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The best things about iOS 17 aren’t the live transcripts of voicemails, interactive tools, or even system-wide stickers. No, the new StandBy mode that fits on a table is the newest thing.
StandBy, also called “nightstand mode,” turns your iPhone into an alarm clock, clock radio, or calendar. But it’s not just to go to sleep and get up again. As we’ll see in a moment, when you plug in your iPhone running iOS 17, StandBy can take up the entire screen. This makes for a useful status board. StandBy also comes with a bunch of tools for developers to make it work with other computers. This makes us think that Apple might even have a version of StandBy that works as a home hub on its own. We’ll see.
“StandBy is really cool, and it’s like ‘a little operating system within an operating system,’” said tech tips writer Muhammed Abdulhadi. “It’s like a little operating system within an operating system because it’s full of little features that make life better.” “It has its own screen to play music.” And really fluid animations. You can still access your control center from it, and if you click a widget that launches an app when the screen is locked, it immediately returns to standby when you click it again.
Your iPhone nightstand companion
It is a typical Apple experience to use StandBy. Your iPhone turns on as soon as you place it on a charger in landscape mode. Nightstand mode on the Apple Watch is equivalent to this. That part is the same, I guess. StandBy is much more customizable than the clock version. StandBy selections are beautiful, in contrast to the boring faces of the Apple Watch.
You can choose to display a traditional clock and date or one of several other analog and digital clock types. But you can also choose to display the tools on the entire screen. This allows you to use iPhone as a status dashboard while you’re away from home. You could put your to-do list there. Or, you can use it to display the cover image of the currently playing song, along with play/pause and skip controls. Or you can see what Siri told you.
And there is something else. Live activities can be used with StandBy. For example, suppose you ordered a pizza. If the pizzeria app supports live activities, the lock screen window will show you how your tasty order is going. If you’re using StandBy, that widget will take up the entire screen of your docked phone, so you can see at a glance when your pizza will arrive.
It’s a cool hack, but Apple seems to have put a lot of work into making it work. For example, if you have more than one MagSafe charging dock in your home or office, you can set each one to display a different default dock screen. The base’s MagSafe ID tells the phone what to do, so you can have an alarm at your bedside and music in the kitchen, for example.
iOS 17 StandBy Beyond the nightstand
If you have an iPhone with a screen that stays on all the time, like the iPhone 14 Pro models, the StandBy screen will stay on. If you have any other iPhone, you need to tap the screen to activate it. This seems strange, since StandBy only works when the phone is plugged in. StandBy can also tell when the room is dark and turn the screen red to make it easier on your eyes.
But there are more. Not even close. Apple has also created DockKit, which is a set of tools that developers can use to make iPhone stands that move. This is meant to be used while shooting photos and movies, but it’s easy to see how it could work for StandBy as well.
If your phone was on a robotic mount that followed you around the room, it would always be in front of you. Or it might only turn towards you when a FaceTime call comes in. This brings us to an oddly clear hole in Apple’s lineup: a home hub with a screen.
StandBy is really cool, and has been called “a little operating system within an operating system” because it has so many little tools that make life easier.
“This is smart. It’s almost like a Trojan horse to fight against all Alexas and Google hubs. If Apple can make the iPhone a true hub device in the home, they can tell their many iPhone customers that they don’t need to buy an Alexa or Google to do the same. TheKDub, an iPhone user and fan of the StandBy app, had this to say in a MacRumors forum post.
Take another look at what StandBy can do, then imagine it on a HomePod with a screen. It’s a clock and a music player, and it can show you your front door camera feed, track your pizza delivery, and make FaceTime calls that follow you around the room.
Everything is in its place. All you need is a fancy box made of metal and plastic to store them.
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Categories: Technology
Source: vtt.edu.vn