Latest news with #VisionOS
CNET
11-06-2025
- CNET
Apple's VisionOS 26 Hands-On: Virtual Me and 3D Memories Are Stunning
My virtual Scott Stein persona is hauntingly real, spatial scenes feel like living 3D memories and even the experience of sticking widgets to virtual walls – and virtual windows – is better than I ever thought. Hey. That's me. My first experience in Apple's new Vision OS 26, announced Monday at WWDC, was making my new 3D-scanned Persona, a feature that Apple says is finally out of beta. I used to find its uncanny style funny, but not anymore. I find it unsettlingly real. Like, I feel like I'm watching myself. New Personas are one of several upgrades to Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro headset announced at this year's WWDC, but there's more that surprised me. There's 3D-converting Spatial Scenes mode that also works in iOS and looks absolutely wild in-headset. The new widgets in VisionOS can be stuck to walls – even into walls – and looked so convincingly real in my demo at Apple Park. I felt like I could stick my head through a virtual window into a panorama photo of Tokyo that wasn't there. None of these improvements are game-changers, but they all far exceeded my expectations when I actually tried them. Apple's on-stage demos during its keynote really didn't do them justice. As usual I had to experience them in the actual headset to appreciate the impact. Unfortunately Apple still hasn't made any headway in camera-enabled AI for Vision Pro, something Google is already planning for Android XR, and an extra I can't wait to see in action. But Apple's skill at adding other features to Vision its AR/VR platform, once it actually does them, is impressive. If updates continue to be this eye-popping, I'm really curious where things go next, as Apple heads towards what should be a lower-priced, lighter version of Vision in the next year or two. Maybe by then it will finally work in camera-supported AI too. Yeah, Personas look this good. Apple/Screenshot by CNET Virtual me is almost me now (except for my hands) Apple says its Personas in Vision are now officially out of beta with VisionOS 26, and it shows. The previous versions of Personas, the 3D-scanned avatars Apple uses in VisionOS, have improved over time but their uncanny vibe remained off-putting. The new scanning now includes more of the sides of people's heads, and Apple's not windowing off Personas in FaceTimes anymore in the headset. They're popping into your room. I scanned myself using the Vision Pro like always, but this time I was greeted with a more realistic version of me, for better and for worse. I saw the bags under my eyes. I saw my beard's salt-and-pepper details. I looked like me. Personas can't be scanned while wearing glasses, so my specs still can't come aboard, but the virtual glasses options are far better now. I could pick from a variety of frames, colors and materials and size them up, too. That feature alone felt like a preview of potential Vision glasses-shopping apps to come. My expressions feel right, too. I couldn't make every expression, but I tried a bunch and I didn't see many fail. Sadly, my hands were still just ghostly things that vanished as I put them closer to my face. I also recorded a test clip of myself using a third-party app, and the result was good enough that I think it captures me now. Will people think it's me? I started wondering about how Personas could be used as virtual stand-ins for myself – not just in Vision, but in 2D apps. Will Apple bring Personas everywhere across iOS and Macs someday? I think it will. There's no way to show in 2D how Spatial Scenes feel. Apple/Screenshot by CNET Virtual memories via Spatial Scenes feel like 3D dioramas Apple is finally living up to the initial Vision Pro ads, where people watched photo memories in 3D like they were moments from Minority Report. A previous auto-converting tool turned 2D photos into 3D, but the Spatial Scenes upgrade lets you actually move back and forth and even deeper into a photo. The frame's larger field of view feels like a window into a museum diorama. A few demo examples made my jaw drop. They're not the same as full volumetric 3D scans, but the tool magically fills in some fuzzy details at the fringes as I shift my point of view, making it feel like the whole thing is really a window into somewhere else. That scene in Ready Player One where Wade visits a museum full of 3D memories of James Halliday's life? It's sort of like that. But this is only for still photos. Spatial Scenes also work in iOS, but I'm telling you, the effect isn't nearly as compelling. Apple/Screenshot by CNET Widgets to fill my rooms Another demo showed me how Apple's widgets can be pinned to walls and other surfaces. I walked into a virtual room and found widgets suddenly popping up everywhere: a music poster on the wall, a window on another, calendars and clocks somewhere else. The OS update can also recognize and remember room layouts and turn off the virtual overlays until you enter, preventing bleed where you might see other rooms' screens through the walls. I've seen pinned displays and windows before in other headsets, glasses and apps, but these still surprised me with their fidelity. An Apple Music poster looked convincingly real and added extra details as I approached, then played music if I tapped it. Clocks look like actual wall clocks. And widgets can be virtually inset into walls, which is wild. The panorama window, which adds photos from your library, had reflective detail around the white curved pane that made it feel really there and inset. The 3D effect was convincing enough that I felt like I could walk up to it and feel really transported – it was even better at closer range. Would I actually use these widgets? I don't know, but I feel the mixed reality blend more than ever. There's more. A 3D "spatial browser" turns Safari into a larger reading mode that auto-converts the images inside to 3D. There's also a new interactive environment in the headset that shows Jupiter viewed from one of its moons, with an interactive panel that can change time of day. The interactive features aren't coming to Apple's other Vision 3D environment backgrounds yet, but I hope they will. Collaboration in the Vision Pro is going to be more of a thing. Apple/Screenshot by CNET More to come this year Apple has other updates that are useful, too. Collaboration in apps can work with other people in-room now, or mix in others coming in as Personas. And I didn't get to try any spatial controller support, which will work with PlayStation VR 2 controllers and third-party styluses. That's coming later this year, I was told, likely because the apps aren't there to work with it yet. Apple still has a long way to go to make its Vision really feel like a face-mounted computer for everyone, but the updates in VisionOS 26 are more impressive than I expected. Apple is pushing boundaries that competitors like Meta and Google, with their focus on AI, are not even tapping into yet.
