Eye Tracking coming to iPhone and iPad

Amazing assistive tech arrives soon -- no extra hardware needed!

Author

Leander Kahney
May 15, 2024

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One of the most amazing things about Vision Pro is its eye-tracking capability. It makes using Apple’s headset feel very close to magic.

Now the same feature is coming to your iPhone and iPad — no extra hardware needed.

On Wednesday, Apple teased several accessibility features headed later this year to a bunch of the company’s devices and platforms. They include Eye Tracking, Music Haptics, Vocal Shortcuts, Vehicle Motion Cues and more.

Eye Tracking on iPad and iPhone is designed to allow users with physical disabilities to control their devices with just their eyes using the front-facing camera. After a quick setup, the camera tracks where they are looking and initiates actions when their gaze dwells on a control.

If it works as described, it’s going to be magical! And that’s just one of several very cool-looking assistive technologies Apple is rolling out.

Also in today’s newsletter:

  • If you’re getting a new iPad Pro (which went on sale today alongside the new iPad Air), be prepared to buy all new everything!

  • Among online storage companies, Prism Drive has a good reputation, making this a killer deal on cloud storage: Get 20TB of lifetime storage for just a few bucks more than Apple charges to rent 12TB (the max available) for a month.

  • If you didn’t see OpenAI’s demo of its new ChatGPT-4o earlier this week, it’s definitely worth checking out — just to see what Siri may soon be able to do.

  • Apple Music’s 100 best albums list continues to trickle out, with picks 81 through 100.

  • This wireless CarPlay adapter is an interesting device. Among other things, it allows you to stream YouTube (which CarPlay bans) to your in-car infotainment device.

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

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Tweetz o’ the day

One more thing ...

❝

Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. These waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you're going to surf. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years. One of our biggest insights [years ago] was that we didn't want to get into any business where we didn't own or control the primary technology because you'll get your head handed to you.

— Steve Jobs, 2008.

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