Posted by interpol_p 16 hours ago
Through that lens, this all looks a bit performative to me, but again, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
The one thing I'm mildly excited to see is the improvement to Voice Control, as guessing what the programmatic name of a button is or having to constantly use a numbers grid to target elements doesn't sound fun.
To respond to what I see in some of the comments:
- On speech rate: It does take quite a bit of practice to crank up the speech rate and there's a degree of retraining you need to do when you switch voices. A lot of more "human" sounding voices are harder to follow at super high speeds which is why a lot of people prefer more robotic but consistent speech and generally aren't convinced by AI-powered TTS yet; they often fall apart if you raise the speech rate past a certain point. - Re: actually waiting for the target audience's verdict: This is so important. I see more and more companies, individuals etc. talk about accessibility, build accessibility solutions and evangelize AI for accessibility without EVER talking to the people they claim to help. This will almost certainly mean mistakes will be made, up to and including doing more harm than good. If you want to do accessibility right, that includes AI products of any kind, hire people with lived experience or you'll get the equivalent of machine-translated text, hackerproof security in one click or an AI-powered coffee bar that orders thousands of rubber gloves. Coincidental note: I have time for new projects right now :P
And it was valuable to me as someone going from "bad but correctable" vision to low vision. I didn't know all those apps existed. I've been looking for exactly that sort of assistive technology.
Funnily enough we're creating a competitor of these third party app that you mention, with the huge experience of my colleague that is son of blind parents.
We have an mvp online but it's not much yet and i really don't want to be the "do you know i have an app?" guy.
One thing confused me though - you felt like the on-device processing is likely a gimmick. I naively assumed this is a big deal because it means it always work, regardless of your cell service. On the subway, on an airplane, in the middle of nowhere, etc.
Unrelated, what app makes the biggest difference to you in your day to day life?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3SmsSCvoss
Those made the ad stand out in my opinion.
Maybe just don't wear them in a car?
I use those motion cues on my iPhone even though I don't struggle with motion sickness https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OxbjggMcKrk
Still somewhat odd when a bus drives out from behind your Terminal mind.
Someone using this feature will want motion cues as well.
And in your quote: Dwell Control is a feature set to interact with an Apple Vision Pro using only your eyes. Lingering your gaze on a button will press it. An AVP is now more comfortable to use in more situations because of motion cues.
Maybe just rethink your "maybe just" comment...?
Why not?
We have harsh laws on using phones whilst driving, a Vision Pro (if configured in a specific way) could entirely block your vision with a Movie or Show and this is dangerous.
Don’t be so scared of variety. You just keep subjecting yourself to more of the same. The unending familiarity makes you dull.
As of macOS 15 (and I don't think they fixed it in 26), you can only increase the font size of first-party apps on macOS.
The global font size setting doesn't apply to third-party apps, even those built using Apple's frameworks.
Without that, there wouldn’t really be great vlm and conversational models.
The AI companies might have paid for the dictation of some videos on their own but voice assistants etc wouldn’t have existed and our ability to have AI that eventually understands the world would be much much harder.
You however…. Maybe need to switch to decaf?
They are there for everyone. You don’t need to have a permanent disability to benefit from accessibility features. A device designed to work one handed is useful to someone without an arm or a person with two arms who is holding a baby. Subtitles are useful to someone who can’t hear or someone lying to a sleeping spouse or in a noisy place.
“Accessibility needs can be permanent, temporary or situational.”
https://www.coursearc.com/accessibility-content-fundamentals...
I think the trap in creating anything is doing it for a crowd. Art, software, anything... it turns out better when it is made with a specific, named individual in-mind.
Accessibility features are almost always championed and field-tested with one specific loved one in mind and I think that's what keeps the technical solutions personable and grounded.
Thank you, Apple, for taking accessibility seriously and dedicating resources towards it.
I very much appreciate it, and the work of the entire accessibility team.
And what about windows (if you use it) ?
I think that we should all be concerned by the accessibility feature, we never know what is going to happen in life.
I can tell you that the hearing accommodations on the AirPod Pro 2/3 headphones brought literal tears to my eyes because of how fabulous it makes music sound for me.
This is a a LOT more work than just adding an equalizer because you have to do multiband real time compression and expansion, in relation to other frequency bands and respecting band-specific sound energy limits.
I know I might sound like I’m gushing, and I kinda’ am. They didn’t have to put in the time or energy to do that or maintain it and they did ... and for that, like I said, I am extraordinarily grateful.
The form-factor is a significant issue for real-world usage, and it's kind of unclear if there is a plan for a future product line given its (pretty abysmal) initial receiption.
The price and lack of content and developer interest have been the main problems.
And ultimately, people just don’t seem that interested in this product category. Meta ran into the same issue, though at least they targeted gaming where there is a decent niche.
VR/AR tech seems cool and futuristic, but hasn’t quite found its killer app yet.
Apple really screwed themselves by only supporting WebXR for cross-platform VR experiences. Soon Valve will ship the Steam Frame, which will likely cost a fraction of the Vision Pro and support bog-standard PC games like H3VR, flight simulators and flatscreen PC titles. Meanwhile, AVP owners will have paid $3,500 for a more powerful chip/headset with a fraction of the content library and featureset that Valve and Meta offer. Vision Pro's lack of audience is entirely a self-imposed failure, it seems.
It was a strategic mistake for Apple to not focus on gaming. But realistically, the AVP was always going to be way too expensive for basically anything.
Maybe if you could pick one up for like $800 and there was a lot of great 3D immersive content, it could take off. But even then, I feel like it’s just not a product category the average person is that excited about.
My biggest gripe with Netflix is that they only have like 3 languages and no auto translation. And even bigger gripe is that it's because of the union racket. They apparently need to pay hundreds of thousands for something computers do for free. Insanity.