🍪 Apple's new vision

Happy Thursday, friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We're like your McDonald’s 6 piece chicken McNuggets: juicy, filling, and fried from writing this thing (jk!).

We really do have 6 nuggets for ya today - let’s get to ‘em.

In the oven this week:

• 🍎 The top 5 things Apple announced this week

• 🗳️ Poll of the week: when’s AR/VR going mainstream?

• 📚 Long form reads of the week

• 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines

• 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds of the week

• 😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the weekend

FRESHLY BAKED

THE 5 BEST THINGS APPLE ANNOUNCED THIS WEEK

It’s that time of year when all of the geeks make their pilgrimage to the great city of Cupertino.

That’s right, it was Apple’s Coachella this week: WWDC, the big conference where they announce tons of new products for the year.

Were we one of said geeks?

Maybe… 🤓

We went to all the talks, so let me save you a few hours. Here are the 5 best things Apple announced this week:

1. Obviously, the big kahuna, the Vision Pro, Apple’s first mixed reality headset.

Apple’s like that one hella annoying kid that always sits in the front of class, knows all the answers, and tattles on everyone. They’re the perfectionists in tech.

And the Vision Pro ain’t an exception.

All the reporters and creators that tried the thing can’t stop singing its praises. Apparently, the tech is the best thing out there today - the eye tracking and gesture control is near perfect.

The screen comes in crisp focus as your eyes move around the frame (no motion sickness, folks!), and there are no controllers. All you have to do is tap your fingers together to click into anything in front of you vs needing to hold your arms up all the time *cough* Meta’s Quest *cough.*

Ok now the downsides:

1. The $3.5K price tag: aka 350 Chipotle burritos….

2. The battery life is only 2 hours

So far there doesn’t seem to be too much you can do with it yet besides watching movies. But here’s the thing: if Meta has sold over 20m headsets, Apple will definitely sell at least 1M of these puppies right out of the gate.

That’s $3.5B. Billion with a B.

2. An easier way to get someone’s number: a new AirDrop feature called NameDrop lets you share your phone number with another person. All you gotta do is bring your phones near each other.

3. Multiple timers. ‘Nuff said.

4. Remember back when we wrote about Apple’s chokehold on messaging? Well, the blue bubble gang is getting even stronger, because they’re now letting iMessage users edit texts, even when there are Android users in the same chat. The only thing is, Android users won’t be able to see edited messages.

Talk about being left out…

5. Perhaps the best announcement: Apple’s finally gonna stop ducking autocorrecting “duck.”

It's about ducking time, Tim.

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

POLL OF THE WEEK: WHEN ARE HEADSETS GOING MAINSTREAM?

AR/VR headsets have been around for some time now, but so far, they’ve been too clunky to go mainstream.

Apple’s now officially joining the party and the $3.5K price point won’t be for everyone, but clearly people are HYPED. So friends, when do we think AR/VR headsets will finally reach critical mass?

COOKIE DOUGH

LONG READS OF THE WEEK

We’re all about the snappy stuff here at Bite Sized Beta, but every once in awhile when it’s gloomy out, we put our toys away and curl up with a longer nerdy read.

And where we are, it’s been gloomy with capital G.

So, here are a few long reads we’re enjoying this week:

• Marc Andreessen’s recent essay on why AI will save the world

• Stratechery’s Ben Thompson on Apple’s Vision Pro

• Matthew Ball on big tech’s biggest bets, and how to build a billion user platform 

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED HEADLINES

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

• 5 rituals to keep you happy all the time

• Bill Gates has a famous reading list he releases every year. This time, he says “there’s more to life than reading” (gasp!!) and released his top books, shows, and movies for the summer.

• The simple framework to improve your relationships: when someone you love comes to you with a problem, you ask, "Do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged?

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

 😂 

What'd you think about this email?

• 🍪🍪🍪 Top notch!

• 🍪🍪 Meh... could use more milk

• 🍪 Undercooked, do better