Play Video

Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Tuesday, June 6 (Philippine time) with a keynote, announcing its latest software innovations, including new updates to iOS, iPadOS and macOS, among others.

That’s not all, however, with the California tech giant also unveiling a number of hardware products at the event, chief of which is the Vision Pro, its new mixed reality headset.

Here are the top announcements from the event:

Vision Pro

Apple’s long-rumored mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, is finally here!

The new device features what the iPhone maker describes as “a revolutionary spatial computer that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world”. It can create a fully 3D interface that you can control using your eyes, hands, and voice, immersing you in digital experiences that transform your physical space. In FaceTime calls, for instance, the people you’re talking to are displayed in life-size tiles, giving the impression you’re with them in-person.

The Vision Pro can also display passthrough video of your eyes through a feature called EyeSight. It uses the OLED display to show surrounding people whether you’re busy viewing something or can see them through the headset.

Under the hood, the Vision Pro is powered by a unique dual-chip design that combines the capabilities of the M2 chip with the new R1 chip. The former handles the computing power, while the latter processes the input of 12 cameras, five sensors, and six microphones in real time. Apple further touts that the R1 chip streams new images to the displays within 12 milliseconds, which is eight times faster than the blink of an eye.

For display, the headset sports a custom micro-OLED display system that boasts 23 million pixels, delivering ultra-high-resolution visuals and accurate colors. The three‑element lens also creates the feeling of a display that covers every part of your vision.

The Vision Pro also runs on visionOS, an all-new operating system that Apple says was built from the ground up. The software was, however, designed on the framework of iOS and iPadOS, allowing first-party apps to easily be ported over. Some unique features of visionOS include a Home screen that floats in view and apps that react to light and cast shadows.

The Vision Pro has a starting price of $3,499. It’ll be releasing sometime early next year, though it’ll only be available in Apple retail stores in the US.

15-inch MacBook Air

Apple is expanding its thin and light MacBook Air lineup with a 15-inch model, which is the largest to date. The new laptop is powered by last year’s M2 chip with an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, along with up to 24GB of memory and 2TB of storage. It also boasts up to 18 hours of battery life and features a six-speaker sound system.

The 15-inch Air is available for pre-order today for the starting price of $1,299, with it shipping next week.

M2 Ultra chips in new Macs

Apart from the Air, Apple is also updating two new Mac powerhouses with the M2 Ultra chip: the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. The M2 Ultra is a more powerful iteration of last year’s M1 Ultra, combining two M2 Max chips through Apple’s UltraFusion architecture with up to 2.5TB/s of bandwidth.

The M2 Ultra touts 20% faster CPU performance compared to its predecessor. Its 76-core GPU, meanwhile, is up to 30% faster. The 32-core Neural Engine also provides a 40% boost over the M1 Ultra. The new silicon is configurable with up to 192GB of unified memory and 800GB/s bandwidth.

Touting iOS 17

For software, Apple announced a host of new features coming to the iPhone with iOS 17.

The latest version of the operating system adds a new Airdrop feature called Namedrop, which allows you to seamlessly share your contact information with another person. The feature essentially saves you from having to dictate your contact details in-person. You simply have to bring your iPhones together, and you’ll get the option to share your number and email address.

What’s more, Apple is debuting Journal, a dedicated journaling app that lets you log your daily experiences. The app leverages the on-device machine learning to make personal suggestions around your activities and data, including your saved photos, your location and your workouts.

The update is also introducing Standby, which essentially lets you turn your iPhone into a deskside clock. The full-screen feature activates when you turn your iPhone to the side while it’s charging. It’ll display various information via widgets, such as time and notifications.

iPad OS 17

iPad is similarly getting some notable upgrades with iPadOS 17.

The new software features improved widget implementation, customizable Home screens, and the launch of new apps that were previously only available on iPhone, including the Health and Notes app.

