Last night, we were finally able to discover the keynote of the Special Event opening theWWDC 2020. The opportunity for Mary-Ann Ionascu, Senior Engineer in charge of developing the software for the Cupertino wireless headphones, to reveal what the next update of the duo will contain. First of all, it is users equipped with the ecosystem of products from the same brand who benefit from unprecedented synchronization between their different devices.
The principle is simple: imagine that you are watching a film on your iPhone, AirPods in your ears, but you want to continue viewing the feature film on a larger screen. You then grab your Mac, click on the iconHandoffto restart reading, and the Bluetooth headsets automatically continue to broadcast the dialogues without you needing to connect them to the tablet! Very practical, this solution now differentiates Apple's wearable much more seriously from all those of the competition, and is also compatible with the Watch, iPads orthe latest true wireless pairs from Beats.
Three-dimensional immersion
The other change is calledSpatial audio. Remindinga patent previously filed by Apple, the concept (only available on the Pro model) clearly takes up that of VR that we know with the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift, but applied to sound waves rather than images. Understand that by listening to a concert, for example, you will have the impression of being with the musicians and will hear the violinist in front of you, the pianist behind or even a trumpeter on the right.
For group calls, very popular since the democratization of teleworking, it's the same: the voices of your interlocutors would be “placed” in different positions around you, with obvious applications in cinema such as those in 4D rooms but in your AirPods. Let’s hope that this algorithm – which would also know “stabiliser” the sound according to your movements and those of your iPhone- is effective, becausethe similar Sony WF-1000XM3 alternative seems like little more than a marketing pitchFor now.
