Podcast Tech

Nerdy Details: The Apple iPhone 16’s Camera Control Button

Apple’s Johnnie Manzari and Rich Dinh share insights on the new control and how it helps people capture more photo/video opportunities in this special episode of Design Tangents

Josh Rubin, Evan Orensten

20 September 2024

We love getting into the nerdy details of design innovations and the iPhone 16‘s new Camera Control button presented a perfect opportunity to dig in. For this first podcast of our new Design Tangents series aptly named Nerdy Details we sit down with Johnnie Manzari from the Apple Human Interface team and Rich Dinh, Senior Director of Product Design, to talk about cameras and photography through the lens of the new control on “the world’s most popular camera.” Camera Control represents years of collaboration between Apple‘s design and engineering teams and the unassuming feature packs a punch, elevating the iPhone’s photography capabilities through a combination of hardware and software innovations.

According to Dinh, who leads the iPhone design team and has worked on all 16 generations of the iPhone, the control’s design was meticulously considered down to the smallest detail. “The amazing thing when you look at the button is it is flush, and so for day-to-day use we’re hoping that the phone feels very much like your phone today in terms of how you grip it and handle it, but we’ve added a little chamfer in there to give that really lovely half press and full press experience with the button flush.” This attention to tactile feedback is complemented by the use of premium materials like sapphire and stainless steel, ensuring both durability and a premium feel.

The control’s capabilities extend far beyond a simple click. As a human interface designer, Manzari explains how utilizing a force sensor and a capacitive sensor enables a range of adjustments, from composition to exposure. “By lightly pressing on the button, you signal to the phone that you are intending to take a photo. That led to all sorts of interesting new experiences that we started to design.” This level of control and customization elevates the iPhone’s camera to new heights, empowering users of all skill levels to capture their vision. Tune in to Design Tangents to learn more about all the nerdy details of Apple’s new Camera Control.

Subscribe to Design Tangents on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify, so that when each episode comes out it’ll be ready and waiting in your player of choice.

Design Tangents is produced and edited by SANDOW Design Group. Special thanks to the podcast production team: Rob Schulte, Hannah Viti and Rachel Senatore and to Amber Lin for creating our show art.

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Spatial Computing Winners of Apple’s 2024 Design Awards

Two developers who’ve been creating experiences for flat screens flexed their true potential by bringing their apps to Apple Vision Pro

Josh Rubin

7 June 2024

Each year ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference a selection of apps and games are recognized for their design excellence. The categories awarded are delight and fun, inclusivity, innovation, interaction, social impact, visuals and graphics and a new one for spatial computing given this year’s release of Apple Vision Pro. The winners in that category are both apps with proven success on other Apple platforms yet they’ve been thoughtfully recreated for visionOS. Blackbox, a gorgeous puzzle game, offers abstract and intriguing visuals that prompt new forms of interaction and encourage movement around your space. djay, on the other hand, recreates the DJing experience with entirely virtual equipment.

“We’re proud to recognize the work of teams behind apps like djay and Blackbox which are reimagining app and game experiences for spatial computing,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “With their deep knowledge of developing apps that are completely native to Apple’s ecosystem both developers have shown how thoughtful but simple designs can seamlessly integrate into our lives and result in experiences that transform our world.”

Blackbox is a distinctive marriage of art, technology and game-play and on Apple Vision Pro uses the entire space around you as its playground, encouraging exploration and experimentation to unlock each puzzle. The iOS version of the game encourages exploration of space as well, however it’s visually constrained to what you can see on the iPhone’s screen while it’s in your hand. For the visionOS version developer Ryan McLeod found the perfect interaction model only once he let go of the windowed, 2D screen paradigm.

“For me, apps needing a window or having some kind of invisible volume really feels like a bit of a stop gap—something that really just exists naturally in the space with you is the ultimate idea,” he shared. “So once I figured out how we could pull off the graphics to support that—and use things like the bubbles instead of windows or menus, it didn’t really feel like a level selection screen anymore because it just kind of takes up your living room or backyard or wherever you are—the interactions all sort of flew from there.” At the same time, designing and developing for spatial computing presents an entirely new set of challenges given a very different set of constraints. “I think it’s so nice that Vision doesn’t have any defined play space and that presents interesting trouble for us as well,” McLeod continued. “If you’re sitting in bed with the headset and playing [Blackbox], do we spawn bubbles behind you through the wall? How smart can we be about trying to look at the space and arrange them?”

