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Apple Highlights Magnifier on Mac and iPhone Music Haptics in New Videos

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Apple today shared new videos that highlight the upcoming Accessibility features that the company plans to introduce with iOS 19 and macOS 16. Apple this week debuted a number of new Accessibility options that will be coming later this year to honor Global Accessibility Awareness Day.


The first video, uploaded to Apple's main YouTube channel, shows off the Magnifier on Mac feature. We saw this video Tuesday in Apple's newsroom post, but it's now easier to watch over on YouTube. In the spot, a woman uses an iPhone connected to her Mac in a classroom setting to zoom in on the chalkboard so she can better see the professor's notes and diagrams.

Magnifier on Mac uses the iPhone camera's zoom feature, beaming the feed to a Mac through Continuity Camera. There are options for creating multiple live session windows for tracking a presentation while also zooming in on a textbook, and each view can be customized with different brightness levels and color and contrast filters to suit individual needs. Magnifier on Mac is an extension of the existing Magnifier option on the iPhone, which allows the iPhone to be used to zoom in on text and detect objects.

Apple's second video was shared on the Apple Music YouTube channel, and it focuses on Music Haptics on iPhone. Introduced as part of iOS 18, Music Haptics provides taps, textures, and vibrations to the audio of music that's playing, so that users who are deaf or hard of hearing can experience songs.


In iOS 19, Apple plans to expand Music Haptics, adding new customization options. Users will be able to experience haptics for a whole song or for vocals only, and there will be settings to adjust the intensity of taps, textures, and vibrations.

Article Link: Apple Highlights Magnifier on Mac and iPhone Music Haptics in New Videos
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/15/apple-videos-accessibility-features/
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Great tech. But as a professor myself, this makes me feel uncomfortable: students are not allowed to record a lecture without the lecturer's permission. Based on the ad itself, there is no way to tell if it's for accessibility or to film.

Simple advice for those who are looking into using it: be a decent person and just explain your intention to the lecturer, and politely asks if they're comfortable with it.
 
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At first I was wondering what a “Magnifier on iPhone Music Haptics” might be. Proper grammar would have been “Apple Highlights Magnifier on Mac and Music Haptics on iPhone in New Videos”, or alternatively “Apple Highlights Mac Magnifier and iPhone Music Haptics in New Videos”.
 
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SteveJobs2.0 said:
What is that phone attachment thingy?
Click to expand...

looks like a magsafe attachment. I have never seen anyone in the history of the world use their iphone/mac in that way. A desktop mount for webcam, sure, but on their actual macbook...never. I didn't even know that feature was a thing.
 
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Konigi said:
Great tech. But as a professor myself, this makes me feel uncomfortable: students are not allowed to record a lecture without the lecturer's permission. Based on the ad itself, there is no way to tell if it's for accessibility or to film.

...
Click to expand...
And based on the ad itself, the student's focus was on fidgeting with tech instead of listening to the professor. I don't think it is great tech if students need to click around and make image processing decision during class.
 
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mattopotamus said:
looks like a magsafe attachment. I have never seen anyone in the history of the world use their iphone/mac in that way. A desktop mount for webcam, sure, but on their actual macbook...never. I didn't even know that feature was a thing.
Click to expand...
This is it... Amazon sells it.

CloudValley Magnetic Phone Holder for Laptop, Adjustable Phone Monitor Side Mount for iPhone 12 Pro Max/ 12 Pro/ 12/ 12 Mini, Slim Portable Foldable Computer Expansion Bracket, Blue-CloudValley - Shenzhen Cloudvalley Maker Technology Co., Ltd.

Brand: CloudValley
cloudvalley.cc cloudvalley.cc
 
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bice said:
And based on the ad itself, the student's focus was on fidgeting with tech instead of listening to the professor. I don't think it is great tech if students need to click around and make image processing decision during class.
Click to expand...
Now you know what people with disabilities have to deal with in a world that makes few accommodations for them.
 
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Konigi said:
Great tech. But as a professor myself, this makes me feel uncomfortable: students are not allowed to record a lecture without the lecturer's permission. Based on the ad itself, there is no way to tell if it's for accessibility or to film.

Simple advice for those who are looking into using it: be a decent person and just explain your intention to the lecturer, and politely asks if they're comfortable with it.
Click to expand...
It is possible that permission was sought and obtained. We don't expect ads to list every contingency but yes, that might have been mentioned.
 
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Yep, that is it and you have to adhere the plate to the laptop. With whatever adhesive that is included with the mount.
 
bice said:
And based on the ad itself, the student's focus was on fidgeting with tech instead of listening to the professor. I don't think it is great tech if students need to click around and make image processing decision during class.
Click to expand...

That looked like part of just getting it setup. You wouldn't have to do that beyond the first minute after you got the board in focus.
 
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For those unaware, National AccessAbility Week runs from May 26 to June 1

Hence the “focus” on this by Apple at present.

As a “Rubella baby” as we were called, born partially blind and thankfully with no hearing deficits, I went through school at a time when there was limited to no support for blind students outside of specialist schools. It was ****, to say the very least.

When Apple introduced the screen reader VoiceOver on Macs in 2005, it was the start of something that opened up ease-of-use for me on computers, but when they began including accessibility features in 2009 with the iPhone 3GS, which offered VoiceOver, Zoom, Mono Audio, and White-on-Black, this was a total GAME CHANGER.

Two years later, only a week after SJ passed away, I read his Bio using Apple Books on my iPhone. It was a ground-breaking moment for me.

As I finished the Bio, I sat there thinking about the sadness of his passing, but the magnificence of what had just happened in that moment. For the first time in my adult life, I had been able to read and finish a whole book just like anybody else could, sitting in a cafe on a hand-held device and without the need for clunky screen readers or over-sized books in enormous fonts that weighed as much as the typewriter that would’ve produced them.

Apple’s willingness to invest huge amounts of money and time into making their ecosystem of hardware and software accessible to a minority of customers including me is why I have a strong sense of gratitude to their support and efforts in this area.

For me and those in similar situations, Apple’s efforts directly impact our day-to-day lives in a positive way by empowering us to be independent and a contributing member of society.
 
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Konigi said:
Great tech. But as a professor myself, this makes me feel uncomfortable: students are not allowed to record a lecture without the lecturer's permission. Based on the ad itself, there is no way to tell if it's for accessibility or to film.

Simple advice for those who are looking into using it: be a decent person and just explain your intention to the lecturer, and politely asks if they're comfortable with it.
Click to expand...
I’m a person who has needed tons of accommodations throughout my life, you ask on the first day and then the professor just gets used to it.
In this ad, it’s clearly not her first class, so presumably she would have *already* explained the accommodations she needed to the professor, on the first day.
But literally anything to complain, I guess
 
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bice said:
And based on the ad itself, the student's focus was on fidgeting with tech instead of listening to the professor. I don't think it is great tech if students need to click around and make image processing decision during class.
Click to expand...
Clearly, another person who didn’t get the point of the ad… at all.
Accommodations are never straightforward, there’s always adjustments that need to be made, that doesn’t mean that there’s not any information being absorbed.
 
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