WWDC 2023 Livestream | Hacker News Reader

WWDC 2023 Livestream

apple.com

76 pointsasadm126 comments

Does anyone else find the presentation triggering uncanny valley vibes? Everything is so polished and perfect that it no longer feels like it's being presented by humans. It just comes off as incredibly inauthentic and utterly devoid of human connection. There's an avatar of a human presenting, but no humanity is present.

not to mention the demonstrations--these do not feel like real people

It's infomercial style. I feel like I'm stuck in an airport next to a looping video about how a frequent flyer plan might be the right choice for me.

Same feeling here. They're precisely hitting every mark, every line and every smile. It's like they're trying too hard. It's so air-tight that they come off as dorks.

But it makes complete sense, these things have always been like this.

Say what you will about the cheesey Zuck and Boz meta presentations/demos, they at least seem like real people even if a bit dorky.

These constant gentle grin + precise hand gestures + identical infomercial vocal tone thing is weird AF.

The number one thing I wish for in an iOS update is for the text selection and the cursor placement to become less terrible. Currently it is an absolutely unusable nightmare.

My main use case for my iPad is writing, and the guy who invented the "smart" text selection seems to hate my fingers - it is impossible to place the cursor where I want it to be. It tries to "intelligently" snap to the beginnings and endings of words and it gets it wrong 90% of the time.

I know that you can move the cursor with press and hold on the spacebar or on the text, but having to wait a second every time I want to move the cursor is the most annoying thing in the world. It is so much easier to edit text on my much smaller Android phone screen, it's ridiculous.

Just place the cursor where I tap, how hard can it be!

Had you used older versions of iOS? Did you prefer how it worked before, or have you always disliked it?

I don't know how many times I've somehow selected the wrong word and then can't seem to select the word just to the left of it that I really want to copy...

> having to wait a second every time I want to move the cursor is the most annoying thing

You can also use two fingers anywhere on the keyboard and there's no wait.

He's talking about the lock screen but I still haven't heard the one I've been asking for for years:

Multiple users

Sometimes I want to let my kid use my phone. I'd like them to have their own login so they aren't messing with my stuff but have their own apps and their own saved data. Let each app be in control of what app is shared across logins vs separated.

Apple wants you to buy an ipad for each kid.

> Multiple users

That would be amazing indeed.

Not even just because of kids. Imagine for example having a separate user for different things.

Like for example having a dedicated user that only has the default apps and Google Maps and WhatsApp. You can use this user outside and if anyone ever stole your phone while it’s unlocked they don’t have access to most of your sensitive data (email, signed in web sessions, various files and documents, etc).

But multiple users would probably mean families would buy fewer devices. In which case Apple might not want to add such a useful feature.

Just make it easy to move the kids' accounts to their own iPhones/iPads for when you finally give in and give them their own.

This feature exists. It’s just that you have to be an educational institution to use it :(

Yes! I didn't even mention this. It already exists!

And please let me use multiple Apple accounts on the same phone! Every time I need to download something from a different App Store, it screws up everything I have downloaded in Music and other stuff. It also signs me off iMessage and what not, and it sometimes takes me months until I realise it.

Actual multiple users on Apple TV would be great as well. Right now it just signs on to different iCloud accounts so it only makes a difference for Apple apps.

It would be great if apps and their profiles were different per user. i.e. I might want to be signed on to my own Jellyfin/Plex accounts, whilst someone else in the house want to be on theirs. Same for everything else, Netflix (automatic profile selection would be good), etc...

Interesting that Apollo (Reddit client) got highlighted in the iPadOS section a week after Reddit updated their pricing to put Apollo out of business. Really sad.

Thought perhaps this was an intentional nod to that exact situation!

The "NameDrop" is one I'm surprised it took so long to come to fruition. This was a use case I've wanted in phones for over a decade.

Probably needed UWB. After all, you don't want to be accidentally namedropping in a crowded bus or stadium.

