Month: June 2023

Enlarge / Apple's adding machine learning volume control features to the second-gen AirpPods Pro. (credit: Apple)

At WWDC 2023 today, Apple announced that it will be adding adaptive audio, combining active noise cancellation and transparency modes based on the noises in the wearer's environment, to the second-generation AirPods Pro. This and a couple other other machine learning-based features are coming this fall via a software update.

Apple touted the feature as a way to use your AirPods Pro with distractions. It uses machine learning to be able to detect noises you would want to block out, like cars honking, but not the ones you would want to hear, like someone speaking to you in real life.

Apple will also add what it's calling Personalized Volume, so AirPods Pro can make volume adjustments based on how you use the device and "environmental conditions," Apple said.

Enlarge / Apple's adding machine learning volume control features to the second-gen AirpPods Pro. (credit: Apple)

At WWDC 2023 today, Apple announced that it will be adding adaptive audio, combining active noise cancellation and transparency modes based on the noises in the wearer's environment, to the second-generation AirPods Pro. This and a couple other other machine learning-based features are coming this fall via a software update.

Apple touted the feature as a way to use your AirPods Pro with distractions. It uses machine learning to be able to detect noises you would want to block out, like cars honking, but not the ones you would want to hear, like someone speaking to you in real life.

Apple will also add what it's calling Personalized Volume, so AirPods Pro can make volume adjustments based on how you use the device and "environmental conditions," Apple said.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple's watchOS hasn't been known for big, flashy feature updates in recent years, but 2023 could be an exception. During the company's annual WWDC keynote, Apple announced a ship date for watchOS—and a couple of notable new additions for Apple Watch users.

The main focus of the watchOS 10 update is the addition of widgets, similar to those previously seen in iOS and iPadOS. Using widgets, Watch wearers will be able to access some information and features of Watch apps without actually launching or browsing around in those apps. Widgets will appear on the watch face by just turning the digital crown, and appear in a "smart stack", and you can long press on the stack to add more widgets. Apple demoed widgets for the weather, stocks, the calendar, fitness, timers, and complications, and of course developers will be able to add more, too.

Apple also spruced up some of the built-in app. The activity app now has corner icons for awards and other fitness tracking, and there are new full-screen views. These corner icons will be a theme in most of the new app designs. There are two new watch faces, a minimalistic color-based watch face called "palette", and a licensed Snoopy & Woodstock watch face.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple's watchOS hasn't been known for big, flashy feature updates in recent years, but 2023 could be an exception. During the company's annual WWDC keynote, Apple announced a ship date for watchOS—and a couple of notable new additions for Apple Watch users.

The main focus of the watchOS 10 update is the addition of widgets, similar to those previously seen in iOS and iPadOS. Using widgets, Watch wearers will be able to access some information and features of Watch apps without actually launching or browsing around in those apps. Widgets will appear on the watch face by just turning the digital crown, and appear in a "smart stack", and you can long press on the stack to add more widgets. Apple demoed widgets for the weather, stocks, the calendar, fitness, timers, and complications, and of course developers will be able to add more, too.

Apple also spruced up some of the built-in app. The activity app now has corner icons for awards and other fitness tracking, and there are new full-screen views. These corner icons will be a theme in most of the new app designs. There are two new watch faces, a minimalistic color-based watch face called "palette", and a licensed Snoopy & Woodstock watch face.

Enlarge / Exploration team members Megan Berger and Rick Hunter navigate the narrow chutes leading to the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave in South Africa, where fossil elements belonging to Homo naledi were discovered. (credit: Robert Clark/National Geographic)

Some 25 miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, there is a famous paleoanthropological site known as the Cradle of Humankind. So many hominin bones were found in the region that it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999. Among the many limestone caves in the region is the Rising Star cave, where cavers discovered fossils representing a new hominin species, Homo naledi, in 2015. Only H. naledi remains were found in the cave, suggesting the possibility that the bodies had been placed there deliberately, although this hypothesis proved to be a bit controversial.

Now the same expedition team has announced the discovery of H. naledi bodies deposited in fetal positions, indicating intentional burials. This predates the earliest known burials by Homo sapiens by at least 100,000 years, suggesting that brain size might not be the definitive factor behind such complex behavior. The team also found crosshatched symbols engraved on the walls of the cave that could date as far back as 241,000–335,000 years, although testing is still ongoing.

Taken together, the discoveries provide evidence of a major cognitive step in human evolution in terms of mortuary practices and meaning-making. The team described these new findings during a virtual press conference and in three new preprints posted to the BioRxiv, which will be published later this year in the journal eLife.

Enlarge / Exploration team members Megan Berger and Rick Hunter navigate the narrow chutes leading to the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave in South Africa, where fossil elements belonging to Homo naledi were discovered. (credit: Robert Clark/National Geographic)

Some 25 miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, there is a famous paleoanthropological site known as the Cradle of Humankind. So many hominin bones were found in the region that it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999. Among the many limestone caves in the region is the Rising Star cave, where cavers discovered fossils representing a new hominin species, Homo naledi, in 2015. Only H. naledi remains were found in the cave, suggesting the possibility that the bodies had been placed there deliberately, although this hypothesis proved to be a bit controversial.

Now the same expedition team has announced the discovery of H. naledi bodies deposited in fetal positions, indicating intentional burials. This predates the earliest known burials by Homo sapiens by at least 100,000 years, suggesting that brain size might not be the definitive factor behind such complex behavior. The team also found crosshatched symbols engraved on the walls of the cave that could date as far back as 241,000–335,000 years, although testing is still ongoing.

Taken together, the discoveries provide evidence of a major cognitive step in human evolution in terms of mortuary practices and meaning-making. The team described these new findings during a virtual press conference and in three new preprints posted to the BioRxiv, which will be published later this year in the journal eLife.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple has unveiled the next major release of macOS, dubbed macOS Sonoma. It adds many of the features from iOS 17, plus a handful of Mac-specific enhancements over macOS Ventura.

For anyone who mourned the loss of the old Dashboard feature a few releases ago, Sonoma brings back a redesigned widgets experience that lets you drag widgets out of the Notification Center and onto your desktop. When you have another app open, these widgets will fade into the background to get out of your way. iPhone widgets can also be displayed on your Mac, as long as your iPhone is within close range of your Mac or on the same Wi-Fi network.

Apple is also continuing in its quest to make gaming on macOS happen with a new "Game Mode" that gives games CPU and GPU priority while they're running, not unlike the identically named feature in Windows. Like the Windows version, Game Mode isn't going to make your CPU or GPU hardware more powerful than it is, but it should help improve the smoothness and consistency of game framerates by keeping other running apps from spiking in usage while you're trying to play something.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple has unveiled the next major release of macOS, dubbed macOS Sonoma. It adds many of the features from iOS 17, plus a handful of Mac-specific enhancements over macOS Ventura.

For anyone who mourned the loss of the old Dashboard feature a few releases ago, Sonoma brings back a redesigned widgets experience that lets you drag widgets out of the Notification Center and onto your desktop. When you have another app open, these widgets will fade into the background to get out of your way. iPhone widgets can also be displayed on your Mac, as long as your iPhone is within close range of your Mac or on the same Wi-Fi network.

Apple is also continuing in its quest to make gaming on macOS happen with a new "Game Mode" that gives games CPU and GPU priority while they're running, not unlike the identically named feature in Windows. Like the Windows version, Game Mode isn't going to make your CPU or GPU hardware more powerful than it is, but it should help improve the smoothness and consistency of game framerates by keeping other running apps from spiking in usage while you're trying to play something.