Posts tagged with "Vision Pro"

Google Releases YouTube App for Apple Vision Pro

Today, Google released the official YouTube app for visionOS. The app allows users to sign in to view their subscriptions, watch later queues, and playlists, and it supports native playback of regular videos, shorts, and spatial formats including 3D, 180-degree, and 360-degree. On the M5 Vision Pro, the app supports playback of 8K videos as well.

The Vision Pro launched two years ago without an official way to watch YouTube. Third-party options like Tubular Pro and the now-defunct Juno filled the gap well, and users have always been able to watch YouTube in a browser on visionOS. (Apple even made improvements to web video playback in visionOS 2 to make using sites like YouTube and Netflix more seamless.) But the lack of a native app from Google has been seen as a mark against visionOS up to this point.

Whether you’re a Vision Pro user who spends a lot of time watching YouTube or just someone who wants to see the platform thrive, having an official solution is a win. One of the device’s most compelling use cases is watching video, and now, there’s a great way to do so directly from Google. It’s always seemed inevitable to me that YouTube would come to the platform at some point, and as visionOS continues its slow burn toward maturity while awaiting hardware that can run it with more mass market appeal, it’s good to have YouTube onboard.

Now, it’s Netflix’s turn.

Immersive Dog Show Series ‘Top Dogs’ Premieres on Apple Vision Pro

Pet lovers, rejoice! After debuting immersive series and specials on subjects ranging from nature and travel to music and sports on the Vision Pro over the past couple of years, Apple is now inviting viewers into the world of competitive dog showing with Top Dogs. Available now, the two-part docuseries offers a one-of-a-kind perspective on Crufts, the world’s biggest dog show, following competitors and their owners as they give their all in hopes of winning the coveted Best in Show trophy.

Let me tell you: having had a chance to see the docuseries, these are some very good dogs. Throughout the roughly 30 minutes of video, I got the chance to see tons of adorable and prim canines, some from breeds I’d never heard of before. Crufts attracts nearly 20,000 competitors each year, so there were plenty of great dogs to meet. It’s worth watching the show just for the shots of the cute pups alone.

But Top Dogs is about more than just making new canine friends. The series offers a great overview of the dog show itself, including some behind-the-scenes footage of the lower-level competitions I wasn’t familiar with from my casual viewings of dog shows in the past. The series also employs the best use of graphics I’ve seen so far in Apple Immersive Video, explaining the dog show’s various rounds with expansive 3D charts. It includes an excellent opening title sequence, too, something I didn’t realize I was missing in these immersive series up until now.

Read more

Immersive Lakers Game Now Widely Available on Apple Vision Pro

Last Friday, basketball fans in the Los Angeles Lakers market got their first glimpse of an immersive live game when the Lakers faced the Milwaukee Bucks on Spectrum Front Row on Apple Vision Pro. While that experience was limited geographically and only available to Spectrum customers via the Spectrum SportsNet app, the game replay is now available widely and for free in the NBA app. Vision Pro users in eligible regions outside Lakers territory can download the app, sign up for an NBA ID, and stream the game replay and highlights today. The full schedule and availability of immersive Lakers games were announced last week.

Being from Arkansas and not California, I missed out on the live premiere, but I was able to check out the game replay on my Vision Pro yesterday, and the experience was fantastic. Most of the game was shown from a front-row courtside perspective, which meant I was literally turning my head from side to side as the teams moved up and down the court. It was very different from the bird‘s-eye view I’m used to watching televised sports from, and it really gave me the impression of being in the arena. At one point, when a member of the Lakers scored a point, I felt the urge to start clapping as if they could hear me, even though I was sitting in my bedroom, not at the Lakers game.

There were several other camera angles that the broadcast cut to from time to time. The behind-the-basket view was a fun way to take in the action when someone was about to score, and there was a roaming camera that brought you onto the court itself before the game and during halftime as well. The cuts were sparing, which made the whole experience feel less jarring than some of the immersive sports highlights we’ve seen on Vision Pro before, but the combination of immersive video and multiple angles offered the best of both worlds. It felt like I was actually there taking in the game, and no matter what was happening, I always got to see it from the best angle.

Even if you’re not a big fan of basketball or the Lakers, it’s worth checking out the replay to see what the experience is like. Right now, broadcasting a game in this way is a big undertaking, but I have a feeling it will only become more and more common with time. If this concept eventually expands to other sports and live experiences like concerts, theatrical performances, and more, it would make a really compelling case for the Vision Pro and the sorts of capabilities only visionOS can offer.

visionOS 26: The MacStories Overview

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

As part of this year’s WWDC keynote, Apple today announced visionOS 26, the next major version of visionOS coming this fall. The update features new ways for users to experience spatial content, display information in their environment, and interact with apps and games. It represents the next step forward for Apple’s vision of spatial computing, including what the company refers to as “the spatial web.”

Since Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language borrows heavily from visionOS, design changes won’t be as striking on the platform. The most prominent user-facing feature of the update is likely to be spatial widgets.

