WWDC23: Monday’s Tidbits and Community Reactions
One of my favorite things after any Apple event is scouring the product pages, accompanying videos, and social media timelines for all the little things that didn’t make the keynote. Here’s my roundup of stuff I’ve found so far. I’ll append more that I find today to the bottom, and will consider posting more throughout the week!
#macOS 14, #iOS and #iPadOS 17: “Music. Invite friends to join your playlist and everyone can add, reorder, and remove songs. In Now Playing, you can use emoji to react to the song choices.”
#Apple #AppleEvent #WWDC #WWDC23 #WWDC2023
Auto filling verification codes from messages app is one of my favourite iOS features and now it’ll work with mail. Fantastico! 👏
Hopefully, it works with Mail closed! I use Spark, but keep accounts enabled in Mail for just such OS integrations.
That’s right — iOS 17 finally adds the option to cross-fade songs. That means when one track ends, rather than abruptly stopping and starting the next song in your playlist, there is a gradual fade transition instead, with the current track getting quieter as the next track gets louder.
Might have to try this out, but I’ve never been a crossfade person before…
Other new tvOS 17 features include […] an option to immediately switch to your profile when you use the Apple TV with your iPhone remote […]
Now that you mention it, it’s a little funny that this wasn’t already the case.
In the Find My app, you can select an AirTag and choose the “Share This AirTag” option to invite a contact of yours. The invited person will be able to see the location of the AirTag just as you can, which is useful if you’re lending an item with an AirTag attached to it to a friend or family member because it eliminates those annoying tracking alerts.
Thank goodness!
That means someone who has access to your unlocked phone and opens your Safari browser won’t be able to get to your private browsing history without secondary authentication. Face ID or a passcode can be used to access the Safari private tabs.
Private browsing also completely blocks known trackers from loading on pages and removes tracking added to URLs as you browse, improving privacy. Websites are prevented from tracking or identifying your device with these new additions, plus Apple also offers improved extension control.
Smart!
The iOS 17 update includes a new option to delete verification codes in Messages (and Mail) after they’ve been inserted into an app or website through the Autofill feature.
“Clean Up Automatically” can be toggled on for verification codes in the Passwords app under Password Options.
I expect this will be less necessary with passkeys as the future of authentication, but it’s a welcome addition in the interim.
With its machine learning technology, iPad OS 17 can identify fields in a PDF so that you can fill them out quickly — that’s big for people who don’t have easy access to Adobe Acrobat. This also functions with photos of documents that you scan onto your iPad.
I hadn’t even thought about scanned documents!
I swear, the Apple TV remote is designed, specifically, to slip between cushions and fall into the black hole of a couch. The remote is tiny, thin, and so smooth. But I have great news. Today, during Apple’s 2023 World Wide Developer’s Conference, a quick mention brought hope to my life: Siri will soon be able to locate your lost Apple TV remote.With just Bluetooth? Not the precision finding integration that we wanted, but pretty close! And coming to all of the 2nd gen Siri Remotes. 
Apple Maps will gain new topographic maps with trailheads, contour lines, hill shading, elevation gains, and more, starting in the U.S. You’ll also be able to search to discover nearby trails and Trailhead categories so you can review additional information such as trail name, difficulty level length, elevation gain, and more before heading out to hike.
Check out the screenshots. I’m partial to the topographical map view with an estimated walk time radius that makes so much sense that I can’t believe I haven’t seen that kind of UI before in other mapping solutions.
Your phone will monitor your progress and if something seems off, it’ll ask you if things are OK — if not, you can send an alert.
To be clear, Check In doesn’t share your location in real time — you can do that separately if you want, but that’s up to you. However, if you don’t arrive at home on time, and don’t disable it, your friends will be able to see your current location, the route you took getting home and your phone’s battery and signal levels. All this is encrypted, by the way!
When you return, everyone you’ve included on your Check In thread will get a notification that you’re back. Of course, it’s still possible to miss this on their end, but it minimizes the chance you go straight to bed without letting someone know you made it. And if anything goes awry, they’ll know right away.
My parents will love this.
Your phone will monitor your progress and if something seems off, it’ll ask you if things are OK — if not, you can send an alert.
To be clear, Check In doesn’t share your location in real time — you can do that separately if you want, but that’s up to you. However, if you don’t arrive at home on time, and don’t disable it, your friends will be able to see your current location, the route you took getting home and your phone’s battery and signal levels. All this is encrypted, by the way!
