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Market Reality: Apple & Facebook Spill AR Details, Niantic's AR Transformers, Looking Glass Unboxed, & Snap's Viral Lens

The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat.

News: Mark Zuckerberg Reveals More About Facebook's Upcoming Smartglasses Set to Debut This Year

Ever since Facebook announced its partnership with Luxxotica brand Ray-Ban to produce smartglasses, the augmented reality space has been on high alert awaiting more details.

Opinion: Why the Nightmare Scenario of Facebook's Quest VR Advertisements Is Actually a Win, & Will Ultimately Boost AR

The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.

How To: Mute Notifications for Everything but Your Favorite Contacts in iOS 15

Your iPhone is full of apps that are all vying for your attention. Notifications from Facebook, Instagram, and even Apple Messages can get out of hand fast. With iOS 15, Apple gives you the tools to choose exactly who can contact you and when. Keep reading to see how to take control of your iPhone's notifications so that you only receive the most important alerts.

News: Tencent Deepens Its AR Investment Portfolio with $50 Million in Funding for Ultraleap

Over the past decade, China tech giant Tencent has invested in several companies with varying roles in the augmented reality industry.

How To: You Can Rate U.S. Businesses in iOS 15's Apple Maps to Remember What You Liked

One of the many great reasons to use Apple Maps is to find fun food options, chill cafes, enlightening museums, cute gift shops, and other interesting businesses that you might otherwise overlook, as well as must-see places of interest. But after a while, you might forget about some of these hidden gems. With iOS 15, it will no longer be an issue.

News: Facebook Develops AI That Can Copy Typefaces & Edit Text in AR

For awhile now, Google has offered the ability to translate text through smartphone cameras via Google Translate and Google Lens, with Apple bringing similar technology to iPhones via Live Text.

News: Apple CEO Tim Cook Teases Future AR Products & Talks Secretive Innovation Process in New Interview

The Apple rumor mill never stops churning and when it comes to augmented reality smartglasses, the chatter has been particularly hot in recent months.

How To: A Father's Day Discount on Bluetooth Earbuds Sounds Great

The draw of wireless earbuds is convenience, and many still offer the same sound performance as their wired counterparts. The difficult part is finding a pair that will stay in your ear reliably, work when you need them, and give you the best audio quality.

How To: Group Your Safari Tabs into Collections in iOS 15

Are your Safari tabs a tangled mess? I know mine are. Every time I try to find an open website on my iPhone, I end up facing dozens, sometimes hundreds of opens tabs. Yes, there's Search, but it's not perfect if you don't remember the right keyword to narrow the results. In iOS 15, Apple has another solution: custom tab groups.

How To: Add Any Apple Music Track You Want to Your Memory Videos in iOS 15

Having thousands of photos and videos in your Photos gallery can make it difficult to find the best ones, but your iPhone does make it a bit easier. Memories, which have been around since iOS 10, automatically group your photos and videos into mini-movies by location, date, or person. It's a fun feature that does the work for you, and it's getting better with the release of iOS 15.

How To: Enter Text from the Real World into Any Search Field in iOS 15

When you need to share large bodies of text from the real world to the digital one, the traditional method has been to take a picture. That's fine for viewing the text, but what about when you need it typed out? That usually means tapping out each letter of each word, which can get monotonous fast. But that's no longer the case, as you can enter text in any field on your iPhone with iOS 15.

How To: Set Unique Alert Tones for Different Types of Sounds with iOS 15's Sound Recognition

Your iPhone's Sound Recognition feature is a powerful tool to help keep you alert to the world around you. With it, iOS will inform you if it hears a fire alarm, a door bell, glass breaking, among many other kinds of sounds. In iOS 15, Apple is updating the feature, allowing you to choose the alert tone that plays when iOS recognizes a specific sound.

News: Looking Glass Portrait — Unboxing the First Mainstream Holographic Display

Not all Kickstarters are created equal. Some take forever to get their products to supporters, and when the product does arrive (usually much later than promised) it's often very rough around the edges.

