Jeff Benjamin writing for 9to5Mac has a comprehensive breakdown on what the Apple Vision Pro Developer Strap can and can’t do. One of the primary benefits for developers is capturing video. As Benjamin writes:
The Developer Strap also lets developers capture a direct video feed from Apple Vision Pro via a wired USB-C connection using Reality Composer Pro. Files transfers of the captured feed occur via the direct USB-C connection. Users without the strap can still capture these feeds but via Wi-Fi only.
Benjamin also explains how to use the strap to access Recovery Mode:
You can also restore visionOS using Recovery Mode via the wired connection made possible by the Developer Strap. This includes downgrading from visionOS beta releases.
My experience is in line with Benjamin’s. The Developer Strap may make capturing short videos and screenshots easier, but it can’t do much else.
I will add, however, that I was contacted by a MacStories reader who tipped me off to one other thing the Developer Strap can do, which is act as a video source for QuickTime. This works a lot like capturing screenshots and video from an Apple TV via QuickTime, and the advantage is that you can capture more than the 60-second cap imposed by Reality Composer Pro. That’s great, except that the capture is foveated, meaning that the video recorded will be blurry everywhere except where you’re looking.
NowPlaying by Hidde van der Ploeg has come a long way since its start. It’s always been an excellent companion to Apple Music, packed with music discovery features that fill a big gap in Apple’s system app. But, with the visionOS version, van der Ploeg has taken NowPlaying to a new level. visionOS allows users of the app to spread out, focus on the music, and absorb the rich catalog of metadata and editorial content about their music in a beautiful, relaxing atmosphere.
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This week on AppStories, we consider how Apple’s response to the Digital Markets Act will change the world of apps for developers and users in the EU.
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On AppStories+, the backstory of Shortcut Buttons a visionOS Shortcuts app by Finn Voorhees.
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Day Ahead is an interesting approach to visualizing the events on your calendar. It’s a visionOS-only app that uses what looks like a transparent tube filled with drops of colored liquid that represent the events of your day. It’s strange, but I think there’s something to it that we’ll be seeing from other visionOS developers as they explore the unique characteristics of the Apple Vision Pro.
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Leading up to the release of Apple Vision Pro, there was as much, or perhaps more, talk about which apps wouldn’t be on the platform on day one as there was about which would. To be sure, there are some very notable holes in the Vision Pro’s catalog, and one of the biggest is YouTube. However, as we’ll see over and over with the Vision Pro apps we’ll be covering at MacStories, the gap isn’t nearly as bad as you’d think, thanks to developers like Christian Selig, the former maker of the Reddit client Apollo and his brand new app, Juno.
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Apple has opened up submissions for the 2024 Swift Student Challenge. As we reported last November, the format of this year’s format is a little different than in the past. Eligible students have from today through February 25, 2024, to submit their app playgrounds on a topic of their choosing.
Apple will choose 350 winners from the entries submitted and name 50 of those Distinguished Winners who will be invited by Apple to visit its Cupertino headquarters. All winners will receive a one-year membership in the Apple Developer Program, a voucher to take an App Development with Swift certification exam, and a special gift.
Two of my kids participated in the Swift Student Challenge in the past. If you know a student who’s interested in learning to code, I know from experience that this is a great way to get them started and excited about the subject.
We’re going to be covering a lot of visionOS apps over the coming weeks, so I thought a fitting place to start would be with two of our favorite weather apps from other Apple platforms: CARROT Weather and Mercury Weather. Both apps are past MacStories Selects award winners. CARROT Weather won the Best Watch app in 2020 and the Readers’ Choice award in 2022, and we named Mercury Weather the Best Design winner of 2023. So, I expect a lot of readers are already familiar with both apps. However, if you’re not, be sure to check out these past stories for more on what makes them two of our favorite weather apps on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch:
So today, my focus is solely on the visionOS versions of both apps, which fill the gap left by Apple’s curious omission of its own Weather app from Vision Pro.
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Apple has created a comprehensive Vision Pro user guide and accompanying support documentation that was published late last week. I’ve spent some time browsing through the user guide, and it’s full of excellent tips to help get people started with the new device. Each section of the guide links to related support documents, which go into more depth about the topics covered. I’ve pinned the page in Safari as I continue to explore everything the Apple Vision Pro can do.
Another page worth bookmarking is a story by Joe Rossignol and Aaron Perris of MacRumors, who compiled a long list of what they describe as ‘nearly all’ of the support documents listed in the Vision Pro user guide. You’ll come across links to these documents in the user guide itself, but if you want to go deeper on a topic and bypass the user guide, MacRumors’ story is a great place to start.
This week, Federico and John consider how Apple’s response to the Digital Markets Act will change the world of apps for developers and users in the EU.
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