TechScape: Do Apple’s bigger car screens take driving in the right direction?
Apple’s annual developer event, WWDC, is in full swing. “Dub Dub”, as it’s known, is about more than the company’s regular product launches, which are focused on the physical devices soon to hit store shelves – it is a chance for Tim Cook’s team to shape the conversation more broadly: focus attention where they want it, guide the eyes of the world to the next big thing, and steer developers towards working on the products and services necessary to enable the hardware still in the pipeline to flourish.
In previous years, that has included a strong focus on augmented reality technology, encouraging developers to adopt the company’s tools for building AR experiences. That has had both a short-term and a long-term advantage: Apple has included increasingly advanced Lidar sensors (think radar but with light) on iPhones and iPads, capable of mapping a room in fine detail. In the long term, it’s meant there’s a community of developers capable of working with the technology that Apple will use in its much-rumoured AR glasses.
This year, we saw similar approaches across the board. The company showed off a new lock screen for the iPhone, that lets users customise far more than just the wallpaper, from the font used for the clock to the placement and location of widgets on the lock screen itself. (We will now take a brief pause while the Android users in the audience point out that they’ve had this for years.)
The changes will be useful from day one and be a clear advantage in three months when, if supply-chain leaks are accurate, the latest iPhones will have an always-on display. That feature turning the lock screen from something you see briefly while waiting for Face ID to kick in to a near-permanent presence in your life if you,
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