WWDC 2023 news: Apple Vision Pro, Mac Pro, iOS 17, and more

Despite some hints toward a possible Apple smart display with its new StandBy feature for iPhones, Apple’s WWDC was underwhelming for the smart home. But Apple did announce one noteworthy addition, Siri will soon handle “multiple commands” in succession without you having to say its name again.

This might seem like a small update, but for anyone who uses voice control in the smart home, saying, “Siri, turn off the dining room lights,” then “Lock the front door,” then “Turn off the fan,” will be an improvement. However, it’s also another example of how Apple is still playing catch-up in the smart home.

For a lot of developers, watching WWDC is a trepidatious affair where they wait to find out whether they’ve been “Sherlocked” — that is, their apps have been outmoded by Apple building their features into its operating systems. We saw it this year when Apple announced Journal, which many have compared to the third-party app Day One. Last year, it was Continuity Cam, which is a lot like smartphone-as-a-webcam-app Camo, and before that, there was Screen Time, which gobbled up traits from Moment.

We’re used to seeing Apple’s new features come from some currently popular app. But it’s less common for Apple to reach back and find inspiration in old, once-ubiquitous tech that predates the iPhone and even the company itself — and this year, that’s exactly what it did, starting with answering machines.

Apple TVs will get native VPN app support in tvOS 17, according to an Apple press release (via 9to5Mac). It’s one of many features that didn’t make it into the keynote at WWDC 2023, but it could be a big deal for some folks. Assuming native VPN apps on Apple’s streaming box work as they do elsewhere, you might not have to wait to get home to catch up on streaming shows when traveling with an Apple TV 4K in tow.

Right now, in tvOS 17, to use a VPN with your Apple TV, you’ll need to do something like install a VPN on your router to do it, and not all routers support this. Native VPN support is one of the rare advantages Google’s Chromecast or Amazon’s Fire TV devices hold over the Apple TV right now.

Apple used the Vision Pro’s $3,499 price tag to give the headset every advantage over the competition. It has dual 4K displays, runs one of the best laptop chips in the business, and comes with sophisticated eye- and hand-tracking technologies. But it also has one advantage money can’t buy: Apple’s developer ecosystem. Perhaps the headset’s single biggest advantage will be the ability for iPhone and iPad developers to easily plug their existing apps into the device’s operating system using familiar tools and frameworks.

Already, the system stands in stark contrast to headsets from Meta, Valve, PlayStation, and HTC, which mostly rely on apps and games made in Unity or OpenXR to power their virtual and augmented reality experiences. While some competitors, like the Meta Quest, have key apps like Microsoft Office, Xbox, and Netflix, offerings beyond this are limited. In the several years that Meta’s headset has been out, the Meta Quest Store has only released about 400 games and apps. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a sign that there’s a serious lack of content optimized for VR.

This week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) wasn’t all about operating system updates and Apple’s new mixed reality headset. Apple also revealed a number of new Macs, including a 15-inch MacBook Air as well as revamped versions of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio with Apple Silicon. All three will be available on Tuesday, June 13th, though you can currently preorder them from Apple, Amazon, and other retailers.

Apple claims the newest MacBook Air is “the world’s thinnest 15-inch laptop.” Its 15.3-inch screen boasts 500 nits of brightness, but it’s otherwise similar to last year’s redesigned 13-inch model. It comes equipped with a 1080p webcam, a MagSafe charging connector, and Apple’s base M2 chip, which is the same processor found in the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Apple has spent years slowly making green bubbles feel like a worse kind of message — no typing indicators, tiny photos, no end-to-end encryption — but those constraints have always been limited to conversations in Messages; use any other app on your iPhone, and there’s generally parity with Android. But with iOS 17 later this year, Apple will expand those platform differences to phone calls, adding a big, splashy sign that your friend or family member bought the wrong phone.

The biggest change is thanks to Apple’s new Contact Poster feature for phone calls, one of Apple’s banner improvements for iOS 17. When you set a Contact Poster, you choose a photo of yourself that fills an iPhone’s entire screen along with the font that displays your name. The vibe is very similar to the customizable lock screens added with iOS 16. Then, when you call someone, your personalized contact card takes over the screen of their phone instead of the large blank page that appears today. (Notably, you can limit sharing to contacts only or require iOS to ask if you want to share it.)

A couple of years ago, laptop sales were through the roof. With the majority of the population stuck at home for both work and school, plus flush with cash from government stimulus checks, many people were in need of better computers for use at home. And many of them bought laptops, to the tune of 340 million units in 2021.

But that wave is long over. Overall laptop sales fell by double digits in 2022, and they haven’t bounced back in 2023. Apple, ever the outlier in so many markets, did manage to squeak out an increase in 2022 over 2021. But the last two quarters have seen the sharpest year-over-year percentage decline in revenue from the Mac in half a decade. Last quarter’s Mac revenue was the lowest since the third quarter of 2020. (Jason Snell over at Six Colors has a lot of handy charts that illustrate this — you want to look for the “Mac revenue” and “year-over-year Mac revenue change” charts.) Despite a huge bump from the revamped MacBook Pro that came out in late 2021 and strong performance from last year’s M2 Air, Mac sales have slowed down a lot.

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t seem fazed by Apple’s introduction of the Vision Pro.

In a companywide meeting with Meta employees today that The Verge watched, the CEO said Apple’s device didn’t present any major breakthroughs in technology that Meta hadn’t “already explored” and that its vision for how people will use the device is “not the one that I want.” He also pointed to the fact that Meta’s upcoming Quest 3 headset will be much cheaper, at $499 compared to the Vision Pro’s $3,499 price tag, giving Meta the opening to reach a wider user base.

Apple’s revealing that its new Vision Pro mixed reality headset is outfitted with displays that have a 90Hz refresh rate. The new detail comes in an online WWDC session for developers where Apple shares how 2D video and stereoscopic 3D video work in the headset.

It’s common to see 90 to 120Hz screens on tech from smartphones to PC gaming monitors, as it provides quicker responsiveness and smoother motion than slower displays. Apple has generally used 60Hz displays on everything it makes other than some of its “pro” devices like the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro that have 120Hz ProMotion displays. For a screen directly in front of your eyes, that added speed will make a big difference.

Apple has a new development framework that can be used to turn your iPhone into an autonomous pet-tracking camera. According to documentation on Apple’s website, developers can use pet-tracking features with motorized phone stands to capture and follow your pet around your house while you’re not home.

As noted by Apple, developers can achieve this using a new framework called DockKit, which can create “photo and video experiences” while an iPhone is mounted on a motorized stand. From there, devs can then use something called the Animal Body Pose API (application programming interface), which is capable of identifying and tracking animals with your phone’s camera. It’s able to identify a pet’s pose, too, including if your pet is sitting down, standing up, or begging for food.

I still remember using the iPhone 4 for the first time in 2010. That was when Apple shipped its first-ever Retina display and Steve Jobs said that, once you use it, “you can’t go back.” It was something I couldn’t unsee, like looking through prescription glasses for the first time.

That’s exactly how I felt after a demo of the Apple Vision Pro yesterday at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. A computer you strap to your face should be primarily judged not only by what you can do with it but also by the quality of what you can see through it. The Vision Pro blows away every other headset in this regard. It’s the industry’s Retina display moment. There’s no going back.