By Mark I. Unger

With Summer comes the ‘fall.’ Every year I fall, even more into the fanboy network. It’s expensive. It’s painful. It’s a problem. It’s also, like summer, an opener into amazement. While I’m not sure I can really afford any of these new toys, my mind starts to swim w/ ideas for use cases, as it does every year around spring and again at WWDC. Here are some highlights and links.

Apple Vision Pro – The long-awaited Apple version of virtual and augmented reality headsets, this makes me think “You idiot…why haven’t you really been playing games like you did when you were a kid, with that other virtual reality headset you asked for, for your birthday a year or so ago.” This thing is a monstrous $3,500.00 and has the ability to operate like a gaming platform, as well as a TV screen and laptop, replete with something I’ve tried but never really grabbed onto in past devices – that of gesture controls (think of the weatherman each night talking about ‘our overall weather pattern,’ with the flick of wrist and pointer-finger, moving swirls as he/she stands in suspended reality). What I don’t think I like is that you have to connect it to a battery pack by wire. Meh. It also has “Eyesight” (control of transparency or opaqueness changed by an attached crown, so that you can control what you see in virtual v. real environment), claimed more interactive meetings (I’m skeptical anything can make meetings truly interactive w/o virtual jousting; think about how attorneys and parties have become more brazen when protected by the zoom screen); Gesture control by hand gestures is what I’ve waited for, for years, is complemented by eye movements and voice control. They call this “spatial computing.”

When setting up Vision Pro initially, it creates your own ‘persona’ a 3D image of your likeness, which seems to allude to the creation of something I’d thought of many years ago when I had the great (pre-Facetime/Skype) idea for “virtual visitation,” specifically potentially holographic appearances, currently being tested at a very high cost elsewhere. There’s more including more of the five senses, but I’ll hold back for the moment, lest you think I’ve gone off the edge more than already.

14” M2 MacBook Air – A new bigger addition compared to the 13” MBA, with 2 USB-C ports, MagSafe port for charging, and a headphone jack). This will start at $1300.00.

The regular MacBook Air will get discounted to $1100.00 starting point.

Mac Studio and Mac Pro – Standalone boxes with massive memory and that can support up to 6 Pro Display XDR displays. The Studio starts at $2,000.00 but the Mac Pro, starting at $7,000.00 will have the M2 Ultra chip, which claims to support 24 separate 4k camera feeds, 8 Thunderbolt 4 ports and 6 expansion slots.

iOS 17 adds some new functionalities.

Contact Posters allow you to create and share a photo and text to display when calling a contact.

Also, when you miss a call, Apple will start to auto-transcribe the voicemail as the caller is recording it with Live Captions (beta with iOS 16). This, in my opinion, is potentially huge, especially if that transcription is saved. This is simply a push in efficacy as Apps like Otter and others have allowed the transcription of voice to text for a while now, and this was telegraphed back in September 2022.

Also available is the available to leave FaceTime voicemails in the form of short video clips. In theory, this is not new because you could always record yourself, it’s just baked into the process of the FT call now, like leaving a message. This, however, could be awkward, especially in those late-night calls that we know are coming in some of our cases. Every day I thank the good lord that none of this existed back when I was twenty-something, though I still have that Peter Pan complex and dream of going back. But that’s another story.

There is also a new safety feature called “Check In,” for notification of family, etc. when you safely arrive at your destination. You’re invited people can track your route, cell levels, and battery and alert them if you veer off course from your landing place. Not to be negative, but I wonder if there will possibly be bad actors stalking or tracking others with this technology, as Apple had happen with Airtags over the last year or so, causing Apple and Google to work together against this type of harassment and abuse.

NameDrop, a new way of sharing contact info with others, allows you to customize the Contact Poster and info you share. I did notice this functionality, however over the last several months in iOS 16. I now have the ability to pick what information in a contact card I can share with people, including info in notes (previously notes would not transfer with the sharing of info).

In my tests, the note info is turned off by default and all numbers, emails, etc. are turned on, though I can share a contact’s info with someone else now without disclosing their Cell number. This is significant, given the conflicting intersections of mass cell use as ‘only number,’ as well as cell phone spam and people (me) wanting to be able to control who has this cell number or that cell number.

In addition, there will be a Journal, which is the ‘Sherlocking’ or mashup of various technologies such as what we’ve seen with apps like Day One Journal. It will provide a multimedia way to preserve memories in a more structured way. Think of it as digital scrapbooking, taking words, pictures, etc., and creating a slideshow but in a journal format. For family law attorneys (or even others), the most obvious use case would be for the client to have a simpler way to pull together screenshots, pictures, texts, etc., to create a timeline for you and/or for the Court.

Look for additional movement towards gaming, widgets (making Mac more like iPhone), increased video conferencing presentation effects (‘news anchoring’), Profiles in Safari similar to Chrome, Safari ‘pw-sharing’ and editing, as well as Apple Watch tweaks for health (especially mental) and exercise/activity; Also, just like the dichotomy b/w Frankenberry and Count Chocula, when we were kids, there will now be a Snoopy watch face for those that didn’t exactly cuddle up to Micky or Minnie Mouse. I love Snoopy.

I live on the iPad and iOS 17 is to make it cooler even with interactive widgets (v. static buttons), more seamless handling of PDFs, though I already handle these with Goodreader and other Apps, I presume this is to attempt to out MS Microsoft in the sandboxing arena by trying to get people to use Files more. The ability however of live editing over a Facetime call b/w two Apple devices sounds pretty cool and provide me with a nod towards the still-best true collaboration on documents of Google Drive.

“Adaptive Audio” and “Conversation Awareness” might force me to splurge on the new AirPods Pro, enabling auto lowering of music (translation: ironic-mom won’t complain about my TV being on too loud) and reduction of low-frequency noises like an airplane engine while allowing better speech recognition at higher frequencies (translation: Mark is getting older and nothing works as well, including these damn ears). Claims of improved background-noise reduction over phone calls would be awesome if true, especially if it makes it a better user interaction for the other person (there has always been an issue with noise reduction being a selfish functionality, more for me than for them).

AirPlay and SharePlay improvements are going to be something, when the parents catch on, as they will increase the ability to stream audio and video from iPhones and iPads to another compatible devices, such as TVs in hotels by scanning a QR Code and sharing of a car’s music with iPhone users (although this does not defeat the purpose of teenagers – to get you to listen their teen crap via Bluetooth hijacking of the car speakers).

All in all, aside from the augmented and virtual reality moves, it may not be earth-shattering but, as time keeps strolling along, this integration, convergence, and mashup of functions hums just as fast. For us strollers and hummers, it’s gas on the fire; something that reminds us of summer, and the ‘fall’ embedded first in my adolescence.

And as we creep up, all we want more and more, is more of our lost youth. This is not a bad summer start.

Mark I. Unger

@miunger

Mark I. Unger is a former Chair of the State Bar of Texas, Computer & Technology section and sits on a number of volunteer boards and committees related to law and/or technology.

Disclaimer or Reclaimer:

No Chat-GPT-faux-neuron-LLMs were used or harmed in the writing of words in this piece.