No cell service? No problem. The latest of Apple’s (AAPL) new features enables satellite communication, part of a suite of technology innovations unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that propelled the company’s shares at a record level on Tuesday.
Dan Howley, Yahoo Finance’s senior technology editor, is joined by Kurt Knight, Apple’s senior director of platform product marketing, for a demo of the new feature for sending text messages and other messages from Apple. emergency.
“When you’re off-grid, you can still share your location with friends and family. (Request) roadside assistance, so if you have vehicle issues, even if you don’t have cell phone connectivity, you can still get help,” Knight told Yahoo Finance.
Knight says the satellite functionality is an extension of existing offerings, like Emergency SOS, but points out that emergencies aren’t the only use case: “It’s kind of the whole spectrum of communications,” he says.
This article was written by Gabriel Roy
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Video transcription
We are here with Kurt Knight.
He is Senior Director of Product Platform Marketing for I Os, iPad, Os and Mac Os.
Kurt.
Thank you very much for joining us.
What can you tell us about the satellite for messages?
THANKS.
I’m so excited to be here.
Um, satellite messaging is a feature that we just introduced yesterday.
It’s part of a set of satellite features we’ve introduced over the years.
Um And all of this is happening when you’re off the grid, you don’t have cell, you don’t have Wi-Fi, you’ll still be able to text and message your friends.
And then I guess, you know, when you’re outside of the usual cell phone range, how does that work?
How does it capture what you do?
How it knows when you are in satellite range is absolutely amazing in that the phone can know when it is out of a cellular network and when you are out of cellular networks it turns out satellites are available everywhere and it’s able to talk directly from your phone in space to a satellite, and then that satellite can then transmit the information back to Earth, it’s incredible technology.
So there is the possibility of sending messages.
But I mean, how, how many can you send?
What, what can you send?
Is it limited to text?
It’s like sending a message today and you can send as many as you want.
There is no limitation on this.
So you see, we have this prompt automatically on the lock screen, it knows I’m off network.
Um And so I can just tap here and it will bring up this login wizard.
And so in this space, you can see that X found us there in Cupertino and it has a satellite feature set.
Of course there are satellite messages.
We’ll come back to that in a second.
There is find my.
So when you’re off-grid, you can still share your location with friends and family during roadside assistance.
So if you’re having vehicle problems, even if you don’t have cell phone connectivity, you can still get help and then an emergency call, let me show you inside messages.
You get that experience here to connect to the satellite.
Maybe I could talk about it to get a better idea of how I should do it.
So this allows me to know very well what I need to do to stay connected to the satellite.
So I’m going to conclude that I will go here to send a text message to Alex and I will say satellite message incoming and I will send it.
And so right now, it’s going up into space and coming back down.
And I’m also going to send an emoji, because you can just text, you can do emoji.
Both.
It’s absolutely incredible right now, it’s traveling 800 miles in space, the satellite is moving at 15,000 MPH.
Um like you don’t see the odor indicator?
Um, it’s already gone up and down.
It’s uh, so Alex sees this.
Um, he already answered me.
I can respond to him with a single click.
There’s these new beautiful tap backs and I was 18, I can scroll where you can see, I can also tap back with an emoji.
Now I’m going to do uh yeah, absolutely.
Um, so these are satellite messages via iMessage.
This also works in S MS.
It is therefore the broadest use.
Basically anyone with a phone that you can send a message to via satellite.
And I guess what do you think the use case for this is?
I went hiking.
I’m not very good at this and I got lost.
Do I just need to connect with someone because I went camping and I, you know, I want to make sure that I can still connect with my wife and I think that What’s nice about this is that it’s a big expansion of what we’ve been doing.
We have already had features like Emergency S OS, which are amazing life-saving features.
And it really expands the scope of what we’re capable of doing.
You might be camping and just want to check in and see, you know, maybe how the family is doing.
You can just say hello.
Um Or maybe it’s something really important.
It’s, it’s kind of the whole range of communication, what would you want to use it for?
Luckily, I only car camp, because I’m too baby to do real camping.
Um, I guess, finally, you know, what is a subscription service?
How does that, how does it work, in this regard?
So this is part of the satellite feature set that we introduced again two years ago and as an iPhone 14 or iPhone 15 user, uh, you get two free years of services in the frame of your phone, and then you can just go from there if you want to continue.
And then yes, we will announce more details later on how that happens.
Great, Kurt.
Thank you very much for joining us.
I really appreciate.
THANKS.
Absolutely.
THANKS.