Apple is also making the PDF experience on iPad better with the addition of Live Collaboration. When you’re collaborating with another iPadOS 17 user on a PDF document and you make edits, it’ll reflect immediately on the other device. iPadOS 17 also uses machine learning to identify fields in a PDF document so you can easily fill them out.

macOS Sonoma

Meanwhile, Apple’s latest macOS version, macOS Sonoma, brings interactive widgets from your mobile devices to your laptops and desktops.

The update also adds Game Mode, which when enabled tasks the Mac to prioritize CPU and GPU power to running games and limit distractions while you’re playing.

On top of these, there’s a new overlay feature for when you’re in a video call that cuts out the speaker and places them in a dynamic background. The feature works on popular video call apps like FaceTime, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and more.

WatchOS 10

For watchOS 10, Apple appears to be focusing on improvements to the user interface. That includes refreshing how you might interact with widgets and first-party apps on your watch. If you want to access widgets now, you can simply turn the Digital Crown and check on weather forecasts, for example. The information from your favorite widgets are displayed on a smart stack on your watch screen.

Apple TV

Apple is now letting you use FaceTime on a large display via the latest version of Apple TV.

You can simply set your iPhone or iPad in front of your TV and use Continuity Camera to have either of those devices double as your webcam. Center Stage then adjusts and keeps you within the frame while you enjoy your call. – Rappler.com

The process of designing a chip involves deciding where to place tens of billions of tiny on-off switches called transistors on a piece of silicon to create working chips. The exact placement of those transistors has a big impact on the chip’s cost, speed and power consumption.

Chip design engineers use complex design software from firms like Synopsys Inc and Cadence Design Systems Inc to help them optimize the placement of those transistors.

On Monday, Nvidia released a paper showing that it could use a combination of artificial intelligence techniques to find better ways to place big groups of transistors. The paper aimed to improve on a 2021 paper by Alphabet Inc’s Google, whose findings later became the subject of controversy.

The Nvidia research took an existing effort developed by University of Texas researchers using what is called reinforcement learning and added a second layer of artificial intelligence on top of it to get even better results.

Nvidia chief scientist Bill Dally said the work is important because chip manufacturing improvements are slowing with per-transistor costs in new generations of chip manufacturing technology now higher than previous generations.

That goes against the famous prediction by Intel Corp INTC.O co-founder Gordon Moore that chips would always get cheaper and faster.

“You’re no longer actually getting an economy from that scaling,” Dally said. “To continue to move forward and to deliver more value to customers, we can’t get it from cheaper transistors. We have to get it by being more clever on the design.” – Rappler.com

In a replay of last month’s dueling chatbot launches by the tech giants, Alphabet touted a “magic wand” for its popular Google Docs software that can draft a marketing blog, training plan or other text, then revise its tone at users’ discretion, a company official demonstrated to reporters.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has teased a Thursday event about how it is “reinventing productivity with AI,” which is expected to showcase its competing Word processor.

Alphabet also said its AI will be able to summarize message threads in Gmail, craft slide presentations, personalize customer outreach, and take meeting notes as part of its upgrade to Google Workspace, a product suite with billions of users on free and paid accounts.

The advances reflect how ChatGPT has spurred a race in Silicon Valley to imbue products with so-called generative AI, which learns from past data how to create content anew, just like the chatbot sensation.

Microsoft, Alphabet, and peers are investing billions of dollars to build and deploy the technology, hoping business they win from speeding up writing and creative tasks for office workers will far outweigh the costs of these endeavors.

Must Read

Alphabet-backed Anthropic releases OpenAI competitor named Claude

“This next phase is where we’re bringing human beings to be supported with an AI collaborator, who is working in real time,” Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive of Google Cloud, said in a press briefing.

Alphabet is giving approved test users access to new Workspace features on a rolling basis throughout the year, before a wider launch, similar to it and Microsoft’s phased release of their chatbot programs.

Kurian declined to say how much the upgraded Workspace might cost businesses or consumers.

AI-generated corgi

Google also unveiled a range of generative AI tools for its cloud-computing customers, for instance previewing access to PaLM, one of its most powerful “large language models” that create human-like text.

Google said customers can fine-tune its AI model with their own data while keeping the information and benefits proprietary.