Bump! app had this, in 2009. Was later acquired by Google.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)

Ok, because that one seemed real familiar. I was a little confused because I was like "It doesn't already?"

NameDrop is going to wreck the "tap to share" startups.

cc. Popl, Linq, Dot, etc.

Apple is once again making unrealistic assumptions about how many friends I have professional-quality headshots of to put into my contacts.

They would provide the photo. You choose your photo and everyone else gets it which is already true with the small contact photo and name which are shared automatically.

Yep, I'm definitely not going to photobomb people with this.

I see! That's better/easier. I hope they've come up with something that still looks decent for the majority of my contacts who don't have or share a contact photo or who (shock) don't use an iPhone.

I know this is cynical but might a degraded experience for your Android contacts be a significant plus of this feature? (edit: I mean for Apple Inc, not for the end user). Like green bubbles.

Maybe, to the extent that people care enough about it to bug their android-owning contacts about it. I don't think that will be a very large number of users, especially since this is pretty trivial compared to the features you lose in iMessage group chats by adding SMS contacts.

Time to start hitting up old friends and arrange photo shoots with them then!

Not only that, but one thing that bothers me about Apple's demos is how unusual all the models are. Why can't they just look like normal people? I did see an old person who they referred to as "your neighbor" and I felt like that was the first time in awhile I had seen a "contact" in an Apple demo that wasn't some young-20 year old with some wild fashion and hair styles.

Haha, it's fine to me that they're using attractive hip young (or old) people in their promos, it's just funny to imagine how these features will play out in the real world given the kinds of pictures real people tend to take of themselves.

The quality of those photos always gets me, makes me feel like Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down demanding that his burger look like the one in the advertisement.

Looking forward to playing with Journal, but I'm a bit underwhelmed by the preso, doesn't feel like they made it really unique vs third party journals. I was hoping for more of an integration to messages and individual app experiences, especially health. Talked about this a month ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35662525

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35662853

I hope it will be on Mac as well because I'd rather write on the macbook over my phone.

"If you just want to type a ducking word"

That was odd

It's a reference to how autocorrect will turn "fucking" into "ducking" as of now. I understood this as with iOS17, you'll finally be allowed to have "fucking" autocompleted and not autocorrected away - thought I might be wrong :)

1m people are watching the main stream live on youtube concurrently. wild. any idea how this compares to previous WWDC's?

I'm not on YouTube so I wonder what the global audience for the keynote really is

Likewise. Watching on Apple TV.

Not replying to you specifically, but… lol, why watch this? Its a an infomercial ad selling a product.

Because it’s a highly impactful product (any of them) that impacts the lives of millions, and the showmanship (however plastified these days) is legendary and attracts people.

I wouldn’t call it a SuperBowl-level event, it’s actually bigger-we used to band together in the office to watch them (at the end of the day here in Europe) in every tech company I worked in.

I have a Macbook, an iPhone and an iPad. They shown a lot of what's coming on for these products's OSs in the near future. They're not _selling_ any of that to me in the sense that I'm not paying any extra as they're free upgrades.

I like to know what's going to change. It's similar to reading the KDE newsletter, or the Linux kernel stuff to know what's new and how I might benefit from it or have to adapt to it.

Aside from that, they were presenting a whole new product, very different from any other products in the same-ish niche. I also watched the Sony PSVR2 announcements, and recently the Meta Quest 3 launch videos. I find it interesting. Why wouldn't I watch it?

im watching in a group stream on discord. definitely an undercount of how many people are tuning in live all told. this is a superbowl level event

NameDrop: sounds like a bad name for feature (negative connotation). May be they ran out of options.

Remember ForceTouch? :P

Or they could just call it "sharing contact cards using AirDrop". Not everything they announce needs an obtuse proper noun :(

I do wonder how many users will run into that memory limit on the M2 Ultra Mac Pro - given that the old Intel machine could do up to 1.5T of RAM.