Blackbox for iOS won an Apple Design Award in 2017. When asked what winning another award meant to him McLeod reflected, “It’s funny because it’s not an Oscar or Pulitzer, but it absolutely feels that way to us. It’s a huge honor and affirmation that we’re doing the right stuff and pushing in the right directions, and it’s always just such a sign of recognition from people who really see and get all the details you’ve worked so hard on.”

djay for visionOS is the latest iteration of algoriddim‘s 18-year long commitment to using technology to enable access to DJing without an investment in the traditional equipment. And in many ways, creating a spatial computing experience gets close to coming full circle to the real life version. Opening the app reveals the flat interface existing users are familiar with from their Mac, iPad and iPhone apps. There’s a button to jump to spatial mode which renders turntables, effects panels and mixers in front of you and lets you choose a virtual environment or the room you’re in to play to. “With Vision Pro for the first time we felt that we can fully unleash our creativity and vision for bringing this experience to users and allowing them to feel what it’s like to be a DJ and to interact with music in that way with the benefits of a digital interface. To us that was really the holy grail moment in terms of the evolution of the product and its design,” Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim shared.

The design of djay leverages the best of 2D and 3D interaction models. Browsing long lists of tracks, for example, is easiest in 2D yet pulling a virtual album from a stack to put on a turntable in 3D is incredibly satisfying. Given the Vision Pro’s spatial sensing, features like previewing a track are as simple as cupping your hand to your ear just like you’d do with physical headphones. What’s intriguing is that when someone is using djay in Vision Pro they’re moving their hands and body just like a DJ would in a live, physical show. Back in February Diplo shared this video DJing with djay in Vision Pro on a private jet and two weeks ago Laidback Luke released the video above performing a live set. “Now gestures actually have meaning because normally when you’re DJing you’re just doing these things with the crowd and you’re not doing anything, but now he’s controlling the music and animating the audience. It’s all coming together,” Morsy joyfully shared.

It’s also important to recognize the finalists in the spatial computing category who include Loóna: Cozy Puzzle Games by Loona Inc.; NBA by NBA MEDIA VENTURES, LLC; Sky Guide by Fifth Star Labs LLC; and Synth Riders by Kluge Strategic Inc.

Here is a full listing of the winners and finalists from the six other categories as provided by Apple

Delight and Fun

Winners in this category provide memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences that are enhanced by Apple technologies.

Finalists for this category include Dudel Draw by Silly Little Apps, LLC; Hello Kitty Island Adventure by Sunblink Entertainment LLC; Rooms by Things, Inc.; and WHAT THE CAR? by Triband ApS.

Inclusivity 

Winners in this category provide a great experience for all by supporting people from a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, and languages.

Finalists for this category include Complete Anatomy 2024 by Elsevier, quadline by Kovalov, Tiimo by tiimo ApS, and Unpacking by Humble Bundle.

Innovation

Winners in this category provide a state-of-the-art experience through novel use of Apple technologies that sets them apart in their genre.

Finalists for this category include Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile by Activision Publishing, Inc.; Copilot Money by Copilot Money, Inc.; SmartGym by Mateus Abras; and Wavelength by Palm Court LLC.

Interaction

Winners in this category deliver intuitive interfaces and effortless controls that are perfectly tailored to their platform.

Finalists for this category include Arc Search by The Browser Company of New York Inc; finity. by Seabaa, Inc.; Little Nightmares by Playdigious; and Procreate Dreams by Savage Interactive Pty Ltd.

Social Impact

Winners in this category improve lives in a meaningful way and shine a light on crucial issues.

Finalists for this category include Ahead: Emotions Coach by ahead Solutions GmbH; Cityscapes: Sim Builder by MagicFuel Games; How We Feel by The How We Feel Project, Inc.; and The Bear by Mucks Games.

Visuals and Graphics

Winners in this category feature stunning imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations that lend to a distinctive and cohesive theme.

Finalists for this category include DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT by 505 Games (U.S.), Inc.; Honkai: Star Rail by COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD.; Meditate by RhythmicWorks; and Sunlitt: Sun Position and Path by Nicolas Mariniello. 