In another enterprise software example, Google showed how a fictional furniture business could build better customer-service chatbots capable of generating images as well as text, like showing how a corgi dog would look on a mid-century modern chair.

The chatbot could integrate with a payments system so a shopper then could buy the chair, a promotional video showed.

Google aims for its AI to “transform” the work of marketers, lawyers, scientists and educators, according to the video.

The Mountain View, California-based company announced a partnership with high-profile AI research lab Midjourney, with Google to provide cloud infrastructure including its custom “TPU” chips.

Microsoft’s generative-AI rollout so far has outpaced that of Alphabet, which is wary of societal harm as well as damage to its reputation as a reliable source of information.

Such software remains prone to inaccurate responses known as “hallucinations”.

A factual error that Alphabet’s chatbot Bard made in a demo last month contributed to a $100 billion slump in its market value, though Microsoft drew scrutiny of its own when its Bing search chatbot professed love or made threats to test users.

Kurian said Google remains “deeply committed to responsible AI,” giving controls to customers and reviewing proper use of its products. Microsoft has also added safeguards to its search software. – Rappler.com

OpenAI, which created the chatbot sensation ChatGPT, said in a blog post that its latest technology is “multimodal,” meaning images as well as text prompts can spur it to generate content. The text-input feature will be available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers and to software developers, with a waitlist, while the image-input ability remains a preview of its research.

The highly-anticipated launch signals how office workers may turn to ever-improving AI for still more tasks, as well as how technology companies are locked in competition to win business from such advances.

Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday announced a “magic wand” for its collaboration software that can draft virtually any document, days before Microsoft is expected to showcase AI for its competing Word processor, likely powered by OpenAI. A Microsoft executive also said that GPT-4 is helping power its Bing search engine.

OpenAI’s latest technology in some cases represented a vast improvement on a prior version known as GPT-3.5, it said. In a simulation of the bar exam required of US law school graduates before professional practice, the new model scored around the top 10% of test takers, versus the older model ranking around the bottom 10%, OpenAI said.

While the two versions can appear similar in casual conversation, “the difference comes out when the complexity of the task reaches a sufficient threshold,” OpenAI said, noting “GPT-4 is more reliable, creative, and able to handle much more nuanced instructions.”

An online demonstration of the technology by Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, showed it could take a photo of a hand-drawn mock-up for a simple website and create a real website based on it. GPT-4 also could help individuals calculate their taxes, the demonstration showed.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, on Twitter called GPT-4 its model “most capable and aligned” with human values and intent, though “it is still flawed.”

GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content than its predecessor and scores 40% higher on certain tests of factuality, the company said. Inaccurate responses known as “hallucinations” have been a challenge for many AI programs.

Microsoft stands to benefit from GPT-4’s adoption, said Rishi Jaluria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

The software maker not only is integrating OpenAI’s latest technology into its products: its Azure cloud is powering usage of OpenAI just as budget-conscious businesses are scrutinizing IT spend in an uncertain economy, he said.

“Whenever a company uses this piece of technology,” Jaluria said, “those workloads go through Microsoft Azure, and I think this is coming at a very critical time.” – Rappler.com

The San Diego, California-based company, which is the world’s biggest supplier of chips that connect mobile phones to wireless data networks, said it is working with Honor, Lenovo-owned Motorola, Nothing, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi to develop the devices.

Satellite-based communications can send and receive data in remote or rural regions where other telecommunications networks are not available. Qualcomm announced that it was adding the capabilities to its chips earlier this year.

Qualcomm’s work with Android device makers is likely to intensify competition between those brands and Apple, which last year unveiled the ability to send emergency satellite messages as one of the flagship features of its newest iPhone lineup. Those new iPhones contain a chip from Qualcomm, though Apple told Reuters that they also contain custom hardware and software that are proprietary to Apple.

Qualcomm did not say when the new satellite messaging features from the Android smartphone brands named on Monday would become available. Earlier this year, Qualcomm said that some Android phones would have the features by the second half of this year. – Rappler.com

The maker of the Windows operating system is staking its future on AI through billions of dollars of investment as it directly challenges Alphabet Inc’s Google.

