Thinking back to the core of the pandemic, I was always learning something new about Zoom, technology, and interacting with friends through the screen. I’m not online nearly as often, thank goodness, and it’s been a while since I was delighted by something I learned online (either on purpose or by accident.)
While chatting with my friend Art Benjamin about his upcoming talk in the UW Tacoma Math Enthusiast Seminar, balloons suddenly streamed in front of his face and up his screen. It shocked us both. Where did they come from? Was it reproducible? Was it a new feature of Zoom?
So we experimented.
Initially the balloons happened when Art described a problem with a choice between one of something or two of another. When he ran through the same description again, nothing happened. So we continued to talk about more important topics. The description occurred again, with Art holding up one finger on his right hand and two fingers on his left hand. More balloons.
Eventually we determined that two fingers triggered the balloons but only on Art’s screen. I could not make it happen. Searching the Zoom community forum, we found a complete description of the “feature.” It occurs because of gesture recognition to the FaceTime Camera in iOS17. I couldn’t trigger it because I am using a Windows machine.
Would it work from my iPad? And what other reactions are there? A little internet research found that there are 8 gestures that work with macOS Sonoma, iPadOS 17, and iOS 17:
These could be great fun in the right situation. But definitely not something you want to happen during a professional meeting. If you are using an Apple product and want to be sure that these reactions don’t interrupt your flow, you can disable them. I found this YouTube by David Cox very helpful.
Math Belongs to All of Us 