To learn more about the Apple Design Award winners and finalists, visit developer.apple.com/design/awards or the Apple Developer app.

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Apple Pencil Pro Is a Case Study in User Experience Perfection

We talk to Leslie Ikemoto and Scott Brodrick about key features you might not have even noticed

Josh Rubin

5 June 2024

A pencil doesn’t need to be special to do its job—the most incredible drawings can be made with a basic No. 2 because artistic talent is independent of tools. And yet, tools matter. When they’re a natural and fluid extension of the artist’s hand the friction of creative expression is reduced. Apple understands and celebrates this point of view in their product development and the Apple Pencil Pro is the latest example. The device has several celebrated new features and two that are so subtle you might not even notice. We talked with Leslie Ikemoto, Apple’s Director of Input Experience, and Scott Brodrick from iPad Product Marketing to learn more about what makes the Pencil Pro so special.

Launched alongside the impossibly thin and unbelievably powerful new iPad Pro, the Pencil Pro includes the same features as the Pencil—pressure sensitivity to control line weight while drawing, hover to see a preview of where the tip will land on the screen, double-tap to switch drawing tools and magnetic attachment which also pairs and charges the Pencil. Added in the Pro model is support for barrel roll to change the orientation of a brush, squeeze to open a tool palette and haptic feedback to confirm these interactions.

Squeezing the Pencil Pro to open a palette is easy and has virtually no learning curve. Testing this feature we noticed that whether you’re left-handed or right-handed the palette always appears in clear view right where you need it. “When someone holds a pencil the tip of the pencil always points away from their hand,” Ikemoto explained when we asked about the feature. “So we use the tilt and azimuth from the pencil plus the position to put the palette in just the right place every time,” she continues. Brodrick added that it’s the deep collaboration between hardware and software teams that makes this possible and so seamless, “the fact that we have sensors in there to determine the tilt and azimuth of the pencil itself has allowed for this interaction to happen.” He continues to note that this leads to the “simplicity and ease of use that ‘Squeeze’ brings by putting a palette right underneath the tip.” It’s also important to note that the “Squeeze” interaction is confirmed through haptic feedback and that haptic feedback changes in intensity based on how hard you squeeze the Pencil Pro.

The other super-subtle feature is “Shadow.” An evolution of “Hover,” you’ll see a faint shadow of the Apple Pencil Pro when you’re close to the screen in an app using the Pencil Kit Canvas element of the iPad OS Software Development Kit. “Shadow really takes Apple Pencil hover to the next level and it’s all about confidence so that you know not only the mark you’re going to make before you make it, but it’s also giving you a subtle cue as to how far away you are from the screen,” shares Ikemoto. Further, the shadow actually is rendered to represent the tool you’re currently using. “In terms of how it works, it uses the position of the pencil in 3D, as well as the tilt, azimuth and barrel roll to render the digital shadow on the screen. It’s in the iPad OS layer and under the hood we have 3D models of all of our different tools—we’re using those signals to then render that model in the right spot,” she concludes.

While all the benefits of Pencil Pro are available in Apple’s native iPad apps on the iPad Pro, they’re also available for all developers to leverage. Procreate was among the first apps to fully integrate what the new device can do. “There’s something very special about the relationship between the artist and their pencil; it’s the most essential tool in every artist’s kit. It’s right there with you in the process of making and with Apple Pencil Pro, you can create in entirely new ways. Like using barrel roll to create instant animations, or using squeeze to effortlessly select layers, and have it respond with haptic feedback, makes Apple Pencil Pro feel alive,“ shares James Cuda, CEO of Procreate.

Apple Pencil Pro is compatible with the latest iPad Pro and is available for $129 and those of us who tend to misplace things can feel better making the investment because the new device is supported in Apple’s “Find My” so that it can easily be located.