The Redmond, Washington, company once dominated the technology world, but it has lost the lead position in the search and browser markets to Google.

Working with the startup OpenAI, Microsoft is aiming to leapfrog its rival and potentially claim vast returns from tools that speed up all manner of content creation, automating tasks, if not jobs themselves. That would affect products for business, such as cloud computing and collaboration tools, as well as consumer internet.

“This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category,” Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella told reporters in a briefing at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond.

The company’s share of search has fallen to about a tenth of the market. A Microsoft executive said that each percentage point of share gain would bring in $2 billion in revenue.

Many investors see the new technology as a win for all players. Shares of Microsoft closed 4.2% higher on Tuesday and Alphabet gained 4.6%.

The power of so-called generative AI that can create virtually any text or image dawned on the public last year with the release of ChatGPT, the chatbot sensation from OpenAI. Its human-like responses to any prompt have given people new ways to think about the possibilities of marketing, writing term papers or disseminating news, or even how to query information online.

The new Bing search engine is live in limited preview on desktop computers and will be available for mobile devices in coming weeks.

Bing will be powered by AI and run on a new “large language model” that is more powerful than ChatGPT, said Microsoft Consumer Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi. A chatbot will help users refine queries more easily, give more relevant, up-to-date results, and even make shopping easier.

Bing is far behind Google in search market share.

Microsoft is now aiming to market OpenAI’s technology, including ChatGPT, to its cloud customers and add the same power to its suite of products, including search.

Near-term, “the partnership with OpenAI is more relevant for its business customers,” said Gartner analyst Jason Wong. Still, he said, it could offer “disruptive opportunities” in consumer businesses as well.

“Except for gaming, Microsoft has not been a leader in key consumer technologies, such as search, mobile and social media,” he added.

Google has taken note. On Monday it unveiled a chatbot of its own called Bard, while it is planning to release AI for its search engine that can synthesize material when no simple answer exists online.

Microsoft’s decision to update its Edge browser will intensify competition with Google’s Chrome browser.

The rivalry in search is now among the industry’s biggest, as OpenAI sets up Microsoft to expand its 9% share at Google’s expense, said Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

Practical uses

Microsoft executives said the new Bing would change how people find information on the internet.

The AI-driven search engine would be able to give clear answers in plain language, synthesizing what Bing found on the Web and in its own data vaults, rather than simply spitting out links to websites.

At the event, Mehdi demonstrated how the AI-enhanced search engine will make shopping and creating emails easier. He showed how Bing could estimate, for example, whether a certain type of couch could fit in the back of a car by pulling together Web data on one’s vehicle dimensions.

For the quarter ending December 31, Alphabet reported $42.6 billion in Google Search and other revenue, while Microsoft posted $3.2 billion from search and news advertising.

Behind Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership is its plan to invest in supercomputer development and cloud support so the startup can release more sophisticated technology and aim at the level of machine intelligence dreamed up in science fiction.

The fruit of this work, however, is more immediate. Last week Microsoft announced the startup’s AI will generate meeting notes in Teams, its collaboration software, as well as suggest email replies to vendors using its Viva Sales subscription. – Rappler.com

Microsoft, meanwhile, said it planned its own AI reveal for Tuesday.

The cascade of news reflects how Silicon Valley is anticipating massive change from so-called generative AI, technology that can create prose or other content on command and free up white-collar workers’ time.

The ascent of ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that could disrupt how consumers search for information, has been one of the biggest challenges to Google in recent memory.

In a blog post, Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said his company is opening a conversational AI service called Bard to test users for feedback, followed by a public release in the coming weeks.

He also said Google plans to add AI features to its search engine that synthesize material for complex queries, like whether learning guitar or piano is easier. Currently, Google presents text that exists elsewhere on the Web for questions where the answer is clear.

Google’s update for search, the timing of which it did not disclose, reflects how the company is bolstering its service while Microsoft is doing the same for Bing, embedding OpenAI’s capabilities in it.

