Tech Tok: Apple makes big announcements at WWDC 2023

Much-awaited Vision Pro headset unveiled giving technophiles a peek into its features

Apple’s biggest annual event Worldwide Developers Conference kick-started on Monday and it has already made waves with some major announcements.

Called ‘revolutionary’ by Apple CEO Tim Cook, the much-awaited Vision Pro headset was finally unveiled giving technophiles a peek into its features.

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The headset is a culmination of both virtual and augmented reality and comes with eye-hand tracking, a pocket battery, and is powered by the VisionOS operating system. It looks much like ski goggles but weighs much lighter than other products in the market. Priced at a whopping $3,499, it is expected to release for users in early 2024.

Another major Apple gadget that was introduced at the conference was the 15.3-inch Macbook Air. Earlier Macbooks only had a 13-inch screen.

The MacBook Air also boasts impressive features such as up to 18 hours of battery life and a high-quality 1080p webcam. It is priced at $1,299 and is readily available in the market. It also gave up exciting details pertaining to iOS 17. Two new features with this update are Journal, an app to help practice gratitude, and StandBy, a way to view information when the phone is on charge.

Apple also said that the latest Mac Pro devices will now be powered by the all-new M2 Ultra Chips.

Several YouTube accounts hacked:

YouTube accounts of several noted individuals in India were hacked on Sunday as a part of the rampant Tesla scam. Users said that the hack could have been averted had the YouTube officials paid attention to multiple requests to freeze the accounts. Journalist Barkha Dutt’s news channel Mojo Story was the worst hit as all the videos were wiped clean and the account was renamed as ‘Tesla’.

Comedian Tanmay Bhat has also tweeted about his account being hacked and claimed that the hackers have bypassed the two-factor authentication he set for his account. Others like stand-up comedian Aishwarya Mohanraj and YouTuber Abdu Rozik also reported their accounts to be hacked.

Hackers targeted select accounts, deleted the videos, and renamed the accounts to make them look like the official accounts of the automotive company Tesla. This is a notorious trend set by hackers in the past couple of years.

Google extends Passkey to Workspace accounts

Earlier in May, Google launched Passkey support as an alternate sign-in option for all personal accounts. Now, the same feature is being extended to Workspace accounts. The Passkey helps users have a password-less sign-in method. One can simply choose to set up a PIN, fingerprint, or facial recognition to unlock apps. Google claims that this will minimize the phishing impact.

Microsoft’s voice assistant Cortana to be discontinued

According to reports, Microsoft will be soon pulling the plugs on its voice assistant Cortana on Windows. The move comes after the tech giant made some major changes like incorporating ChatGPT on Bing Chat. Its latest tool Windows Copilot which will be available on the taskbar is said to be capable of doing everything that Cortana could do and hence the decision to kill this application.

– Epsita Gunti with agency inputs