No cell service? No problem. Apple’s (AAPL) latest new features enable satellite communications, part of a series of technological innovations unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that sent the company’s shares to a record high on Tuesday.
Yahoo Finance Technology Editor Dan Howley is joined by Kurt Knight, Apple’s Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing, for a demonstration of the new feature for sending text messages and other emergency messages.
“If you’re off the grid, you can still share your location with friends and family. [Requesting] Roadside assistance, so if you have car problems, even if you don’t have cell phone service, you can still get help,” Knight tells Yahoo Finance.
Knight explains that the satellite feature is an extension of existing offerings such as Emergency SOS, but clarifies that emergencies are not the only application: “It’s kind of the full range of communications,” he says.
This article was written by Gabriel Roy
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Video transcription
Everyone, we’re here with Kurt Knight.
He is senior director of product platform marketing for I Os, iPad, Os and Mac Os.
Kurt.
Thank you so much for joining us.
What can you tell us about satellite for messaging?
Thank you.
I’m so excited to be here.
Um Satellite messaging is a feature that we just introduced yesterday.
It’s part of a series of satellite features we’ve introduced over the years.
Um. And this is all about the fact that if you’re not connected, you don’t have mobile network, you don’t have WiFi, you can still text and message your friends.
And then I think, you know, if you’re out of regular cell phone range, how does it work?
How does it pick up what you do?
How does it know when you are in satellite range? It’s absolutely incredible because the phone can tell when it’s outside a mobile network and when you’re outside the mobile network. It turns out that satellites are available everywhere and he can talk straight from your phone. phone into space to a satellite and then that satellite can transmit the information back to Earth, it’s incredible technology.
So there is the possibility to send messages.
But I mean, how, how many can you send?
What, what can you send?
Is that so, is it limited to text only?
It’s like sending a message today and you can send as many as you want.
There is no limitation.
So you see, we have this prompt automatically on the lock screen, it knows I’m off the network.
Um And so I can just tap here and this connection assistant will pop up.
And so you can see in this one space that X found us there in Cupertino and there are some satellite features available to me.
Um Of course there are satellite messages.
We’ll get into that in a moment.
There is mine.
So even if you are not reachable, you can still share your location with roadside assistance from friends and family.
So if you have vehicle problems, even if you don’t have a cell phone connection, you can still get help and then the emergency service will show you the inside of the messages.
You get this experience here to connect to the satellite.
Maybe I can bring this up to get a better idea of how to do it.
So it really lets me know what I need to do to stay connected to the satellite.
So I’m going to wrap up that I’m going to go over here and send a text message to Alex and I’ll say there’s a satellite message coming in and send that along.
And so now it goes into space and back down again.
And I’ll also go ahead and send an emoji because you can just text, you can do emoji.
Um, both.
It’s absolutely incredible right now, it’s going 800 miles into space, the satellite is moving at 15,000 miles per hour.
Um. Don’t see the odor indicator?
Um, it’s been up and down again.
That’s um, so Alex sees this.
Um, he already answered me.
I can answer him with a tap back.
There’s this new fancy tap back and I was 18, I can scroll where you can see it, I can also tap back with an emoji.
Now I’ll do the uh. Yes absolutely.
Um So those are messages via satellite via iMessage.
This also works in S MS.
So it is most widely used.
In principle, anyone with a telephone can send a message via satellite.
And I guess what you see as the use case for this?
I went for a walk.
I’m not very good at it and I’m lost.
Should I just contact someone because I went camping and I, you know, I want to make sure I can still contact my wife. I think the great thing about this is that it’s a great extension of what we’ve been doing.
We’ve had features before like emergency SOS, which are great life-saving features.
And this really broadens the view of what we can do.
You might be camping and just check in and see how the family might be doing.
You can just say hello.
Um. Or maybe it’s something really important.
It’s kind of the full range of communication, what might you want to use it for?
Luckily I only car camp because I’m too much of a baby to actually camp.
Um, I think it’s, lastly, you know, what is it a subscription service?
How does it work, how does it work in that regard?
So this is part of the suite of satellite features that we reintroduced two years ago and as an iPhone 14 or iPhone 15 user you get two years of free services as part of your phone and then you can just go from there if you want to continue to go.
And yes, we will reveal more details about how that will work later.
Great, Kurt.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Absolute.
Thank you.