OPINION: This past week marked a major milestone for Apple as the company finally unveiled its first venture into AR/VR with the Apple Vision Pro.
Of course, the Vision Pro wasn’t the only device to make an appearance at WWDC 2023. The company also showcased upgrades to its 15-inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio and Mac Pro lines, along with all the big software updates rolling out across Apple products later this year.
Next in line appears to be Samsung as the company recently announced a date for its next Unpacked event where the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 are expected to make their first appearance.
Keep scrolling to discover what we picked for our winner and loser in tech this week.
Winner: Adobe
Our winner this week is Adobe after the company announced that its Firefly generative AI models are coming to the Adobe Express app.
Adobe Express is an all-in-one editing app designed to enable people of all skill levels to create content quickly and easily, making it comparable to rival app Canva. Express allows users to touch up images, create designs, make social content, edit PDFs, piece together TikToks and more all in one place.
By embedding Firefly directly into Express workflows, Adobe will make it possible for users to generate image and text effects from text prompts and descriptions going forward. This should make it even easier for users to create original designs for social media pages and small businesses without any prior experience or design background.
“The new release of Adobe Express brings together technology from Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and Acrobat with our Firefly generative AI models into a fun and easy web application experience allowing everyone, from individuals to large organizations to create content that stands out”, said Adobe’s President of Digital Media Business David Wadhwani.
The ethics of AI art and other popular generative models have been highly contested over the past year, with many artists raising concerns over topics like job security and copyright infringement.
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The latter is something that Adobe has addressed with its choice of dataset and Do Not Train Content Credentials tag. However, that doesn’t mean everyone will be on board with the addition of generative AI to Adobe apps and it remains to be seen what the general consensus will be from the art community.
Whatever your opinion on generative AI, it’s good to see Adobe giving equal attention to its more beginner-friendly apps rather than reserving this advanced feature for the Creative Cloud suite.
Loser: Apple
This week’s loser is Apple and while the Vision Pro is the reason behind this verdict, it isn’t because the mixed-reality headset sounds bad by any means. The reason why the Vision Pro is our loser is that it’s far too expensive.
Apple unveiled its first mixed-reality headset at WWDC this week. The Vision Pro is a product that has long been rumoured, bringing a large number of iOS apps into the 3D space. The headset also allows wearers to stream immersive movies, play games, hop on FaceTime calls and capture 3D photos and video to revisit later.
The headset is controlled with eye-tracking, voice commands and hand gestures, and that’s before mentioning the uncanny EyeSight feature that scans an image of the wearer’s face and projects it onto the front of the device, causing the headset to appear transparent.
All of the above sounds almost too futuristic to be true – and in a way, it is for the average consumer. This is because the Apple Vision Pro costs a staggering $3499.
For reference, the high-end Meta Quest Pro costs $999/£999, while the HTC Vive Elite XR is priced at $1099/£1299. Even the HTC Vive Pro 2 caps out at $1249/£1399 with all the controllers and accessories included.
Of course, the Apple Vision Pro does carry some major benefits compared to its competitors – namely the VisionOS platform which is an operating system designed to bring the headset into the Apple ecosystem with all the apps and features you’d expect from an Apple device.
However, by pricing the headset at over $2000 more than its next competitor, Apple has made the Vision Pro virtually inaccessible to most regular consumers.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