I think the exciting thing is that it works as GPU memory. 192gb would be great for running LLMs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36187466

What is the TDP? The performance promised seems too good to be true, what's the catch? I'm sure their advertised workloads are hardware accelerated so I wonder how it performs off-the-beaten-path so to speak.

No doubt many will find 100+ gigs of GPU ram is worth closing 2 or 3 Chrome tabs.

We have all gathered to see... Stickers demo -_-

It was a footnote -- but stickers are now available in third party apps that support emoji? How does that work?

some of smartest people on the earth working on Stickers and emojis

I guess that's better than the smartest people optimizing ad clicks by making people depressed.

The unbearable weight of being is probably better tackled than all of them going and studying algae trying to figure out how we stay alive 10 more years with heavy anxiety.

Haha I died reading this. I was feeling the same. Like isn’t this not WWDC? Apple is definitely losing the appeal for devs to watch these. It’s no longer technical and all marketing.

I miss WWDC several years ago

MacPro finally announced with Apple Silicon with the new ultra chip

I am too hyped for headset that mac updates aren't even entering my brain.

While I'd never pay the $6999 for the Mac Pro, it's far more interesting to me than the potential headset. I am interested in seeing what Apple would propose a headset to be used for, and how they'd implement it, but I'm nowhere near sold on it being useful at all for the average person. I still remember the hype surrounding Google Glass all to well to expect an Apple headset to be a revolutionary product.

I'm starting to think there will be no headset announcement. They spent an awful long time on stickers. And it's almost over.

Edit: Glad to be wrong, but also quite deflated. I will never be able to afford this $3499 device.

I wonder if VM passthrough works for cards installed its PCI-E slots.

Lol, he said so I can use apollo on mac. Good luck with that soon!

I miss Steve.

Me too. Craig sounds like a professional voice actor reading a script.

Steve sounded like a kid who was amazed at the stuff he was talking about. It brought an energy to the presentation.

I miss live WWDC in person. It just lacks the same excitement.

Also this set so far is very dry. Probably the least exciting WWDC I’ve seen in the last 15 years

Yes, that too. The audience reaction was a big part of it. Watching online still felt like you were part of the show when you could hear the audience get excited at the same time you did.

Outside of the themes, words, and presentation talents of Steve, these recent Apple events are making me realize I miss his wardrobe. I knew what he wore. I knew he really wanted to show me something, not just himself. Having every person in this demo wearing some highly unique designer clothing item results in it feeling inauthentic.

New keyboard gets all of the features that GBoard [1] had on iOS for the last 3+ years.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1...

Good. If they can execute them better than Google I am all for it. GBoard gets worse every day.

Curious to see what will stop contacts (or hackers) from setting one’s contact image to something inappropriate. A thumbnail is one thing, but a full resolution gonad picture, broadcast to others, would be a jarring experience for the recipients

The sound sounds overproduced.

I'm like 90% sure that Craig's voice is either ADR or AI generated

Sounds like an infomercial.

Auto-correct was Fucking broken and I dont know if this is really solved.

I've had it disabled for months. Hopefully they fixed it.

Edit: genuinely curious -- why is this being downvoted? I have had autocorrect disabled for months because it was more trouble than it was worth. I do hope they have fixed it. What gives?

Apple's ecosystem and momentum is scary. They can just take popular apps and features and integrate them into their own OS and instantly crush startups and smaller companies to irrelevance.

AirTags -> RIP Tile

NameDrop -> Any 'bump' based app startup

Journal -> Subscription based journal apps like DayOne, etc.

and many more.

Theoretically, nothing is stopping Google from doing the same, if they ever manage to release anything without a product expiry baked into it, or just release anything really.

So far, in 35 minutes the Worldwide “Developers” Conference seems to be exclusively about consumer features, though they did mention API as an afterthought :)

That's pretty typical of how they do WWDC though... big consumer feature announcements, then share new developer features throughout the rest of the week.