Podcast Tech

meriko borogove: Design Tangents Episode Fifteen

Nerding out with the ever-insightful designer, engineer, director and photographer

Josh Rubin, Evan Orensten

4 April 2024

It’s challenging to reduce the immensely influential, future-defining contributions of meriko borogove—a designer, engineer, director and photographer, as well as a close friend to COOL HUNTING—into a smattering of introductory words. For instance, though you may not know her name, if you’ve used an Apple device with a camera, you’re familiar with her work. borogove led the team behind the creation and development of the company’s cameras for years, starting with the iPhone. A warm, insightful human being who uses her grasp of technology and passion for creativity to forge togetherness, borogove experiments in the worlds of VR and AR. As a part-time contributor to ScanLAB Projects, a London-based art and technology studio that believes 3D is the future of photography and cinematography, borogove questions the future of audiences, devices and performance. In this latest episode of Design Tangents, borogove enlightens us with tales from her early days at Apple, shares the origin story of the iPhone’s camera, offers up thoughts on Vision Pro, and even the essence of connection with spatial computing.

borogove took a temp job at Apple on the QuickTime team in 1995—years before joining the team that would imagine the iPhone. “We didn’t sleep for a year and a half when we were launching the phone,” she says. “I remember knowing it was going to be important, that it was going to be big, but none of us really understood” what they were creating.

“We were such a small team on the first iPhone. We all did a lot of things,” she continues. “I was responsible for power and performance. I was responsible for the QA team. We built all the demos that Steve launched with. I was also really embedded and responsible for the media stack— graphic, audio and sound” components. borogove also worked on the company’s Camera RAW and Aperture software before Apple made the first phone. It gave her insight into computational imaging and a vision for what an iPhone camera could do. “I believed we should not be competing with camera phones, which all sucked,” then, she says, “but I knew that we could be competing with point and shoots and DSLRs.”

Her world after Apple has demonstrated a commitment to exploring the convergence of technology, artistry and community. It’s led her to a co-director role of a production with the Berliner Ensemble to a professor position at Royal Holloway, University of London. Whether it’s through her iPhone camera, or the LIDAR technology employed by ScanLAB, borogove maintains her passion for photography, as well.

Ultimately, she’s hopeful for our technological future. “I believe that there is a generation that is going to be dreaming past us and building past us and I believe it is going to be multidisciplinary,” she says. She also wholeheartedly believes that the next generation of creators understand that we must all start from a place of respect. To hear more of borogove’s insights—like never swipe through other people’s camera rolls, or pay attention to the future of volumetric capture—tune in to Design Tangents now.

Subscribe to Design Tangents on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify, so that when each episode comes out it’ll be ready and waiting in your player of choice.

Design Tangents is presented by Genesis and produced and edited by SANDOW Design Group. Special thanks to the podcast production team: Rob Schulte and Rachel Senatore and to Amber Lin for creating our show art.

Samsung’s Latest Phones Leverage AI to Improve Utility

Last week Samsung presented their latest Galaxy line of products with a heavy focus on Galaxy AI. Integrated throughout the phone features, it’s clear their focus is on improving everyday apps over adding entertaining gimmicks. Circling a product in a photo to initiate a search for it, live speech translation during a mixed language phone call and filling in parts of a photo left blank while editing are just a few things Galaxy AI is reported to do with underlying power from Google’s Android operating system. Ian Carlos Campbell digs in over at Inverse. And keep scrolling from there for Ray Wong’s hands-on review.

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New Year, New Behaviors with the iPhone 15 Pro Action Button

Billy Sorrentino talks about the design process behind this new button and we round-up apps to use with it

Josh Rubin

8 January 2024

At this point easing into the new year we’re reconciling resolutions with realities. Changing behavior sounds easy in concept but in reality it can be quite a challenge. Apple‘s new iPhone Action Button, introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro models, asks us to change the familiar behavior of flipping the ring/silent switch and provides a simple approach to using apps to help follow through with 2024 resolutions.

“As a design team we really go deep into the integration of hardware and software, creating a visual relationship between them so users don’t feel a difference,” shares eight year veteran of Apple’s Design Team, Billy Sorrentino, while talking about the Action Button and the settings interface to control it. That interface is a significant departure from the lists and toggles used to personalize other aspects of the iPhone. Its animated full-screen visuals offer a rich and informative explanation of the button’s potential functions and how to use them. “When hardware becomes software it becomes a kind of entirely new type of design language,” Sorrentino explains. “And Dynamic Island is a prominent recent visible representation of this but as a team we’ve been fascinated with this for a while and kind of go in really deep on it.“ The mention of Dynamic Island is especially relevant because it’s where visual confirmation of Action Button usage is reflected.

