visionOS 1.0 has Landed

And somehow it's already better than expected.

Brandon Butch
June 23, 2023

Good morning! ☀️ *Tim Cook voice*

Lots of software updates, visionOS 1.0 Beta, Reddit is in trouble, and more. Another short one this week!

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

📊 Poll

Last week, I asked the last time you bought a Mac..

Here were some of my favorite replies:

4+ Years Ago - “I have a mid 2015 MBP! It still works well enough to do small things, but I’m eyeballing the 15inch MBA as I may start going to school again, if finances work out!” I say buy the 15” MBA - it’s a beast for that price!

2-3 Years Ago - “Was a former Windows user, and Apple Silicon blew me away. Currently rocking an M1 MacBook Air.” I think if you have anything older than M1, you should upgrade. I’m with ya, Apple silicon still blows me away

Within Last Year - “Apple Studio M1 Max. Beast of a computer. Power. Unlimited power.” My M1 Ultra Studio agrees - unlimited power!

This week: What’s the best iPhone color in your opinion?

Your Favorite iPhone Color?

⚙️ Holy Software Updates!

This week was jam-packed with software updates! Here’s what you need to know:

iOS 16.5.1

This is a bug fix update with a pair of major security patches… aka update ASAP to keep your device secure.

Patches 2 bugs that were being actively exploited
Fixes a bug impacting Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter
Here’s my video outlining the changes
watchOS 9.5.2 & macOS 13.4.1 were also released with security patches
For older devices: iOS 15.7.7, macOS 11.7.8, and macOS 12.6.7 were released to address the same actively exploited bugs

iOS 17 Beta 2

For those running the iOS 17 Developer Beta, the 2nd Beta was released on Wednesday and it includes several changes.

Adds NameDrop (here’s a demo)
Haptic Touch has a new “Fast” mode that is far better than iOS 16. This is the closest we’ve been to 3D Touch since 2019.
Music crossfade can be customized from 1s-12s (and Settings doesn’t crash anymore)
You can actually run Shortcuts from the Lock Screen now
Performance is improved, battery life is still trash (on my 14 Pro)
Here’s my video showing 30+ more changes
Also released: Beta 2 for watchOS 10, macOS 14, and tvOS 17
Expect Beta 3 and the first Public Beta in July

Along with these updates, Apple dropped the first iteration of visionOS (discussed in the next section)

🤓 visionOS is here and.. WOW!

visionOS App Store

Developers will play a key role in determining whether or not Apple’s Vision Pro headset succeeds. And now, developers can begin building applications on visionOS!

Apple released the visionOS SDK (software development kit), along with Beta 1 of the software
To get access, download Xcode 15 beta 2. This includes the visionOS SDK and Reality Composer Pro (a new tool that makes it easy to preview and prepare 3D content for visionOS)
Developer labs open next month in Cupertino, London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. These in-person labs will allow devs to get hands-on time with the Vision Pro. Sweet!

And if you’re wondering about the default applications on visionOS 1, here’s a look:

Hands-On

I’ve been playing around with the SDK in Xcode and here are some of the standout things I noticed.

Guest Mode

..but still not on the iPad

Travel Mode

MR explains what this mode does

Control Center & Spotlight Search

Visual Search

According to MR, this new feature is similar to visual lookup on the iPhone, except much more useful.

You’ll be able to use the headset to get information about an item, detect and interact with text in the world around them, copy & paste printed text from the real world into apps, translate text between 17 different languages, and more. So cool!

Siri, Settings, and Window UI

The overall look and feel of visionOS is quite impressive for a first Beta build…especially when viewing this from a computer screen and not the actual headset.

Not to mention, the 3rd-party applications Apple demoed made me verbally say “wow” and to think this is just the very, very beginning is exciting!

Some images via 9to5

🌑 Reddit is in Trouble

If you haven’t been following along with the Reddit drama over the past month, go read last week’s issue. But today, the plot thickens..

A group of hackers - named BlackCat - were behind a February cyberattack on Reddit, where they claim to have stolen 80GB of data after an employee fell victim to a phishing attack.

This phishing attack allowed the hackers to access Reddit's systems and steal internal documents, source code, employee data, and more.

And now, the hackers want $4.5 million in ransom money and changes to be made to the heavily controversial API pricing.

"I told them in my first email that I would wait for their IPO to come along. But this seems like the perfect opportunity! We are very confident that Reddit will not pay any money for their data," threatened the ransomware operation.

But I am very happy to know that the public will be able to read about all the statistics they track about their users and all the interesting confidential data we took. Did you know they also silently censor users? Along with artifacts from their GitHub!"

Reddit Pressures Mods

Reddit is now applying even more pressure on moderators to reopen their communities that are still dark in protest.

A Reddit employee has told unpaid moderators of r/DIY that the “expectation here is that communities reopen.” And it worked.

With the upcoming API changes, which will impact every subreddit and everyday users (even those who believe it will not) we have come to the difficult decision to modify the subreddit rules.

This decision was made for us by Reddit. Like many other subs, we received the message that if we were unwilling to re-open the subreddit we would be removed. I'd like to stress that we are not re-opening because we're worried about losing our modship - in fact, Reddit has already stepped in and moved me from the top of the list to the bottom.

We're re-opening because if we don't, the mods that Reddit appoint may not care about the subreddit the way we do. They already removed my permissions (now restored by another mod) and moved me down the list.

A mod for r/DIY

The sad thing is, this is likely happening in every community. Reddit is even bullying small communities on the site.

Idk about you guys but ever since this whole thing started, I found myself rarely visiting Reddit. I never usually get involved in the politics of companies and their business decisions, but this one is just straight up ridiculous.

Also, let’s not forget, Reddit’s IPO is coming up. This 100% has investors on edge.

I’m sure this story isn’t over yet, so stay tuned. Ha!

📰 Quick News Bites

🎨 Set Wallpaper

Click the image to download the full res file.

🫶 Reader Love

Please spread the word! This is much harder to grow than YT 😅

I hope you guys will also tell me when I’m slacking! Haha

Until next week, ✌️

- Brandon

PS: I’m not making a dime from this newsletter, so if you would like to support directly, you can do so here!

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