Pets are an important part of our lives. Therefore, many owners consider their dog or cat a real family member. Apple also recognizes this and wants to help them in the future with the ideal feature for the iPhone.
Pets are sweet and fun, but sometimes totally incomprehensible. Sometimes they pull the weirdest pranks. Apple now wants to help you track your AllBall, Napoleon or Fikkie so you know what they’re up to. To do this, you need your iPhone.
Apple introduces ideal feature for pet owners
No, unfortunately Apple’s new feature won’t translate what your dog barks or your cat meows. However, it does make you understand your cat just a little bit better. After all, the iPhone can now track your pet.
For this purpose, Apple has developed a new tool for your iPhone called DockKit. This provides a photo and video experience when the iPhone is docked. Also integrated into this is the Animal Body Pose API, which recognizes and tracks pet movements and poses. This includes when your pet is sitting or lying down, for example.
Here’s how it works on your iPhone
Using these features, an iPhone can automatically track your pet. In fact, the phone can even rotate 360 degrees. However, this does not happen on its own; the phone must be placed on a swivel dock. The iPhone can control the motors of this dock to keep following the pet.
Apple will not come up with an app itself that tracks your pet, but it does offer the ability to do so. So it will be up to developers to take advantage of this. Manufacturers will also have to develop special docks for this purpose.
During Apple’s keynote at WWDC23, the company also came up with another interesting pet feature. The photo app in iOS 17 can recognize dogs and cats, just as it already does with different people. This makes it very easy to sort all the photos of your pet, instead of just typing in “cat” or “dog.” Handy if you have multiple dogs or cats.