Rich integrations of hardware and software are not unique to Apple—and yet they do it so well because of the collaborative nature of their creative process, where digital and physical design seemingly carry equal weight in the studio. “Where we pride ourselves is being a team that’s built on a bunch of different disciplines all sitting together—UI designers next to industrial designers next to type designers, 3D designers and spatial designers. So as we approach problems, we really make sure that we’re bringing in the best of the whole studio to solve them,” he says.

The Action Button can be set to nine different options and given that one of them lets you choose a Shortcut, there really are endless possibilities given the Shortcut app’s extensive support for scripting a wide range of app and iOS interactions. You can start a meditation timer, log a glass of water, start a yoga workout, set a reminder to stand up and move around, create a new journal entry or pretty much any other function to help follow through with that New Year’s resolution.

While we have go-to apps that are long time favorites, we’re also always testing new ones. Here are a few we think are worth checking out to help with behavioral change.

Learn on the go by chatting with ChatGPT’s voice interface

Start a yoga class with Asana Rebel

Open a meditation soundtrack from Endel

Dictate a draft of anything for Audio Writer to transcribe and edit

Capture a moment in words and pictures using Apple’s Journal app

Start a Golden Hour countdown timer with Lumy

Open your next Duolingo language lesson

Develop new habits by logging activities with Tangerine

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Apple’s Next Generation CarPlay Shown with Aston Martin and Porsche

Deep integration between iPhone and vehicle offers holistic user experience customized for each brand

Josh Rubin

20 December 2023

The next generation of Apple‘s CarPlay is a leap forward in the integration of the iPhone with your car, offering seamless integration with the vehicle’s multiple displays and providing a holistic and intuitive user interface that’s unique to each car brand. This evolved version of CarPlay extends beyond the central infotainment system to include the driver’s information cluster and all other screens in the car, providing all vehicle information and interaction through a singular interface paradigm that also supports the user’s ability to select widgets to appear in predetermined areas on the screen—much like customizing the iPhone lock screen today. This version of CarPlay appears the moment the car is turned on and combines locally rendered content with features powered by the iPhone’s wireless connection to the car. Today Apple announced the first two partners on board to integrate this new generation, Aston Martin and Porsche, and showed us preliminary screens.

In the development of the next generation of CarPlay, car makers and Apple are forging an even closer partnership, focusing on crafting a unified yet distinct interface tailored to each vehicle. This collaboration is crucial in ensuring that the new CarPlay not only upholds the unique brand qualities and characteristics of each automaker but also allows for the creation of custom gauge clusters, layouts and widgets that resonate with their specific brand identity and ethos. Alan Dye, Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, encapsulates this vision: “With the next generation of CarPlay, we partnered with automakers to design an entirely new, unified experience that enables the very best of Apple and each particular automaker. It is a blend of a user’s personal experience of iPhone paired with a celebration of the strong brand identity of each automaker. The next generation of CarPlay also introduces a driving experience that leverages the advanced capabilities of the car along with the power of iPhone. We’ve designed a complete system of controls that allows for seamless interactions between vehicle functions alongside the features of iPhone. We can’t wait for users to experience it in the future.”

The design system introduced by Apple provides a range of options in terms of shapes, organizational structures and information presentation, enabling automakers to create displays that are both on-brand and informative. This next-gen CarPlay enables the incorporation of vehicle-specific information and features, including speed, RPMs or energy use, fuel or charge levels, temperature and odometer readings and more, into the interface.

Only Nike and Hermès have had the the opportunity to bring elements of their brands into native Apple experiences as we’ve seen on Apple Watch. Opening up the CarPlay interface design to auto manufacturer partners is a big leap, but they’ve provided a thorough toolkit for user interface customization and shared that they are working closely with their brand partners to ensure thoughtful, thorough and usable co-designs.

Aston Martin has meticulously customized CarPlay to complement its brand ethos and driving experience. They have opted for a minimalist dual gauge layout that highlights their driver-centric cockpit using precise tick marks on the gauges, paying homage to the brand’s analog history. The text “Handbuilt in Great Britain” hugs the tachometer and the interface is accented with British racing green as a reminder of their heritage. The next generation of CarPlay is expected to be integrated into the Aston Martin lineup in 2024. We do not yet know if it will be available as an update in any existing models or if it’s limited to new cars.