How To: Revert Spoofed Photos & Videos in iOS 15 to Their Original Locations & Dates

Apple introduces several new privacy settings with iOS 15, including the ability to better manage the metadata in your photos. With just a few taps, you can effectively spoof a photo's geolocation and change its creation date and time, providing a sort of disguise over your personal information. If you constantly take and share photos, it's a welcomed feature, but its results are not permanent and can be reversed.

AR Snapshots: Snapchat Lens Shows Us What Our Fav Live-Action Movies Would Look Like from Pixar Animation

For its latest augmented reality trick, Snapchat has brought the world an AR Lens that has become a bit of a viral hit on Twitter as users turn themselves and their favorite movie stars into characters out of a Pixar movie.

News: Apple Releases iOS 14.7 Beta 3 for iPhone

Apple released the third iOS 14.7 public beta for iPhone Tuesday, June 15. The update comes one day after Apple released the third 14.7 developer beta, and twelve days after the second iOS 14.7 beta, which was only released to registered developers.

News: Niantic Primes Its Lightship AR Engine for Transformers Game, Global Launch Slated for 2021

With the tagline "More Than Meets the Eye," the Transformers franchise was pretty much preordained to have its own augmented reality game, and AR gaming pioneer Niantic has stepped up to fulfill that destiny.

Market Reality: Apple's New AR Tools, Snap Spectacles Apps, Magic Leap Exec Shake-Up, & Microsoft's Military HoloLens

Over the past few weeks, Google, Snap, and Facebook have all taken their turns to show off their new augmented reality technologies. This week, it was Apple's turn, with new AR features for iOS 15 along with new capabilities for developers.

News: 'The Matrix' Movie Effects Pioneer & Former Magic Leap Exec Reveals 'Tragic Story' of Startup's Recent Struggles

Magic Leap has had a rough couple of years, highlighted by high-profile executive departures, lawsuits, troublesome patent shuffles, and massive layoffs.

News: Google Extends AR Search Lead Over Apple with Landmark Recognition for Google Lens

This week, Apple unveiled its own version of Google Lens in the form of Live Text. In response, Google just hit back with a new feature for its visual search tool called Places, a new search category that can recognize landmarks and return information on them within the camera view, which Apple touted as a capability of Live Text during its WWDC keynote.

How To: iOS 15 Makes It Really Easy to Change the Location & Date/Time for Any Photo or Video

Metadata might be a bigger concern than you might realize. In its continuous push to be a privacy-first company, Apple has released several new features with iOS 15 that allow you to adjust and permanently change the metadata stored within the photos and videos you take on your iPhone. But why would you want to do this?

How To: These Ergonomic Earbuds Will Fit Your Ears Comfortably for Truly Immersive Listening

Having earbuds that don't work for you is kind of like having shoes that don't fit. They're never where they're supposed to be, and every second you're using them, you're acutely aware of how much they aren't working for you. And if they fall off, you'll probably step on them. ComfoBuds Pro True Wireless Headphones are the right fit, the right sound, and the right choice if you want to listen to music instead of being distracted by the place your music is supposed to come from.

How To: Sound Recognition on iPhone Gets 2 New Detectable Sounds in iOS 15

Sound Recognition was introduced with iOS 14, and the accessibility feature uses on-device intelligence to detect 13 different sounds and then notify you whenever it hears one. Apple increases that number to 15 with the addition of two more detectable sounds in iOS 15 that it should have included from the get-go.

News: Snap's Spectacles Turned into Immersive AR Dance Teacher via Lens Studio

The debut of the augmented reality version of Snap's Spectacles came with several examples of how the wearable can allow creators to transform the world around them.

How To: iOS 15's Safari Changes the Way You Access Tabs

When you first open Safari after updating your iPhone to iOS 15, you might be a bit surprised by the design change. Apple attempted to make browsing the web on its smartphones more natural and cohesive, but it may leave you wondering just how to actually navigate your tabs.

News: Magic Leap Experiencing Yet Another Major Executive Shake-Up, Report Says

Just when everything seemed settled over at Magic Leap, it turns out that the internal tumult is still in play.

How To: This Mini Drone Is the Perfect Gift for Father's Day!

