AppleZulu

saarek said:

It's a shame that the spacial seems to be Apple hardware specific. I'm sure other headphones that support Dolby Atmos could easily do it too if allowed.

Guess again.

From Apple's FAQ:

How can I listen to Dolby Atmos music?

All Apple Music subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV7 can listen to thousands of Dolby Atmos music tracks using any headphones. When you listen with compatible Apple or Beats headphones,8 Dolby Atmos music plays back automatically when available for a song. For other headphones, go to Settings > Music > Audio and set Dolby Atmos to Always On. You can also hear Dolby Atmos music using the built‑in speakers on a compatible iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, or HomePod,9 or by connecting your Apple TV 4K to a compatible TV or audiovisual receiver.

Note: The headphones audio output from Dolby Atmos works the same as output from a binaural recording, a technology that's been around for decades. It will work in any stereo headphones. (It's the back end tech that is completely new.)

Note to the note: Dolby Atmos for movies requires AirPods Pro because they have gyroscopes. Watching a movie on your iPhone, you're oriented toward the screen. If you hear an airplane coming from behind you and flying over and you turn instinctively turn your head, you still want the sound to be oriented to the screen as it would be if you were sitting in a movie theater. For listening to music, not so much, because you'll often be walking around doing other things while listening, and it's just as well to have the soundstage remain oriented to your ears as there's no screen involved.

sflagel said:

I feel like I am the only one who doesn’t get it, but what is the difference between Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos Audio? 

And what is the difference on iPhones between the “Automatic” setting and “All”. It seems that “All” plays Spatial Audio on all headphones; while “Automatic” restrict Spatial Audio to AirPods and Beats; why?

Spatial Audio refers generically to all surround sound sources, including Dolby Atmos.

Dolby Atmos refers to an object-oriented surround sound technology created by the Dolby company. Normally when audio is mixed, the sound engineer decides exactly which sounds come out of which speakers (left, right, center, back left, back right, etc.). Mixing in Dolby Atmos, the engineer decides from which direction a sound should come, and the listener's device computes on the fly how to accomplish that, based on what speakers are attached and where they're placed in the room.

For headphones and earbuds, the computational work is done on the fly to create binaural sound. In short, you have only two ears, but you can tell when a real-world sound is coming from a certain direction. Your brain accomplishes this by sensing slight delays between when your left ear and your right ear pick up the same sound source, and by interpreting echoes and other effects of real-world sound bouncing around in your surroundings. Live sound recorded by two microphones placed into a mannequin head's ears that's then played back directly into your ears via headphones will be binaural audio, and your brain will be able to interpret not only left and right, but all directions for that recorded sound. 

Now, the computational power of your iPhone is able to recreate that effect for any surround-sound source that was mixed for multiple surround speakers in a room. Your iPhone sorts exactly where and when the delays and echoes should be just as they enter your ear canal. As a result, you hear the playback not just as let/right, but as spatial audio, all around you.

As far as the settings, Automatic works with Apple's buds or headphones automatically, because there is two-way communication going on between those devices. "Always on" is necessary to get spatial audio playback in standard wired headphones, because the signal is just one-way output from your iPhone to 'dumb' headphones. 

Thanks to competition and the free market, this fellow has the choice to not interact in any way whatsoever with Apple, their hardware or their software. 

Ah, but that's probably not what he really wants. He wants access to the wallets of Apple's customers, but doesn't want any of the accountability that Apple requires to get there. What none of the folks who take this position realize is that it's because of all that accountability, privacy, security and software stability that Apple mandates that Apple's customers are more desirable than the ones who opt for Android. So if he got what he says he wants he wouldn't actually get what he really wants.

It would probably just annoy them, but it is possible to click somewhere on the map inside Crimea and chose the “Report an issue” option, where you can leave a comment such as “Crimea is not part of Russia.”

“Spatial Audio promises an immersive audio experience, built on top of Dolby Atmos. Rather than using fixed audio channels, Spatial Audio also takes into account the user's head movements, allowing the music sources to stay in positions relative to the user's body.”

Based on what’s written here and in the linked explainer article, I think AI misunderstands what spatial audio is. The short end result of that is that I sincerely doubt that spatial audio for Apple Music will involve tracking head movements as it does when watching a movie with surround sound on your iPhone.

This is because when watching a movie with spatial audio in your earbuds, the gyroscopes and sensors are orienting the surround sound to the device’s screen, not the listener’s body. The purpose of this is so that the sound of, say, an airplane flying overhead from behind your right shoulder and into the action on the screen will stay oriented to that screen even if you momentarily turn your head in reaction to hearing the airplane approach. This is a very cool effect, but it’s accomplished both with measurements from gyroscopes and accelerometers, along with some reliable assumptions about how you and your iPhone are positioned when you start watching. 

When listening to music in your earbuds with no associated video on your iPhone, you’re a lot more likely to have the phone in your pocket or left on some furniture nearby. As a result, measuring your earbuds’ orientation to your iPhone becomes less than meaningless. The sensors in your AirPods Pro can detect motion, but as there are no sensors on your body, AirPods can’t determine on their own which way your head is turned. As such, there would be no way to consistently track head movements within an audio-only surround sound music track, without either assuming a listener is looking straight forward at the beginning of a track (an incorrect assumption much of the time) or by requiring an active user interaction confirming their starting position when pressing “play.” 

