Apparently Apple’s big announcements this week were for everyone, but really they were for writers: here’s what we will actually use – and what we might want to actually use. Including that headset.

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SCRIPT:

– Hello, I’m William Gallagher and this is 58keys, which as ever, as always, is for writers like you and me who use and write on Macs, iPhones, iPads – and headsets?
– TITLES
– Let’s get that headset, Apple Vision Pro, out of the way first. You’ve heard all about it, I think it’s been difficult to avoid hearing about it, but what you and I can do is look at this whole new category of Apple device as writers.
– So actually, part of it is how Apple wrote this announcement, how it tried to communicate a lot of detail, overcome quite a bit of disinterest, and at least try to sell us on this device.
– CAPTION: It’s $3,500
– I said try.
– CAPTION: It’s $3,500
– Yes. That £3,500 price kills it, for now, but as writers, I think we can appreciate that Apple seems to have actually pulled off something no other company has before. Apple has managed to make it so that you are at least interested to try a headset.
– CAPTION: It’s $3.500
– Okay, Apple hasn’t made everyone want to open their wallets or their purses or just hand over bank accounts. It hasn’t given us that absolutely must-have device the way it did with the iPhone. But before this week’s announcement, I was shrugging at headsets.
– And now… I want to know what it would be like writing with one.
– Because apparently, yes, you can write using this Vision Pro headset. Kind of.
– Apple went in deep more on visual stuff, on what looked great, and watching you and me type was never going to be a headline star attraction. But the company did mention two things for us.
– It said that the headset works with Apple’s keyboard and trackpad. Presumably also a mouse, though that wasn’t explicitly mentioned. Presumably also any keyboard, trackpad or mouse that works with Macs, though, again, I might be presuming too much.
– At least with Apple gear, though, you will be able to sit there with this stuff on your face and type.
– And Apple also said that you can use the Vision Pro headset with a MacBook Pro. Open the MacBook, give the screen the eye, and then “move” that screen anywhere you want. Resize it.
– So you might have a little 14-inch MacBook Pro as I do and sometimes find the screen a bit small. With this Apple Vision Pro headset on your noggin, the MacBook Pro screen is as big as you want.
– For writing, then, Apple’s headset could be useful. It has the capability to be useful for writers, and it has the possibility that you would wear it — and I’ve never thought that of any headset I’ve tried.
– Yeah. Full disclosure: I’ve tried one. I shrugged.
– But it’s remarkable that Apple has made this so that you can see yourself wearing one, for a while at least, and you can see the usefulness. At some point, maybe a very many years from now, you and I are going to get one.
– And quite possibly we will then spend our entire time immersed in watching TV and film through it.
– I’d do that. I’d do that right now.
– Anyway. I offer that Apple did startlingly well with its reveal of the headset, that it’s gone from something you couldn’t ever see yourself bothering about, to something you could see yourself bothering with some day.
– That is huge.
– But for you and me as writers, for you and me as writers right now, there was more in the rest of this week’s WWDC announcements to see and to look forward to using. Including a lot that is free instead of $3,500.
– STING
– The most obvious new feature for writers is Journal, a new Apple app coming to iPhones and iPads. This must be wrong, but it doesn’t appear to be coming to the Mac.
– Anyway, if you’ve seen Day One, you’ll know the idea. Every day you write in this app what’s been going on with you — I think you grasp the concept of diary — but then the app also pulls in details from your phone for you. So today you might write down that you bought an ice cream, but the app will also include that you had a dentist appointment at 10. And that the weather was hot. I don’t know what else.
– I also don’t know that Apple has now killed Day One, but it’s at least maimed it. There are reasons to still pay a subscription to the Day One app instead of using Apple’s free Journal, and people who do use Day One tend to utterly adore it.
– I don’t.
– Some years ago now, some many years ago, some change was made in the back end of Day One, in the bits that exist in the Day One company. I can’t remember what it was, but I cannot forget that it destroyed my wife’s journal. Destroyed.
– I spent six or seven hours doing things I can’t even figure out now, but hours upon hours forensically pulling back together her data. I managed to get, I think, about 80% of her text back — but zero percent of her photographs and other images.
– It was, I promise you even though it’s long enough ago now that I can’t recall the details, it was entirely Day One’s fault. And I was pissed at how the company reacted. Practically said “Whoops”. Certainly did not help at all, did not check to see if it had any backups from before this calamitous update.
– My wife stopped using an iPhone journal from that day on. She uses a paper one and from time to time I fret about her paper book being lost.
– Of course she won’t use Day One again and neither will I. But that loss, that totally not-remotely-her-fault loss means she won’t use any iPhone journalling app.
– Maybe I will. I don’t know. But a journal that we can write in, and which also pulls in related information for our day, it’s a good thing.