Microsoft has said it plans to imbue AI into its all its products and on Tuesday plans to brief news outlets on developments it did not specify, with its CEO Satya Nadella, according to an invitation seen by Reuters. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, tweeted that he would also attend the event.

How Google aims to differentiate Bard from OpenAI’s ChatGPT was unclear. Pichai said the new service draws on information from the internet; ChatGPT’s knowledge is up to date as of 2021.

“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our” AI, Pichai said.

Behind the new chatbot is LaMDA, Google’s AI that generated text with such skill that a company engineer last year called it sentient, a claim the technology giant and scientists widely dismissed.

In a demo of the service, Bard like its rival chatbot invites users to give it a prompt while warning its response may be inappropriate or inaccurate. It then bulleted three answers to a query about a space telescope’s discoveries, the demo showed.

Google is relying on a version of LaMDA that requires less computing power so it can serve more users and improve with their feedback, Pichai said.

ChatGPT at times has turned away users because of explosive growth, with UBS analysts reporting it had 57 million unique visitors in December outpacing potentially TikTok in adoption.

Google also plans to give technology tools, first powered by LaMDA and later by other AI, to creators and enterprises starting next month, Pichai said. – Rappler.com

A senior US administration official, discussing the initiative shortly before the official announcement, called it the first sweeping AI agreement between the United States and Europe. Previously, agreements on the issue had been limited to specific areas such as enhancing privacy, the official said.

AI modeling, which refers to machine-learning algorithms that use data to make logical decisions, could be used to improve the speed and efficiency of government operations and services.

“The magic here is in building joint models (while) leaving data where it is,” the senior administration official said. “The US data stays in the US and European data stays there, but we can build a model that talks to the European and the US data because the more data and the more diverse data, the better the model.”

The initiative will give governments greater access to more detailed and data-rich AI models, leading to more efficient emergency responses and electric grid management, and other benefits, the administration official said.

Pointing to the electric grid, the official said the United States collects data on how electricity is being used, where it is generated, and how to balance the grid’s load so that weather changes do not knock it offline.

Many European countries have similar data points they gather relating to their own grids, the official said. Under the new partnership all of that data would be harnessed into a common AI model that would produce better results for emergency managers, grid operators and others relying on AI to improve systems.

The partnership is currently between just the White House and the European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-member European Union. The senior administration official said other countries will be invited to join in the coming months. – Rappler.com

Scientists now are moving to improve on that 18th century innovation with 21st century technology – a system employing a high-powered laser that may revolutionize lightning protection. Researchers said on Monday, January 16, they succeeded in using a laser aimed at the sky from atop Mount Santis in northeastern Switzerland to divert lightning strikes.

With further development, this Laser Lightning Rod could safeguard critical infrastructure including power stations, airports, wind farms and launchpads. Lightning inflicts billions of dollars in damage on buildings, communication systems, power lines and electrical equipment annually while also killing thousands of people.

The equipment was hauled to the mountaintop at an altitude of about 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), some parts using a gondola and others by helicopter, and was focused on the sky above a 400-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) transmission tower belonging to telecommunications provider Swisscom, one of Europe’s structures most affected by lightning.

In experiments during two months in 2021, intense laser pulses – 1,000 times per second – were emitted to redirect lightning strikes. All four strikes while the system was active were successfully intercepted. In the first instance, the researchers used two high-speed cameras to record the redirection of the lightning’s path by more than 160 feet (50 meters). Three others were documented with different data.

“We demonstrate for the first time that a laser can be used to guide natural lightning,” said physicist Aurelien Houard of Ecole Polytechnique’s Laboratory of Applied Optics in France, coordinator of the Laser Lightning Rod project and lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Lightning is a high-voltage electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, within a cloud or between clouds.

“An intense laser can generate on its path long columns of plasmas in the atmosphere with electrons, ions and hot air molecules,” Houard said, referring to positively charged particles called ions and negatively charged particles called electrons.

“We have shown here that these plasma columns can act as a guide for lightning,” Houard added. “It is important because it is the first step toward a laser-based lightning protection that could virtually reach a height of hundreds of meters (yards) or a kilometer (0.6 mile) with sufficient laser energy.”

