For all the ideas that Apple comes up with, some give me a bit of pause. Sure, everyone’s focused on the Apple Vision Pro right now, but I don’t feel that’s a big deal. What’s a big deal for me is these camera reactions.
This feature was added to iOS/iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma and are triggered when doing certain hand gestures. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this was only going to be limited to Facetime calls. However, for a lot of Mac users especially, this turned out not to be the case. I’ve accidentally triggered them during a monthly charity meeting. My therapist and I both triggered them at random times during sessions.
Also, this isn’t to say that only macOS users have been subject to it. Its just that I imagine it is more prevalent on devices where conference calls are usually made. And it’s clear that a lot of Apple users aren’t necessarily happy with the feature just being on by default.
It was discovered in iOS 17.4 beta 3 and macOS Sonoma 14.4 beta 3 that the default behavior will change. New code was found that seems to suggest that new users will have the reactions disabled by default. They will then be presented with options to turn it on.
It is not clear if this feature will switch to opt-in for all users or just new users when the update releases, but I for one hope so.
Otherwise, it’ll be two thumbs down.
Source: 9to5Mac