– STING
– On the iPad, the next most immediately obvious update, is about PDFs. Whether it’s a PDF you found in your research or you save your own manuscript in that form, Apple has improved how we can work with PDFs in the Notes app. PDFs now go full screen to give you room to scribble, and you can collaborate with other people.
– Then the new iPadOS also brings Live Activities to the iPad. When I was at an airport, for instance, Live Activities on the iPhone I could look at my phone screen and see the latest update on my flight. No opening an app, no searching, just wake the screen, there it was. If you have a newer iPhone than I do, the screen stays on all the time so you just glance. Apparently it’s good for sports results, which just keep updating and there is nothing we can do to stop them.
– Both the iPhone and the Apple Watch are getting a new look. Again, for us, I think the benefit is in showing us information more quickly, or maybe sharing With the iPhone, that means widgets that can show you information right there on the screen. With the Apple Watch, you can swipe up to check something, then go back to the Watch face to see the time.
– And alongside improvements to AirDrop, the ability to quickly send anything from your iPhone to your Mac, or to other people, there is now a way to swiftly send just contact details. To swap business cards, if you like, through a very similar system to AirDrop.
– Plus I love this too, or I will if it works with my mobile phone provider, my carrier, and it may not. If the carrier plays nice, then when someone calls you and you don’t answer, you let them go to voicemail, iPhones will show you a transcript of the message they’re leaving you.
– The iPhone with iOS 17 will show you that transcript live, in real-time, as they are leaving the message. So you can get the gist, or you can see that yeah, no, you’d better take this call right now.
– I love this. It’s called NameDrop.
– STING
– Just as an aside. The new version of macOS, the operating system that runs everything on a Mac, is called macOS Sonoma.
– You saw me having to think there. For some reason that name will not go in my head unless I first think of the word “carcinoma”.
– Lovely.
– MacOS Sonoma, IOS 17, iPadOS 17, WatchOS 10, they will be coming to your Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch later this year and they will be free.
– And I can tell you this about the Mac because it is always true, every year, and also I’ve been commissioned to write about macOS Sonoma so I’ve already got the developer beta.
– You will update to the new macOS and you will sit there thinking, o-kay… Apart from this wallpaper, you won’t see a difference.
– At first.
– But then as you write, as you work, you will keep finding things you like. More than that, look at these widgets. And also this icon in my dock. If I click that, it opens a writing website I use a lot but it opens like an app.
– It isn’t one tab amongst dozens in Safari, it is its own thing. You’ve been able to get third-party apps that do this for years but they’ve always seemed a bit flaky, I’ve never stuck with any of them.
– Now I’ll stick with this. And I expect I’ll stick with widgets on the screen.
– I suspect it because as I say, I’m writing about this macOS Sonoma. So I have it on my Mac but I also have macOS Ventura, the current one, and I need to switch back and forth.
– Already, fewer than 24 hours since the beta was released, I don’t like moving back from Sonoma to Ventura.
– STING
– As I say, these new features and an awful lot more are coming to the iPhone, the iPad, all that, and the Mac. But there are now three new Macs for us.
– Well, realistically, only one of them is for us as writers. That’s the new 15-inch MacBook Air. The MacBook Air has always been an excellent machine and often it’s been the sweet spot in the MacBook range.
– Actually, the sweet spot and also the cheapest spot.
– This new version costs £1,400 or $1,300, so “cheap” is relative. But for a Mac, for what you get, for a large screen and yet still a low weight, it’s a good price.
– For completeness, the other new Macs, by the way, are the Mac Studio which I secretly want, and a Mac Pro, which is just ridiculously powerful and at $7000, quite possibly should be.
– To be fair, it does replace a machine that used to cost up to $50,000.
– STING
– Apple announced a lot this week. Much of it won’t really sink in, at least for me, until we’re using it all every day.
– But, just curiously, two nights ago I set up a set of smart scales, weighing machine. Okay, writer, sedentary lifestyle, far too keen on Pepsi Max, just back from overeating on holiday, I bought scales.
– I don’t think you’ll know this unless you’ve looked for it, but iPhones come with a Health app and it connects to these scales. I weigh myself and before my tears reach the ground, that weight measurement is in my iPhone’s Health app.
– The surprise for me was that there wasn’t a Health app on the iPad. I had never noticed, never needed to notice, but now I did and now there wasn’t one.
– Except now there is.
– It’s not why everyone should write on iPads, Macs and iPhones, but it’s another reason why these things all work so well together.
– And I think that’s one last element about this year’s WWDC news, at least for me. The Mac didn’t get a lot of attention, and it is what I write on the most so that’s a shame, but the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch and the Apple TV, all got knitted together just that little bit more.
– And that’s a good thing for all Apple users, whether they’re writers or not. Whether they wear a headset or not.
– That’s it for this edition of 58keys. Thanks for watching, now take care of yourself, write more, and I’ll see you soon.