Drones give you the joy of experiencing the sky without any of the downsides of gravity. Copernicus was the astronomer who put the sun at the center of the solar system. This little drone is aptly named after him because it similarly gives you a true look at the sky through a crystal clear camera and agile, intuitive controls.

News: Facebook's Smartwatch Will Eventually Include CTRL-Labs Tech for Smartglasses Control, Report Says

If you were to summarize the path Snap has taken towards augmented reality smartglasses with a meme template, how it started would be the first-generation Spectacles camera glasses and how it's going would be the next-generation Spectacles with AR capabilities.

How To: The New Way to Start a FaceTime Audio Call from Messages in iOS 15

FaceTime audio calling is a great alternative to regular phone calls on your iPhone because it usually has better audio quality and fewer dropped calls than regular calls over cellular or Wi-Fi calling. Plus, it's easier to start group chats, and you have the choice to turn on your camera. If you frequently use the "audio" button in Messages to start FaceTime audio calls, know that things work differently in iOS 15.

How To: iOS 15 Lets You View All Actions for Shortcuts in One List

One thing you couldn't do in the Shortcuts app when building a shortcut was browsing the entire list of available actions for all of the apps and services on your iPhone. That all changes in iOS 15.

News: Join Loki on His Time-Traveling Adventures with This Snapchat Lens

Like its predecessors WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Marvel's latest series for Disney Plus, Loki, has its own augmented reality experience.

How To: Add Android, Linux & Windows Users to FaceTime Calls in iOS 15

Apple's exclusive chat services, iMessage and FaceTime, force many of us to stay locked into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS to communicate with other Apple users, so chatting with Android-using friends means SMS texts, third-party messaging apps, and third-party video chat services. However, Apple is breaking boundaries with iOS 15 so that we can FaceTime with Android, Linux, and Windows users.

News: Apple Pushes ARKit Closer to the AR Cloud with Location Anchors, Expands Face Tracking Support

While Apple introduced new AR features for iOS 15 and Object Capture for Reality Kit 2 during the WWDC 2021 keynote, updates for ARKit were curiously absent in the official presentation.

News: Apple's Object Capture Puts 3D Scanning Market on Notice, but Unity MARS Benefits via New Integration

One of the more exciting augmented reality announcements Apple made during its WWDC keynote on Monday came in the form of Object Capture, a new 3D scanning feature coming to macOS Monterey.

How To: Learn Python Today with This Discount Bundle

If you've ever wanted to start learning to code but haven't known where to start, then one of the best places is with Python. It's great for introductory programmers, and it's also a must-have addition to the repertoire of anyone experienced in the industry. As of 2019, over eight million programmers have used Python, and the industry has only grown since then, so the best time to start practicing is today!

How To: Open a New Private Tab in iOS 15's Updated Safari App

When you open Safari for the first time after updating to iOS 15, you'll instantly notice its new look. The search bar is now at the bottom, and the View menu has moved with it, now situated next to the tabs button. For tabs, moving between them is as easy as swiping left and right or selecting one from the new grid view, but you may get confused whenever it's time to open a private window.

How To: iOS 15 Makes Searching Your iPhone from the Lock Screen Even Easier

Your iPhone's search bar has so many great uses. For example, you can quickly find apps on your device, browse different Safari results to find the site that's right for your question, and even search across different iOS apps like Messages, Mail, Notes, and Photos. With iOS 15, Apple has introduced the fastest way yet to start searching with Spotlight on iPhone.

How To: These High-Quality Courses Are Only $49.99

Project managers — and those hoping to become one — should rejoice at this killer deal. The Project Manager's Essential Certification Bundle Ft. Scrum, Agile & PMP usually runs for $1,990 but is only $49.99 for a limited time.

How To: Perform Advanced Man-in-the-Middle Attacks with Xerosploit

A man-in-the-middle attack, or MitM attack, is when a hacker gets on a network and forces all nearby devices to connect to their machine directly. This lets them spy on traffic and even modify certain things. Bettercap is one tool that can be used for these types of MitM attacks, but Xerosploit can automate high-level functions that would normally take more configuration work in Bettercap.