Google Reorganizes Devices Group, Humane Announces Reorganization
We kick things off with Neil’s thoughts on Google reorganizing its devices group. The update then turns to Humane announcing a reorganization ahead of its upcoming Ai pin launch.
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Apple Demos More Vision Pro Spatial Videos, 3D Movie Icon Appears on Apple TV, Humane Ai Pin vs. Spatial Photos/Videos
Hello everyone. Welcome to a new week. We do have a few CY3Q23 earnings reports to go over. However, today’s update will take a spin through Vision Pro land.
Apple Demos More Vision Pro Spatial Videos
Over at Daring Fireball, here’s John Gruber:
“Yesterday Apple released developer beta 2 of iOS 17.2, the first version of iOS to include support for capturing spatial video with iPhone 15 Pro models. Today came the public beta, enabling the same feature. Apple invited me to New York yesterday, not merely to preview capturing spatial video using an iPhone, but to experience watching those spatial videos using a Vision Pro.
The experience was, like my first Vision Pro demo back at WWDC in June, astonishing…
My demo yesterday was expressly limited to photography in general, and spatial video in particular, and so my demo was, per Apple’s request, limited to the Photos app in VisionOS. It was tempting, at times, to see where else I could go and what else I could do. But there was so much to see and do in Photos alone that my demo — about 30 minutes in total wearing Vision Pro — raced by.”
The full post made for an interesting read, especially if you want the details regarding how Apple is implementing spatial videos via iPhone 15 Pro. For example, the iPhone 15 Pro needs to be held horizontally “to put the two capturing lenses on the same plane. The iPhone uses the main (1×) and ultra wide (0.5×) lenses for capture when shooting spatial video, and in fact, Apple changed the arrangement of the three lenses on the iPhone 15 Pro in part to support this feature.”
When Apple announced this past September that the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max would be able to capture spatial video, my assumption was that iPhone videos
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OpenAI and Jony Ive Discuss HW Venture, What Is AI Hardware?, Humane Provides First Look At Ai Pin
Hello everyone. Yesterday, we talked about live events. Today, we talk about AI hardware. Let's jump right in.
OpenAI and Jony Ive Discuss HW Venture
“OpenAI is in advanced talks with former Apple designer Sir Jony Ive and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to launch a venture to build the ‘iPhone of artificial intelligence’, fuelled by more than $1bn in funding from the Japanese conglomerate.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief, has tapped Ive’s company LoveFrom, which the designer founded when he left Apple in 2019, to develop the ChatGPT creator’s first consumer device, according to three people familiar with the plan.
Altman and Ive have held brainstorming sessions at the designer’s San Francisco studio about what a new consumer product centred on OpenAI’s technology would look like, the people said.
They hope to create a more natural and intuitive user experience for interacting with AI, in the way that the iPhone’s innovations in touchscreen computing unleashed the mass-market potential of the mobile internet.
The process of identifying a design or device remains at an early stage with many different ideas on the table, they said.
Son, SoftBank’s founder and chief executive, has also been involved in some of the discussions, pitching a central role for Arm — the chip designer in which the Japanese conglomerate holds a 90 per cent stake — as well as offering financial backing.
Son, Altman and Ive have discussed creating a company that would draw on talent and technology from their three groups, the people said, with SoftBank investing more than $1bn in the venture.
Discussions are said to be ‘serious’, but no deal has been agreed, they cautioned, and it could be several months before a venture is formally announced. Any resulting hardware product is likely to take years to bring to market.”
The most surprising part of this news may be that it leaked in the first place. It’s tough to see Jony being thrilled with this kind of attention being placed on him and his design company. It's one thing to put information out there in hopes of garnering friendly press coverage which can then be used for employee hiring and other financial considerations. It's another to begin fueling high expectations that will become difficult to beat.
Upon hearing this news, my first impression was that
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