Marco Mattiacci, Global Chief Brand and Commercial Officer shared, “At Aston Martin we strive for excellence and performance and this was the key reason we chose to partner with Apple on the next generation of CarPlay. The integration of the latest state-of-the-art technology combined with a bespoke intuitive interface is paramount to creating the ultimate Aston Martin customer experience. We look forward to sharing more as we work together with Apple to bring the next generation of CarPlay to Aston Martins in 2024.”

Utilizing the CarPlay design system provided by Apple, Porsche has adapted its interface to feature a distinctive three-dial layout, including a central power meter and a left-positioned speedometer, paying tribute to Porsche’s rich motorsports history. The customization extends to the use of circular graphics, inspired by the gauge borders in earlier Porsche vehicles. The circular drive mode indicator in the UI is specifically designed to match the driver mode knob, ensuring that the interface is both intuitive and functional. While we didn’t get to see screens of the different modes, it seems apparent that the colors, graphics and layouts for each drive mode can be designed to convey the emotion of that setting as they are in many auto manufacturer’s interfaces today.

Michael Mauer, Porsche’s Vice President of Style commented, “We have long been committed to providing Porsche owners with the brand and sporty driving experience synonymous with the Porsche. In addition to the sports car itself, digital offerings that are perfectly tailored to our customers are becoming increasingly important to the overall driving experience. We recently brought the My Porsche app to CarPlay to provide drivers with even easier access to car functionality, and in the future we will be adding support for the next generation of CarPlay to Porsche models. We look forward to delivering an experience that adds the personal touch of a driver’s iPhone to the exclusivity of a Porsche.”

The next generation of Apple’s CarPlay marks a significant advancement in automotive technology, showcasing a seamless and intuitive integration with vehicles. This evolution is not just an upgrade in functionality; it’s a fusion of Apple’s cutting-edge technology with the unique identities of esteemed automakers like Aston Martin and Porsche. Through meticulous customization and design, these brands have infused their vehicles with an interface echoing their heritage and ethos, while Apple’s comprehensive toolkit ensures a user-friendly and cohesive experience. Apple continues to work with a broad range of automakers to bring the next generation of CarPlay to iPhone users and this collaborative endeavor between Apple and automakers is a leap forward in creating a more connected, personalized and immersive driving experience. The introduction of this technology into the Aston Martin lineup in 2024 and its anticipated integration into Porsche models highlight a future where the distinction between digital and automotive luxury is beautifully blurred, offering drivers an unmatched experience that blends the best of technology with the spirit of driving.

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Recording Spatial Video and Viewing it in Apple Vision Pro

During our third demo with the headset the nuances of spatial video come to life

Josh Rubin

14 December 2023

In iOS 17.2, Apple enabled Spatial Video recording on iPhone models 15 Pro and Pro Max. These iPhones capture spatial content using the phone’s main and ultrawide cameras simultaneously, and the format utilizes the stereoscopic difference between the two camera positions and focal lengths to render three dimensional video when viewed using the Apple Vision Pro headset. My first Spatial Video demo got me thinking about use cases, and I’ve been recording a range of content to try out. Yesterday I had the opportunity to see my videos come to life on a Vision Pro headset.

Recording Spatial Video on an iPhone requires a bit of imagination—what you see on-screen is the same flat, familiar preview you see in the regular video recording mode. I was curious to experiment with light, reflection, distance from the subject and movement in my recordings and had both correct and incorrect guesses about how they’d feel in the Vision Pro. Here are my initial findings and impressions.

Available Light

On a few occasions while recording the iPhone warned “More light recommended.”  I was pleasantly surprised when viewing that content in the headset: the movies still had plenty of depth and the image quality remained crisp and not grainy. One clip, certainly a moment from the future, was from a night drive in an autonomous Waymo on the streets of San Francisco. In another clip there was a strong, focused spotlight on peonies sitting on a table in a dark bar. This contrast made for a nice dramatic moment and even the objects in the shadowy background had depth.

