What blew me away at WWDC?
[Scroll down for AND a few more things... imaging industry news highlights]
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Frankly, I am a bit underwhelmed by the scope of the WWDC announcements, in particular those that are relevant to the photo and video industry. It’s pretty obvious that Apple has spent a lot of energy on porting specific iOS features to MacOS and v.v., but this might have very well come at the expense of more exciting innovation relevant to our industry. |
Still, here are the announcements I felt stood out:
The App Store charm offensive.
Responding to the crescendoing criticism from app developers and competitors that Apple is too greedy in terms of the commission it takes from App Store sales, Apple put its best face forward at WWDC and made a few App Store-specific announcements.
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The numbers. Apple said its App Store today sees 600M weekly users and has paid out more than $230 billion to developers since the App Store launched, highlighting the business opportunity for app developers. The week before WWDC Apple also announced that its App Store facilitated $643 billion in commerce in 2020, up 24% YoY. The company noted that about 90% of the billings and sales facilitated by the App Store actually took place outside its walls – think online shopping, printed photobooks, food delivery, ride hailing, etc. – meaning Apple took no commission on those purchases.
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Oct. 19-20: Visual 1st 2021
Virtual interactive conference
Oct. 21: DIY Video Ecosystem Summit
Virtual interactive conference
Oct. 28: Meet & Greet,
in-person, San Francisco
Stay tuned for updates!
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Multiple App Store pages. App developers will now be able to create multiple custom product pages in the App Store to showcase different features of their app for different users. For instance, they’ll be able to try out things like different screenshots, videos, and even different app icons to A/B test what users like the most.
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Events. Apps that roll out new content or promote time-limited events, such as photo contests, will now be able to advertise these events in the App Store. Users can also discover events with personalized recommendations and through App Store search. App Store editors will curate what they think are the best events.
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Turning 2D images into 3D. Apple announces Object Capture, a new API on macOS Monterey that will enable developers to create photo-realistic 3D models of real-world objects from a series of 2D photos. Use cases include 3D viewing and AR of physical products sold on e-commerce sites, such as by Wayfair or Etsy. As at Visual 1st we have had startups such as Bellus3D (winner Visual 1st Best of Show Award 2019), Fyusion and Cycloramic show their specific approaches to “capturing 3D through 2D”, we look forward to seeing if or how Apple can take these approaches to the next level – or how these types of startups can leverage what Apple is now releasing for its developers.
Live Text. Yah, Apple announced finally something along the lines of Google Lens, allowing Apple devices to recognize text and numbers within an image and letting users copy that text from the image and paste it into other apps. Leveraging Live Text, Visual Lookup then enables users to search by people (facial recognition), scenes, elements (snow/rain), locations and landmarks, or even specific text within the photos. For photo print products or visual storytelling apps the Live Text + Visual Lookup combo could conceptually be used to curate content or to grab text content that could be part of the photo story or photobook. Fine print update: on the Mac, Live Text will only be available on Macs with the M1 chip.
Photos Memories & Apple Music. Or: Magisto meets Shopify. Apple Music songs can now intelligently be added to the Photos app’s Memories feature. Leveraging AI, Memories can now sync audio from Apple Music with imagery. Its mixes are user-configurable with intelligently chosen songs based on the user’s profile. The integration also includes song suggestions that combine expert recommendations with a user's personal tastes. A nice touch: suggestions can also recommend songs that were popular at the time and location of the memory, "songs you listened to while traveling, or a song from the artist you saw for a concert memory," Apple says.
10-bit Video HDR. HDR (which requires taking multiple exposures for every shot or frame) is not an easy feat for video with a gazillion frames. At WWDC Apple introduced 10-bit Video HDR to replace what they previously called “Video HDR” but now acknowledge it was actually only an “HDR-like” solution for video. Confused? Here is the video of the session that explains what has changed and what else is new in Apple's camera capture functionality.
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Printed Memories. When we're talking trees: planting trumps killing them. A new company, Printed Memories, is launching a line of environmentally friendly photobooks. With the objective of limiting the company’s carbon footprint, Printed Memories will plant a tree for every order placed. The average tree creates roughly 15,000 sheets of paper, according to the company, compared to the 85 sheets of paper in an average Printed Memories photo book.
Perfect Corp. From AR beauty to fashion. Past Visual 1st presenter Perfect Corp., developer of the YouCam Makeup AR app, goes beyond the beauty aisle by expanding into fashion tech with the release of hyper-realistic AR and AI 3D virtual try-on effects for eyewear (glasses) and earrings. Try some on!
Poparazzi. FOMO going berserk. Really, a valuation of $135M, days after the app’s public launch? The photo sharing app whose announcement we covered in our last issue raises a $20M Series A led by Benchmark at a valuation of up to $135M according to Forbes. Poparazzi encourages users to take and share photos of their friends. It does not allow selfies, and a user’s profile is made up of photos they’re tagged in by their friends.
EyeQ. AI Scene Detection. EyeQ, the developer of Perfectly Clear automatic photo correction solutions, has added AI Scene Detection functionality to Perfectly Clear, which enables the software to identify a scene or lighting condition and then apply a correction with predetermined parameters. This ensures the correction is as accurate as possible and most appropriate to the scene or lighting condition in that photo.
Best,
Hans Hartman
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