The Verge
09-06-2025
- The Verge
Apple's Liquid Glass redesign doesn't look like much
Design, to quote a wildly overused Steve Jobs-ism, is how it works. And if that's the case, Apple's new design language, which the company is calling 'Liquid Glass' and just announced at WWDC 2025, is really nothing new at all. The Liquid Glass look comes largely from VisionOS, which shipped with a particular constraint: it had to layer digital information over your physical world, without occluding that physical world. That's why everything in VisionOS is translucent and glassy, so you can both see it and see through it. Everything is layered and three-dimensional, an effort to make digital experiences feel more like objects in space than objects on a screen. The impetus for turning the VisionOS look into the Liquid Glass system, Apple software boss Craig Federighi said at the beginning of this year's developer conference keynote, was that Apple's devices are more closely connected than ever. That's certainly true: Apple's ecosystem remains tight, and there are lots of good reasons to buy an iPad if you have an iPhone or an Apple TV if you have a Mac. (Call it synergy, call it illegal monopoly maintenance, you pick.) Most of Apple's devices have a lot of features in common, and it makes sense to bring them all more closely together. Putting elements in familiar places, making sure things work the same everywhere — these are all good things! Leaving aside the somewhat wild decision to pivot your entire UI system around a prohibitively expensive headset hardly anyone has ever even tried, the thing about most of Apple's devices is that they aren't overlaying digital information on the physical world. They're just screens! So the little glass loupe that slides over text as you highlight on a webpage won't feel like you're moving something around; it'll feel like you're poking at a fake water droplet on the screen. The playback controls that seem to float slightly above your content, refracting its light and colors, look to my eyes a little like a hokey 3D effect. The navigation buttons that ripple as you scroll a webpage don't look like physical objects — they just look busy and hard to read. Apple executives frequently made a point of noting that Liquid Glass is minimalist and 'keeps your content in focus,' but the constantly morphing interface feels to me like it might be even more noticeable. There is one thing about Liquid Glass I really like. Now, when you tap on an alert or a menu item, the rest of the content appears from within, as if it were contained by the thing you just tapped. That's a clever way to keep people anchored in place. You won't tap something, only to be taken to another screen, with no obvious way back to where you were. The menu just radiates out over top of whatever you were doing, and then folds back in on itself when you're done. It's far too easy to get lost in your phone, and this is a nice touch. You really can't look at Liquid Glass without thinking of Windows Aero, the similarly glassy and translucent design language that shipped with… Windows Vista. (Tough comparison, that.) With Aero, Microsoft made an effort to make it easy to know where you were on your computer, and to find everything you needed. You could see through windows to other windows; app borders would change to match the content within; you could use widgets and live thumbnails to get quick access to information. Aero didn't last, in part because it was a huge resource suck to render something so graphically intense. Now, Microsoft's design is much more colorful, and even more aggressively physical — there are drop shadows everywhere. The ideas behind both Liquid Glass and Windows Aero are good ones! They stand for personalization, customization, for helping people figure out where they are and what they're doing on their device. Apple has long been unmatched in executing this kind of stuff, too, and the demos we saw at WWDC today suggest that this layered, three-dimensional effect will work smoothly across all of Apple's devices. But for all the epic language of the unveiling, I don't see much in Liquid Glass that will matter. Maybe we'll get more in the months to come, and maybe developers will figure out how to make the best of the layers. But for every place this kind of layered translucency makes sense, there will be lots of places it just looks like a mess. It won't change much about how you use your devices or the way you perceive them, and at least to my eyes, it doesn't even make them better-looking. It's just … slightly different. Watching Apple's announcement, it's hard not to read the whole thing as borne of efficiency rather than of inspiration. Alan Dye, Apple's vice president of design, started his portion of the keynote by harkening back to iOS 7, and its simple, layer-based look. 'Now, with the powerful advances in our hardware, silicon, and graphics technologies,' he said, 'we have the opportunity to lay the foundation for the next chapter of our software.' He called Liquid Glass 'our broadest design update ever.' Not biggest. Not best. Just broadest. In that broadest sense, it's logical that this is where Apple landed. It obviously wouldn't, and probably couldn't, fundamentally change the look and feel of every device it makes for billions of users around the world. No one wants that. So Apple just took all its elements and made them more universal: everything's a little more round, a little more contained, a little less designed for a specific screen size. A floating menu of black and white icons works pretty much anywhere, you know? By turning menus into lists that pop out of buttons, Apple prevents itself from having to optimize every menu for every device and screen orientation. Liquid Glass is the lowest common denominator, done about as well as you could. But I'm not impressed, and I'm not optimistic. Apple is at its best when it has strong opinions about how things should work; even the attempt to get out of the way and let your content dictate everything feels like the wrong tack. Plus, I've spent the past year tinkering with Apple's new tinted and color-matching iPhone homescreens, which mostly serve to make your device uglier. I don't see a reason that Liquid Glass would make my devices better, simpler, or more personal. I just see buttons that are harder to read.