The laser device is the size of a large car and weighs more than 3 tons. It uses lasers from German industrial machine manufacturing company Trumpf Group. With University of Geneva scientists also playing a key role, the experiments were conducted in collaboration with aerospace company ArianeGroup, a European joint venture between Airbus and Safran.

This concept, first proposed in the 1970s, has worked in laboratory conditions, but until now not in the field.

Lightning rods, dating back to Franklin’s time, are metal rods atop buildings, connected to the ground with a wire, that conduct electric charges lightning strikes harmlessly into the ground. Their limitations include protecting only a small area.

Houard anticipated that 10 to 15 years more work would be needed before the Laser Lightning Rod can enter common use. One concern is avoiding interference with airplanes in flight. In fact, air traffic in the area was halted when the researchers used the laser.

“Indeed, there is a potential issue using the system with air traffic in the area because the laser could harm the eyes of the pilot if he crosses the laser beam and looks down,” Houard said. – Rappler.com

The innovations showcased, developed by the agency’s Advance Science and Technology Institute (ASTI), include ROAMER (Robot for Optimized and Autonomous Mission-Enhancement Response), an automated robot that can monitor plants and detect plant diseases in order to aid farmers; Gul.AI, a plant growing system that uses sensors to monitor plants, and collect data that can be accessed online; and DATOS (Remote Sensing and Data Science), an engine that analyzes geospatial data for disaster risk-reduction and agricultural purposes. 

ROAMER is being designed to autonomously go around plantations, and using AI, identify which plants may have a disease to prevent further spread. Currently, the pilot study for the project is being conducted with a partner banana plantation in Mindanao. The wheeled robot hopes to alleviate manpower issues related to monitoring plantations. The project began in June 2021, with a budget of P24.7 million, with implementation expected in June 2024.

The Gul.AI project aims to encourage the youth to learn about crop farming and technology, through a plant box with sensors that measure various information. Data from plants being monitored are then collected, and made accessible through a web platform, with proposed AI-related uses for the data. The data is analyzed to see which parameters work best for a certain plant, building a knowledge database that can potentially be applied to future farming.

“By deploying plant box components capable of collecting data through onboard sensors, data is collected and parameters not-easily seen before such as water pH level, relative humidity, temperature, luminance, and live imaging of the monitored area recorded in a cinch,” OpenGov reported in March 2022. The report also said that the DOST reached an agreement with the University of Rizal System for field testing of the Gul.AI prototype.

DATOS represents a consolidation of various DOST efforts, with a primary goal of collecting relevant disaster information, and its dissemination to relevant agencies. As stated on its DOST page, it relies on the CoARE project for data archiving and machine learning functions, and the PEDRO project as its primary source of satellite images that DATOS processes.

The DOST said its attendance in these international trade events is part of its initiative to strengthen emerging technologies in the Philippines, such as semiconductor manufacturing, AI and robotics, through partnerships with governments and key industry players. 

Must Read

CES 2023’s coolest gadgets, part 1: Hybrid folding-sliding displays, smart dual dashcams

It also gains various insights and possibilities for the country to use in market intelligence and in benchmarking homegrown technologies. The agency touted that the innovations it showcased were at par with their international counterparts, which include France’s SentiV, a scouting robot for monitoring field crops; Israel’s Agwa, an AI-assisted indoor vegetable-growing device; and Japan’s Land Evaluation Engine, an application for monitoring lands of interest from space. 

“Similarly, as we vision to continuously be abreast with countries with cutting-edge technologies, we explored potential investment opportunities and areas for cooperation particularly with startup companies and universities in Silicon Valley,” said DOST undersecretary Leah Buendia. 

The Philippine delegation was composed of members from the DOST, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA), the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Foundation, Inc. (SEIPI) and the Philippine Trade and Investment Center (PTIC).

“We also recognize the importance of having a pool of experts in achieving this vision, hence we have the commitment of continuous knowledge transfer and developing our home-grown science and engineering workforce through the Balik Scientist Program,” added Buendia. – Rappler.com