If macOS Ventura is successful, it will make living on a Mac easier.
macOS Ventura is expected to bring a slew of exciting new features and enhancements. The new 13-inch MacBook Air 2022 and MacBook Pro 2022, both of which contain Apple’s M2 CPU, were unveiled at WWDC 2022 with Ventura and two other new laptops.
MacOS Ventura, due out in the second half of 2022, is expected to provide a slew of new features and upgrades geared at simplifying your Mac experience. New MacBooks, on the other hand, may feel more tangible and thrilling.
After attending WWDC in person and seeing some of the new features for myself, I’m enthusiastic about the upcoming improvements in Ventura. I’m even tempted to try out the Ventura public beta when it launches in July if only for a handful of the promised enhancements.
Here are the features of macOS Ventura that most excite me.
1. Continuity Camera delivers the ultimate webcam
MacOS Ventura’s Continuity Camera will let you can utilise your iPhone as a wired or wireless camera and microphone for your Mac. Using your iPhone as a camera provides you greater control over how you position and operate your iPhone, which might help you appear your best if your Mac’s webcam takes lower-quality photos than your iPhone.
Note that you should be able to use any app that accepts camera/mic input with your iPhone because your iPhone is treated as any other webcam. For features like Studio Light (which artificially dims your background and lights up your face) and Desk View (which taps into the iPhone’s ultra-wide camera to display a second camera feed of what’s on the desk in front of the camera), Apple has also done some software work to enable them. To take advantage of this, you may use Apple’s Center Stage feature, which was previously exclusive to iPads and Macs with Apple hardware (and which leverages the ultra-wide camera and software wizardry in order to automatically crop the camera on the person speaking and follow them around if they move).
To use Continuity Camera in macOS Ventura, you’ll need suitable gear and software. In order to use it, you must have an iPhone running iOS 16 or later and a Mac running macOS 13 (aka Ventura). It should be noted that several of the Continuity Camera’s functions require an iPhone XR or later model (launched in 2018).
2. Live Captions and other accessibility improvements
Ventura is bringing a variety of new features that make macOS a little more user-friendly for everyone. With Live Subtitles, you can get captions for any audio material in real time, including FaceTime conversations, which is a new feature only available on Mac computers with Apple hardware (so they need either an M1 or M2 chip).
In spite of the fact that Apple warns users not to use Live Captions for vital work and that the service is only available in English initially, this nonetheless represents a significant advancement for those who use captions on a daily basis. It’s a boon for accessibility that macOS includes built-in closed captioning, since many current broadcasting platforms don’t do so. On iOS 16/iPadOS 16, it will also be accessible on any iPad with an A12 Bionic chip (or better) and an iPhone 11 or later.
Ventura also includes a text checker for VoiceOver input (so you can better structure and modify dictated text), a white noise tool to make relaxing background noises like rain, and a novel “buddy controller” system that allows you to merge inputs from various gaming controller into a single device.
As someone who suffers from severe carpal tunnel syndrome, I’m particularly excited about the final one. Many gamers, like myself, prefer to use bespoke controllers or have a friend nearby with a second gamepad to handle inputs they aren’t capable of handling. It’s fantastic to see Apple allowing such solutions, which make it possible to play games more comfortably.
3. Undo in Messages and Mail
In 2022, it appears that Apple will breach the “no takebacks” rule by adding new Undo buttons to Messages and Mail in macOS Ventura.
After 10 seconds of deciding whether or not to send, it’s excellent news for everyone who’s ever wished they could go back and re-send a message they’ve just sent. Messages will allow you to undo or change a message for 15 minutes after you’ve sent it.
4. Gaming gets better with Metal 3
With the release of Metal 3 and macOS Ventura in late 2022, the condition of gaming on Macs might be vastly improved.
When it comes to improving the graphics speed of an app on Apple devices, developers turn to the Metal API, which was created to allow them fine-grained control over how the GPU in your Mac or iPhone displays things on screen. MacOS Ventura’s inclusion of Metal 3’s third major version is especially welcome since it will let developers to take full use of Apple’s hardware in new and innovative ways.
Metal 3 will introduce a slew of intriguing new capabilities that Apple has previously teased, but we won’t know how significant they are until we see what developers can do with it.
New upscaling capabilities and improved ray tracing are among the improvements, as is the compilation of shaders, which has been streamlined and made more efficient. This is a long and complicated way of explaining that developers will be able to use Metal 3 to create visually appealing and faster Mac games.
5. Passkeys are here to kill the password
The new Passkey feature in macOS Ventura might make your life a lot easier if, like me, you spend more time than you’d like attempting to guess or change your own passwords.
This may be the beginning of a password-free future for all of us if Apple’s Passkeys are as good as they claim to be. With Passkeys (in macOS Ventura, iPadOS 16 and iOS 16), the Face ID or Touch ID sensors on your Mac or iPhone securely authenticate your identity before allowing you to access a website.
There will be an option to use a Passkey instead of your password whenever you establish a new account online that requires an email address and password. A Face ID/Touch ID verification question will appear if you attempt to connect in into that account again. Then you’re all set.
It is reasonable to assume that Apple Passkeys are more secure because they are only saved locally on your Mac, rather than on a remote server. If you generate a Passkey on your iPhone or iPad, it will function on your Mac or iPad, and vice versa. For Passkeys, Apple claims to use end-to-end encryption, which implies that neither Apple nor anybody else should be able to access them.
If you’re interested in learning more about Ventura, we’ll have a complete review out in the fall of 2022, so keep an eye out for that.