CNET
09-06-2025
- CNET
Apple Updates Its Vision Pro OS With PlayStation VR Controllers, Better Personas And More
Apple's Vision Pro headset was introduced two years ago, but this year's WWDC conference has news on new VisionOS features coming later this year. Besides new design updates (and a new name: VisionOS 26), here's what to expect. VisionOS is getting widgets that float, like a clock, weather, and photos. There's a new Widgets app in VisionOS. There's a new memory for app placement in space, too. Spatial Scenes, a new way to generate 3D in photos, is coming to VisionOS 26: it's an update to the auto-converting 3D images tool that was there before. These allow movement back and forth to make scenes feel more 3D. Finally, it's like the original Vision Pro ads. Apple's uncanny 3D personas are getting upgrades to look more realistic and the quick demo Apple gave looked impressive. New collaborative same-room tools are coming too, for same-room AR interaction, or games, or…movie watching. There are also some spatial controller support, much like what other headsets like Meta already have. Logitech Muse, a stylus, is getting Vision support for 3D stylus work, and PlayStation VR 2 controllers are going to work with Vision Pro games. This is a developing story...
Tom's Guide
09-06-2025
- Tom's Guide
Apple announces Liquid Glass design for iOS 26 and all Apple devices — here's everything that's new
As rumored heading into WWDC, Apple announced a significant update to all of its operating systems. The rumored changes are real — the company will be called its operating systems iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and so on. But there's also a new design language, which Apple calls Liquid Glass. Visually, Apple's goal appears to be creating rounded corners that complement the rounded displays found on most devices. The company also cited the interface used in its VisionOS as an inspiration for the new look and feel — the first massive change since iOS 7. Outside of rounding off edges, Apple is also focused on overlaying buttons and controls that adapt as you perform actions. It showcased the phone reacting to movement, adapting to both light and dark environments, and shrinking tabs and other elements designed to get out of the way. The company revealed at WWDC a menu at the bottom of the screen that moves and shifts as you scroll, creating a streamlined experience with buttons that don't obstruct your view of the content. These changes don't just apply to mobile operating systems; the company is unifying the look and feel of its software, which could make switching between Apple Watch, iPhone, and Mac more seamless. Of course, we'll need to try it out for ourselves to see how streamlined the changes are, but it sounds promising. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.
Hans India
09-06-2025
- Hans India
Apple Teases Future iPhone with iOS 26's ‘Liquid Glass' Redesign at WWDC 2025
In a highly anticipated move, Apple is set to introduce a bold new user interface with iOS 26, dubbed the 'Liquid Glass' design. Scheduled to be revealed at WWDC 2025 tonight at 10:30 PM IST, this significant UI transformation takes cues from VisionOS, reflecting Apple's commitment to unified aesthetics across its entire product lineup. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the Liquid Glass look is more than just cosmetic. Featuring transparent layers, floating menus, and a glass-like finish, the new design is crafted to showcase depth and fluidity—mirroring the visual appeal of the Vision Pro. This marks Apple's most substantial design revamp since iOS 7 and introduces a fresh systemwide interface called Solarium, bringing consistency across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Interestingly, this design evolution may also set the stage for a future hardware leap. Gurman reports that Apple is laying the groundwork for a special edition iPhone to mark the 20th anniversary of the iconic device in 2027. Internally codenamed Glasswing, the anniversary model is rumoured to feature curved glass edges wrapping entirely around the body, along with a true edge-to-edge display. The absence of visible notches points toward the likely inclusion of under-display Face ID and camera systems. Apple is also said to be simplifying its OS branding by aligning version numbers across devices, moving away from its current scattered naming approach. This could help make their platforms more intuitive for both users and developers. With WWDC 2025 only hours away, all eyes are on Apple as it signals a fresh chapter in design and device integration—one that could redefine the iPhone experience once again.