Up to this point, native widgets have been completely absent on visionOS, and the company has introduced them in a way that is consistent with its other devices while adding a spatial flair. Widgets can be customized to include a border and a depth effect to blend in with the user’s environment, and they remain fixed persistently in place even after the Vision Pro restarts. Built-in options like the Clock, Calendar, Music, and Photos widgets were featured, though third-party developers will be able to provide their own widget options via the new Widgets app.

Various ways of experiencing spatial content have been enhanced in visionOS 26 as well. Building on last year’s introduction of spatial photo conversion, Apple this year added a feature called spatial scenes to all of its platforms. Spatial scenes add depth to photos, enabling users to experience their pictures from different perspectives by moving their heads. These scenes can be viewed in Photos, the Spatial Gallery, and Safari, and developers can add them to their own apps. visionOS 26 also adds native support for playing back 180-degree, 360-degree, and wide field-of-view content.

Read more

Apple Previews a Wide Range of Upcoming Accessibility Features to Mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

With Global Accessibility Awareness Day coming up this Thursday, May 15, Apple is back with its annual preview of accessibility features coming to its platforms later in the year. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the creation of the first office within Apple to address accessibility, and there’s no sign of any slowdown in the company’s development on this front. While no official release date has been announced for these features, they usually arrive with the new OS updates in the fall.

In addition to a new accessibility-focused feature in the App Store, Apple announced a whole raft of system-level features. Let’s take a look.

Read more

Apple Immersive Video Utility Released

Apple has released a new companion app called Apple Immersive Video Utility for Vision Pro owners that allows them to organize and manage immersive content with the help of a Mac. The utility, which is available for the Mac and Vision Pro, allows users to view, stream, and organize Apple Immersive Video into playlists. The app supports more than one Vision Pro, too, synchronizing playback of content streamed from a Mac to multiple Vision Pros. Videos can also be transferred from the Mac app to a Vision Pro for watching them there.

Apple Immersive Video Utility.

Apple Immersive Video Utility.

The App Store description only touches on it, but Apple Immersive Video Utility, the company’s first new Mac app in a long time that wasn’t released as part of an OS update, appears to be designed for post-production work by video professionals. The app could also be used in group educational and training settings based on its feature set.

The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive Camera. Source: Blackmagic.

The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive Camera. Source: Blackmagic.

However, the fact that NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters, conference is going on this week suggests that the app is primarily designed for post-production video work. In fact, the app seems to go hand-in-hand with Blackmagic’s URSA Cine Immersive, an Apple Immersive Video camera that was also shown off at NAB this week, and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20, which supports editing of Apple Immersive Video.

To expand the library of available Apple Immersive Video, there need to be tools to create and manage the huge video files that are part of the process. It’s good to see Apple doing that along with companies like Blackmagic. I expect we’ll see more hardware and software solutions for the format as the months go by.

Hands-On with Guest User Mode in visionOS 2.4

The Apple Vision Pro is a device that begs to be shared with others. Sure, mirroring your view to a TV or iPhone via AirPlay is a decent way to give people a glimpse into the experience, but so much about visionOS – the windows floating in real-world spaces, immersive videos, 3D environments, spatial photos, and more – can only be truly understood by seeing them with your own eyes. That’s why Guest User mode is so vital to the platform.

Guest User was included in the very first version of visionOS, and Apple has iterated on the feature over time, most notably by adding the option to save a guest’s hand and eye data for 30 days in visionOS 2.0 to speed up repeat sessions. With this week’s release of visionOS 2.4, Guest User has received another major update, one that I think Vision Pro users will be very happy about.

Read more

Scratchpad: The Cross-Device Text Utility That Pairs Perfectly with Your Clipboard Manager

One of the best indicators of how sticky a cross-device utility will be in my setup is how quickly I install it everywhere. For Sindre Sorhus’ Scratchpad, the answer was “very sticky.” The simple text utility works on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro (via iPad compatibility mode), and as soon as I tried it on my desktop Mac, I grabbed all of my other devices and installed it on them, too.

At its core, Scratchpad is a single view for typing or pasting plain text that syncs everywhere. What sets it apart from similar apps is its many small touches that demonstrate a deep understanding of the way people use a scratchpad app.

Read more

Metallica Is Coming to the Apple Vision Pro

Apple revealed a new Immersive Video title for the Vision Pro. As announced at SXSW today, Vision Pro users will be treated to a live performance of three Metallica songs: “Whiplash,” “One,” and “Enter Sandman” on March 14th.

According to Metallica’s press release:

This project marks a new foray into immersive technology, using ultra-high-resolution 180-degree video and Spatial Audio to give fans unprecedented access from vantage points as close up as the Snake Pit to wide-angle views. It brings the live show to a whole new level, and to achieve this, Apple built a custom stage plot featuring 14 Apple Immersive Video cameras using a mix of stabilized cameras, cable-suspended cameras, and remote-controlled camera dolly systems that moved around the stage.

For its part, Apple released a trailer for the video on YouTube:

along with an interview by Zane Lowe with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich:

Today’s Metallica news follows the recent Immersive Video announcements of VIP: Yankee Stadium and Bono: Stories of Surrender. It’s great to see new content coming to the Vision Pro, especially live concerts and sports, which are a perfect matches for the format.