Distance from subject

Keeping the subject between two and eight feet from the camera resulted in plenty of depth between foreground and background. The best scenes had multiple focal points within that two to eight feet range, and gave the most significant and satisfying sense of immersion. A slow walk through Ugo Rondinone’s stained glass clocks at Art Basel Miami Beach last week played back just like my experience in the original visit.

Movement

Movement is where it gets a little more complicated. Knowing the viewer will be static and the content immersive, it’s best to avoid creating too much difference between what the viewer is seeing and what they’re feeling because it can feel disorienting and create nausea. Shots with the camera stationary (such as on a tripod) are ideal, but camera movement is often necessary or desired to make a satisfying story. I found that recording linear and gently curved movements, especially in open spaces, created videos that were easy to view. By contrast, sharp turns in close quarters created more jarring videos. Given that a stationary camera is ideal, we found that optimizing for movement of the subject is even more important for dynamic, engaging experiences. In multiple videos with Rory, our jovial canine mascot, his presence was felt as he ran, played and chomped on his toys.

Sound

The audio captured in my video recordings completed the spatial experience on the Vision Pro, and I had an incredibly accurate sense of where the sounds were coming from. Closer sounds were especially satisfying—Rory’s chomping on a chew toy had ASMR-level satisfaction.

I also had a chance to look at some static images I captured with a DSLR and my iPhone, non-spatial (2D) videos, and panoramas. Similar to my experience at the previous demo I was keen to expand the image viewer as large as possible and placed it on the wall across the room. I immediately noticed how delightfully exacting the color rendering of photos was in Vision Pro compared to the iPhone 15 Pro Max screen—the gentle sunset pinks behind thick rain clouds over a dark ocean looked the same to me as they do on the iPhone’s HDR Retina screen.

Looking at panoramas in immersive view was also a treat, and surprisingly it wasn’t the distant landscape shots that were the most impressive: the panoramas from tighter, closer spaces—like at the Karnak Temple in Luxor, Egypt or JR’s epic collage, “The Chronicles of Miami,” rendered so perfectly in the headset that they almost felt 3D, despite looking distorted here in their flat view.

Apple has not yet announced a release date for Vision Pro beyond “early next year” and after this third demo of it that timeline feels promising. Every nuance of the experience has tightened and improved with each subsequent demo and we’re eagerly awaiting its release. Simply viewing photos and videos in the headset is already a luxury of focused attention combined with incredible color and resolution quality, and the prospect of creating content for this new spatial world is intriguing.

Yes it is a “post-apocalyptic bulletproof stainless steel squared off cockroach with sharp edges that will slice your finger open anytime you go near it,“ as Jason Cammisa describes. And it’s also even more radical than its exterior design. The Cybertruck’s engineering innovations are wildly impressive and Cammisa takes us through them in his usual thorough-yet-cheeky style for Hagerty’s ICONS series.

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Testing the Marantz STEREO 70s Two Channel Receiver

An excellent, affordable amplifier that’s far friendlier for non-audiophiles while still cranking out the brand’s powerful, warm signature sound

Michael Frank

30 November 2023

The STEREO 70s integrated receiver/amplifier isn’t celebrating the 1970s. Instead it’s a commemoration of 70 years of making amplifiers; in 1953, Saul Marantz founded the company in New York City. The Marantz brand is, today, quite different; the company’s wares are largely Japanese, manufactured in its Shirakawa facility that’s been there for the past 22 years. That transition from NYC to Japan happened over decades, thanks to devoted audiophiles in that country and manufacturing capacity that was growing in the 1960s and ’70s, while it was shrinking in the US.

You should care about the STEREO 70s because it’s affordable for an item from a brand with a fairly legendary audiophile pedigree, and it’s dead-simple and un-intimidating to use. “Unfortunately,” Gary Dayton, Senior Product Planner at Marantz says about the reputation of better audio components, “there’s been an impermeable intimidation wall regardless of whether you can afford better audio products. Consumers have just been taught it’s a pain in the ass.” 