> "With iPhone in your hand"

The lack of an article was a bit startling here, i.e. "iPhone" not "an iPhone". Is this something they have been doing for awhile? Sure we've heard "Siri" and "Alexa" personified for awhile, but raising the device itself to a Person? Perhaps I've just missed this all this years and I'm more sensitive to it in a post-ChatGPT world.

Since the launch of the first iPhone.

Wow! That's amazing my brain has completely ignored it or, at the least, passed it off as nothing. My brain must be interpreting assuming or expecting AI in the presentation and making things stand out accordingly.

It's one of those Silicon Valley-isms that no one uses outside of product presentations. IIRC it goes all the way back to when Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone

It's an Apple-ism, and it's grating

Steve Jobs talked about the iPod that way. Maybe even earlier products ("I’d like to have Macintosh speak for itself.")

Game mode!?

Will this mean we will FINALLY get the no-acceleration mouse input modes, and be able to play 20+ years old FPS games on $3000+ machines?

live voicemail transcribing will be a killer feature. Hopefully those Robocalls (you car warranty just expired..) will be dead soon

Yeah I stopped receiving robocalls entirely just two weeks after switching to Pixel :) Hopefully iOS a big enough footprint to finally make that industry unprofitable.

Aw man, I've been thinking of moving to the iPhone when my Pixel 3a finally dies. Are you saying I'm going to have to deal with robocalls again?

Haha, I actually did start getting robocalls again when I switched back to iOS :D But maybe this Live Voicemail feature will help mitigate it!

They finally did it. They copied Aerial[1]. (Aerial has come a long way though, it's still going to be better than the basic 'Copy/paste the Apple TV screensaver to MacOS).

[1] https://aerialscreensaver.github.io/

Finally multiple timers! but only on ipad? We have not made it to the future yet.

Introducing apple Night stand: $299 for best ever and smartest nightstand

I think it's a useful idea, not sure why you are sarcastic about it

useful yes but hard to justify pricing

It's just a mode on the phone isn't it? You would get a charger from anyone that would let you set your phone in portrait mode to charge.

Some startups are going to get sherlocked and destroyed today.

Journal apps are a start

Which ones, and why?

“Apollo for Reddit” that one isn’t going to age well

Awkward timing to highlight the Apollo widget...

"Multiple timers. We truly live in an age of wonders!"

Feels like I am in bizarro world. What is so wonderful about this?

It's obviously a joke.

It's sarcasm. The keynote is full of it this year.

I feel like all these widgets are just setting up the AR/VR headset which will be very widget heavy.

Would it be possible to run new macpro in an energy saving mode if you dont need all the power, i wonder?

How much power do you think you stand to save by something like that? These modern CPUs have blurred the distinction between "idle" and "off".

MULTIPLETIMERS

That 2 thumbs up gesture guy is probably going to be the next big meme.

Not a big MacOS user. Do people really love these distracting widgets?

AutoCorrectBots Assemble!

It's not the same when Tim says "One more thing" :(

Safari Profiles - Well most of the browsers had it like years back

Safari 2023 feature set looks like a chrome from 2017.

All without the Google privacy-suck. Pure win. I know you are trying to be snarky, but I could not name a single feature Chrome has introduced in the past five years that I give a shit about other than various attempts to kill off any privacy control users might have over their browsing experience.

Omg ! this is true "arm and a leg" price

That's why they primed you right before telling you the price by mentioning that you would have to buy a big screen TV, surround sound, powerful computer and cameras and still not have the same experience. :)

It's basically a portable computer, so it's priced like a laptop.

Oh, nice name drop of Apollo there. Great timing.

Poor timing for the Apollo shout out, oof.

There's Sonoma innovation at Apple.

New, 15" MacBook Air.

taking Safari to next level seems sarcastic !

No sideloading?

Hopefully, they've spent the last 12 months making XCode work because they certainly haven't spent it innovating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com