where it would be impossible to tell categorically if he would’ve approved their newest incursions.
Whether he did or didn’t, this time he won’t be there to rescue them.