In response to that perception, Marantz designed the STEREO 70s with paper instructions that were simple to follow. Unbox the unit and it tells you what to plug in where. As soon as you’ve strung an HDMI cord from your TV to the clearly labeled HDMI port you’re able to follow on-screen instructions, and getting the unit to work with a pair of speakers (or a soundbar), turntable and/or CD player is all super-simple. In fact it’s almost breathtakingly antithetical to the rest of the electronics world. Once setup was complete, it was also simple to add the Marantz to a home network and then enable AirPlay (so you can send whatever’s playing on your phone to the receiver). Further, if you use a higher bitrate streaming service, such as Roon (which we like, because it enables control of our own library as well as higher-fidelity streaming) the Marantz will auto-populate it as an output. 

Plus, an app called HEOS (for Android and iPhone) is integrated with the STEREO 70s. It lets you communicate with the receiver from your phone and stream from sources like Spotify, Tidal, SiriusXM, SoundCloud and about 10 more services, as well as from tracks natively stored on your phone. Your phone becomes your remote, too, since you can choose from all the amp’s wired sources like phono or CD, as well as video sources, such as an Apple TV. The included remote is far less necessary with HEOS. 

Dayton explains two decisions about this one-stop app solution. “First, we’re not making judgment calls for customers,” where, without naming names, other more hidebound brands might want to curate what you can stream. “I download a lot of stuff from Bandcamp or just self-published or otherwise under-available on streaming services sources. I can play that just as easily through my Marantz equipment as I can a Spotify playlist that my daughter sends me.” 

As for making playback easier, that was critical to Marantz’s thinking, especially for video integration. “Historically there has been a pretty high degree of inconvenience; you couldn’t just turn on the TV and have it automatically switch to your amplifier. Now it automatically switches.” This is regardless of whether you were just playing music through a streaming service or the amplifier was off. Likewise, switch off your TV and the whole system powers down. “This restores the expectation of convenience that we’ve had with sound bars or with the TV without sacrificing any sound quality.” 

Not that any of that would matter if the sound was garbled—but just the opposite is true. During testing, whether listening to Joe Cocker’s amazing 1970 live cover of “The Letter,” a lossless recording on Apple Music, or Hank Mobley’s version of “Dance of the Infidels” on a Blue Note LP we picked up on vinyl in Tokyo, the sound staging and reproduction were superb. Dayton attributes the clarity and warmth to a bit of in-house technical wizardry, noting that over time Marantz, like most other larger-scale producers, switched from “analog” amplification to chip-based circuitry—but that introduced its own headaches. 

“Ideally amplifiers would just use a power supply to make a facsimile of the incoming audio signal but bigger, right?” Dayton asks rhetorically. “Unfortunately with chip-based amplifiers there are problems. One, they’re usually unable to respond to voltage changes very quickly, and that introduces distortion.” There are other issues, but Dayton explains this led to Marantz’s decision to build their own custom Hyper Dynamic Amplifier Modules (HDAMs). These are custom tuned by Marantz engineers, are comprised of individual resistors, capacitors, and inductors, and allow Marantz to continue with its signature “warmer” sound, without losing accuracy. 

“People think that there are competing objectives; that you can’t have crispness without a kind of cooler temperature. But it’s not true. We want you to hear that inherent warm character in recorded music without overdoing it so it’s dripping with syrup, which is not fun.”

The final piece of the puzzle is simple design. Going all the way back to 1960, when Marantz came out with the Model 9 amplifier, a chunky block of metal that collectors still chase, the company has used a signature, center “porthole” on the face of their amps that’s like a cyclops eye. Dayton says that on the STEREO 70s, as with past units, it’s meant to convey information simply (such as showing you that you’re streaming over AirPlay), rather than to introduce distraction with dancing lights. This is especially true if you want to use the unit with a minimal soundbar in front of a TV, where moving meters would be a visual bother. This is also why the unit is slim—only 4.1 inches tall—so it can fit into your life rather than dominate a bookshelf.

There are some subtle but lovely design elements to the piece, however. Smoothly surfaced dials for treble and bass, as well volume, balance, speakers and input source grace the facade face plate, while that sits against a slightly concave, Fibonacci patterned, dimpled metallic surface. “That’s meant to suggest some order in our universe,” Dayton explains. “Think of concentric circles formed from rain on a pond.” But, he adds, the idea is meant more to convey timelessly classic minimalism. “At its fundamental level this is not a scientific instrument. It’s there to help communicate art.” 

The Marantz STEREO 70s is $1000 direct from the brand or at select retailers.