StandBy will turn your iPhone into an always-on display when charging. | Image by Dan Siefert / The Verge Apple has announced StandBy — a new feature that turns the
StandBy will turn your iPhone into an always-on display when charging. | Image by Dan Siefert / The Verge

Apple has announced StandBy — a new feature that turns the iPhone into a sort of smart display when it’s docked on its side. The company announced this new trick onstage at WWDC 2023 while debuting iOS 17, which is expected to arrive this fall.

StandBy comes with iOS 17 and kicks in automatically when your iPhone is charging and on its side. It’s designed to be seen from a distance and can display the time with customizable clock faces, Apple Home controls, the weather, music controls, app smart stacks, and other features. At night, StandBy adapts the screen to lowlight, taking on a red tone to avoid being disruptive at night.

Apple says StandBy will auto-surface the right info at the right time, such as showing you your schedule before your meeting starts. It also adds another way to use Siri hands-free, acting like a smart speaker; you can ask Siri to play music as you would on a HomePod, and in StandBy, the phone will show visual results when you ask the voice assistant questions.

Basically, it feels like StandBy is turning your smartphone into a smart display. It can even display your photos as a digital photo frame — something both Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub smart displays already do. When you pop it on a MagSafe charger, StandBy will remember your favorite view, or you can tap the screen to conjure it. On iPhone 14 Pro, it can be on all the time, thanks to the Always-On display.

 Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
StandBy can adapt to low light to work as a nighttime clock.

It doesn’t look like StandBy is coming to the iPad, where it would be really effective as a smart display. But Apple did announce it’s bringing interactive widgets to the iPad with iPadOS 17 — you will be able to control things like smart lights directly from the Apple Home widget. Whether this will work for the iPhone widgets, too, we don’t know yet, but it’s a feature I personally really want to see.

Live Activities from iOS 16 are also coming to the iPad lock screen, letting you take advantage of its other new ability: multiple timers. This could be handy for the kitchen, a popular spot for smart displays and sticky iPads.

 Image: Apple
Live activities on the iPad’s lock screen could be useful in the kitchen.
 Image: Apple
Interactive widgets are coming to the iPad, including Apple Home, so you can tap to control lights.

Apple Home users have been asking for a dedicated smart display from Apple for years. The company is the only major smart home platform without one. A smart display is loosely defined as a communal touchscreen interface for the home that’s easily accessed by anyone in the house.

While an Apple smart display has been rumored for a while, it has yet to surface. StandBy on the iPhone and interactive widgets on the iPad certainly feel like a stop-gap solution slash test for how a dedicated smart display might work in Apple’s ecosystem. But none of this effectively addresses the communal aspect of a smart display — a device anyone in the home can easily use. This is something Google showed off with its new Pixel tablet, also designed to be a home tablet. Apple, the ball is in your court.

original link


You may also be interested in this

Apple’s Lisa entomb…

Digging up the story about thousands of buried, unsold Lisa computers led to an interesting story about sabotage, Steve Jobs, and more.Steve Jobs with an Apple LisaNot all icons shine

Apple Rivals Unite to Pro…

Google, Meta, Qualcomm, Nothing, Lenovo, Opera and several other tech companies have announced a collaborative effort to push for "open digital ecosystems" in what appears to be a pointed move

Samsung Announces Updated…

Samsung has announced its popular Smart Monitor M8 is getting an update for 2023, with a new 27-inch size joining the previous 32-inch option, and both 4K screens gaining HDR10+

New Twitter CEO to start …

Elon Musk has tweeted that he's hired a new CEO for X/Twitter and that she'll be starting in about six weeks — but who it is, isn't clear.Twitter logoMusk also

iPhone is dumb and besott…

Image: Google Google has found a fun new way to dunk on Apple with an ad campaign for Pixel phones that straddles the line between cute and cringe. The search

First US state officially…

Last month, lawmakers in Montana voted to approve a first-of-its-kind bill to ban TikTok across the state. The final hurdle for that bill was a signature from Montana Governor Greg

This Case Turns Your iPho…

Bitmo Lab today introduced the GameBaby, a case that's perfect for playing retro games on an iPhone. The GameBaby is a clever two-part accessory that adds a d-pad and buttons

15-inch MacBook Air vs 14…

Macworld At a glance Our VerdictThe 15-inch MacBook Air is the perfect laptop for those who want a large display, compact build, and enough power for general day-to-day computing. If
X

A whimsical homage to the days in black and white, celebrating the magic of Mac OS. Dress up your blog with retro, chunky-grade pixellated graphics to evoke some serious computer nostalgia. Supports a custom menu, custom header image, custom background, two footer widget areas, and a full-width page template. I updated Stuart Brown's 2011 masterpiece to meet the needs of the times, made it responsive , got dark mode, custom search widget and more.You can download it from tigaman.com, where you can also find more useful code snippets and plugins to get even more out of wordpress.