So spatial audio for Apple Music is going to mean that there is indeed a three-dimensional sound field played back to you in your earbuds or earphones, whether from a 5.1 audio mix or from a Dolby Atmos source. It will be amazing. It almost certainly will not, however, involve tracking head movements for audio-only music. The surround sound field will stay oriented to your two ears, just as stereo does now. “Spatial audio” itself just refers to the technology that enables three-dimensional sound to be played back through two earphones or earbuds. The technological feat here is simulating the surround effect achieved with a much older recording concept known as binaural audio.

avon b7 said:

This is part of what the EU had to say:

"Today's decision concludes that Apple's anti-steering provisions amount to unfair trading conditions, in breach of Article 102(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU'). These anti-steering provisions are neither necessary nor proportionate for the protection of Apple's commercial interests in relation to the App Store on Apple's smart mobile devices and negatively affect the interests of iOS users, who cannot make informed and effective decisions on where and how to purchase music streaming subscriptions for use on their device.

Apple's conduct, which lasted for almost ten years, may have led many iOS users to pay significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions because of the high commission fee imposed by Apple on developers and passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription prices for the same service on the Apple App Store.

... "

Apple makes no reference to its anti-competitive behaviour in its statement and instead tries to put the spotlight on Spotify, its European nature and music streaming.

That’s because it’s absurd for the company that holds more than half the market to accuse another company that has a much smaller market share of “anti-competitive behavior” in that market. It becomes doubly absurd when you consider that much of that market wouldn’t even exist without the mobile platform created by Apple and then copied by its competitors. 

dewme said:

The Home app is certainly attractive with all of the background pictures. Functionally it’s still very far behind Alexa app, which incidentally has a prominent control to turn ON/OFF all lights - which I used last night. It also lets you classify smart plugs that are controlling lights as “lights,” which I find rather useful since the smart plug is just an intermediary or proxy. 

Apple will get there eventually. I think they are trying to make it very simple and accessible for those who are new to home automation. Perhaps when they start getting more people comfortable with it they’ll add in the kind of features people who have been using home automation devices are expecting. It’s still very early in the adoption phase for this technology for a lot of Apple users.

Change a smart plug’s icon to a light in the Home app, and it will be interpreted as a light. 

Let’s not forget that this started with Mr. Musk talking sh** for some mixture of reasons including ego and his desire to loosen Twitter’s policies regarding restrictions on the spread of disinformation. Musk talked a big game about purchasing Twitter for a ridiculous sum of money, sure that such a bluff would demonstrate his masculinity while pushing Twitter’s execs around in public. 

jdiamond said:

Guys, no one is implying Apple will make a physical car.  It's like AppleTV - initially, everyone hoped for an amazing Apple TV that was transparent and thin.  But it ended up just being a little box you hook up to a normal TV.  There's no reason to think this wouldn't be similar in concept to car play.  Apple would just be helping car companies that need to play catch up on things like self driving features, etc.  And they could go to town integrating the infotainment/entertainment systems with their own stuff.

Apple is already publicly moving forward with enhancements to CarPlay. That's not the Apple Car. CarPlay is simply a dumb terminal in your car that displays a customized interface with your iPhone.

Also, AppleTV didn't end up being the whole TV because Apple couldn't get all of the other content providers to agree to integrate into an AppleTV standard. If they were going to be the TV, it was going to be a device that seamlessly provided you with content from your cable provider, from streamers like Netflix and HULU, from things like YouTube, for purchased content, and on-air TV. For the user, it would all just work. Without that, they made a box that's better than the other boxes and dongles, but it doesn't require everyone else to play ball for it to be usable. You'll note that on your ATV box, HULU and Amazon integrate into the Apple search and 'Up Next' feed, but Netflix refuses. Xfinity only made their cable content available in an app a few months ago. When HBO became "max," their app dropped Apple's API and went with their own crappier one. Apple wasn't going to be the seamlessly integrated TV device unless they could do it all the way, all their way. None of this is analogous to their situation in developing a car.

Why wouldn't Apple produce an entire car? Apple has thirteen times the market capitalization of Toyota, the largest "established" automaker, and 55 times the market cap of GM. There are many new EV companies coming on line, and they don't have Apple's resources. See Fisker, Rivian, Lucid, and even DeLorean is apparently resurfacing as an EV company.

It seems entirely likely that Apple may contract with another company to manufacture their car, just like they do for production of iPhones and iPads, but they will not launch a new initiative as Apple Car and simply have it be CarPlay on steroids, living as an insert inside other companies' cars. That would subject Apple's reputation to the whims of other companies' design and manufacturing decisions. That's not how they do business. 

foregoneconclusion said:

"I would think of it as unwise to say that the services are not safe to use, because that has nothing to do with the DMA," Vestager said about the warnings. "The DMA is there to open the market for other service providers to get to you and how your service provider of your operating system, how they will make sure that it is safe is for them to decide."

Uhhhhh...if the other service providers get to decide how "safe it is" then why wouldn't Apple be allowed to say there are risks? Vestager just admitted that the DMA doesn't have security standards. Didn't the EU previously claim that App Store users would have no idea that they could pay for things on the internet unless a message inside the app told them they could do it? But now Apple isn't allowed to communicate that the security standards will be different...which is definitely true according to Vestager herself.

Bingo.

Apple offers a number of consumer protection benefits for users of third-party apps downloaded through the App Store, and in-app subscriptions and purchases handled through the App Store. Apps are reviewed for compatibility and compliance with consumer data collection standards, including required transparency and permissions for collection and use of certain user data. In-app subscriptions can be stopped as easily as they are started. The list goes on. 

For third-party app stores, these things - by definition - will not be handled by Apple, and Apple can't guarantee that similar standards will be maintained by operators of third-party app stores. They not only should be allowed to communicate this, an actual consumer protection law should probably require that this be communicated.

As much as the EU seems to be actively pretending it's not the case, the primary reason that some app developers want to have access to the iOS platform outside the App Store, is specifically because they want to defy Apple's standards for security, privacy and consumer protections. They want to collect and sell user data and they want to implement in-app sales and subscription practices that don't meet Apple's standards.