When you return, everyone you’ve included on your Check In thread will get a notification that you’re back. Of course, it’s still possible to miss this on their end, but it minimizes the chance you go straight to bed without letting someone know you made it. And if anything goes awry, they’ll know right away.
Child Safety features for all! Good to have them available.
There isn’t much detail about how it will work, though it appears to be fairly straightforward from the looks of it. In iOS 17, photos of food will be identified, and you’ll then be able to search for similar dishes. For instance, in the photo illustrating this on the page, photos of bowls of quinoa lead to suggested recipes for other quinoa meals, and specifically breakfast foods, as shown in the photo. If this works as described, it could be a handy way to get inspiration about what to cook, without having to search across the web, though it likely won’t be able to guide you to the specific recipe for the dish pictured.
AKA the “empty the fridge” feature.
During WWDC, Apple also announced other updates to SharePlay. Instead of connecting through FaceTime, users can bring devices together to instantly start a shared activity using SharePlay. For example, if you’re going on a run with a friend and want to jog to the beat of the same tunes, you can link up your music.
I wonder if this will work through the Apple Watch sans iPhone. I never run with my phone anymore.
“Animated SF Symbols” 👀 #wwdc23
Yes, you heard that right! iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma add support for sharing passwords and passkeys in groups with friends and family.
- share passkeys, passwords, verification codes, and notes
- edits and updates seamlessly sync between group members
- end-to-end encrypted
- share with family, friends, and other close contacts
- the password manager that’s built in to iPhone, iPad, and Mac is free to use and easy to switch to :)
Sounds like everything I need to make my switch. Can’t wait to go back to system integrations.
Can’t quite tell if the new Apple Watch cycling mode can figure out your assist level on an ebike. Hopefully.
At the moment I get WAY too much credit for fitness if just riding to the shops with the assist mode turned up.
iSight/EyeSight joins Macs/Max, iBook/iBooks, etc. in the pantheon of Apple name-siblings.
If you see a controller, they blew it.
This is exactly how I wanted this UI to look/work. I’ve been putting iPads and phones taped onto my closet door next to my desk and it’s a perfect setup. Mac in the center, iPhones and iPads to the sides.
“I wish I could see through the gaps between them” THEY DID IT. They gave me a bunch of floating iPhone apps.
🍎🥽💦
Is the real-time subsystem another…leaving…from Project Titan?
Glad to see some tech make its way out of that project. Wasn’t Mike Rockwell part of Titan, too?
Apollo getting a lot of screen time. Maybe Apple will pick up those api charges.
No VR games with controllers? Does Vision Pro really not support the one product market fit we’ve seen for VR?!
Also Apple does not seem to be promoting any actual VR or AR games — just flatscreen games that you can play on a big screen inside the headset. Which makes sense given that there are no hardware controllers, but might also mean you still need something like a Quest if you want Beat Saber or whatever.
All in all, I would say this was a keynote for the ages. A lot of really cool stuff. I’m just still smarting at the price of that thing, but everything else about it seemed pretty cool.
I quite enjoyed the ‘grab bag of features’ nature of all of Apple’s existing OSes this WWDC. If ever you were going to take a ‘Snow Leopard’ year, it’s while everybody is distracted with visionOS. Fixing big problems with iOS, like the keyboard, is a win from me
the announcement today that will have the greatest impact in my family’s day to day life:
Now this is interesting; why would we need to be using TestFlight to test with visionOS unless Vision Pro developer hardware is coming very soon?
If any of this were true, why wouldn’t they announce it in either of the keynotes? 🫨 #WWDC23
Of note: “When the App Store becomes available, compatible apps will be available automatically with no action needed, giving people more options in visionOS.”
This is the best feature Apple has ever made.
Multiple timers, In #iOS / #iPadOS. 👏
#iOS and #iPadOS 17: “Notes. Quickly add links from one note to another. It’s a powerful way to connect research notes, reference a recipe, or even create wikis for your team.”
#Apple #AppleEvent #WWDC #WWDC23 #WWDC2023
I’m not a heavy inter-note linker, but I’d be very glad to have easy access to a URL back to a specific note that I can paste elsewhere.
WorkoutKit makes it easy to create, preview, and schedule planned workouts for the Workout app on Apple Watch. Learn how to build custom intervals, create alerts, and use the built-in preview UI to send your own workout routines to Apple Watch.
Wait a sec, are apps going to be able to send their custom workouts into the Workouts app?