Vision Pro Memoji, Beta Shortcuts Actions, Keyboards and Typos, and an Apple Music Radio Tip Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week:
Fran Besora shared a shortcut for adding Apple Vision Pro to Memoji-style profile pictures. Fran also shared an excellent list of changes to the Shortcuts app discovered in the current OS betas. Club members compared notes on whether the various iOS keyboards cause...
Apple’s Vision for Spatial Computing NASA’s efforts to send astronauts to space have led to a wide variety of new technologies that have benefitted people back on Earth, with items like LEDs and cordless vacuums. That’s the beauty of big goals like exploring space. The research along the way leads to everyday advances and conveniences. I expect the same will...
This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico and John are joined by Jonathan Reed and Roman Lefebvre, the developer of Sequel, to discuss The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This week’s show was recorded live in the Club MacStories Discord community as part of the Club MacStories+ AV Club.
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Yesterday, Apple released the visionOS SDK and updates to its Human Interface Guidelines and developer documentation for visionOS. Within hours, developers had downloaded the Xcode beta and begun testing the visionOS waters, building their apps for the Apple Vision Pro. Although there is undoubtedly a lot of work to be done to fine-tune their apps for use in a spatial computing context, it’s impressive how quickly Apple’s new tools allow developers to get started.
To give readers a sense of what the developers of some of our favorite apps have been able to accomplish in under 24 hours, we’ve collected posts we’ve found on Mastodon and Twitter below.
In addition to releasing the visionOS SDK and developer tools today, Apple has updated its Human Interface Guidelines and published additional visionOS documentation for developers. The updated HIG begins with an overview of designing for the Apple Vision Pro, covering topics like Passthrough, Spatial Audio, Focus and Gestures, Ergonomics, and Accessibility, advising developers to:
Embrace the unique features of Apple Vision Pro. Take advantage of space, Spatial Audio, and immersion to bring life to your experiences, while integrating passthrough, focus, and gestures in ways that feel at home on the device.
If you’re interested in Apple’s design philosophy for the Vision Pro, the HIG is an excellent plain-English read. For developers who want to dive deeper into the details of building apps, Apple has also published a lot of additional documentation covering the nuts and bolts of building visionOS apps.
As I wrote earlier today, Apple has a lot of plans for its Podcasts app this fall, but the company is not waiting to roll out all of the changes to the app. Yesterday, Apple Podcasts added the following nine new subcategories to the app’s search tab on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV:
The new categories also feature their own charts with top shows and episodes in listeners’ regions.
Alongside the addition of new subcategories, the Apple Podcasts editorial team has updated its recommendations with new Podcasts Essentials and added the ability to find podcasts in more than 20 languages if you live in the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.
It’s great to see Apple Podcasts receiving as much attention as it has and continuing to get updates outside of major OS releases. I’ve been using Apple Podcasts on iOS 17 for the past couple of weeks, and I like what I’ve seen so far a lot.
Today, Apple announced the visionOS software development kit that will allow developers to start creating apps for the Apple Vision Pro. In addition to the SDK, an update to Xcode is introducing Reality Composer Pro, which lets developers preview 3D models, animations, images, and sounds. There’s also a new visionOS simulator that can be used to test different room configurations and lighting for visionOS apps.
The developer labs that Apple announced at WWDC will open soon too:
Next month, Apple will open developer labs in Cupertino, London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo to provide developers with hands-on experience to test their apps on Apple Vision Pro hardware and get support from Apple engineers.
Developers can also apply for an Apple Vision Pro developer kit, so they can test apps on the device itself. Anyone who has used Unity’s tools to build 3D apps and games will be able to port them to visionOS next month too.
Among the developers who have tried the visionOS SDK is Algoriddim, whose CEO, Karim Morsey, said:
The djay app on Apple Vision Pro puts a fully featured DJ system right at a user’s fingertips. With a reimagined spatial interface, anyone can mix their favorite music and apply real-time effects using just their eyes and hands. Whether for a beginner or a seasoned professional, djay on Vision Pro transforms the user’s surroundings with stunning environments that automatically react to their mix, enabling them to experience and interact with music in ways never before possible.
It’s great to see Apple getting these tools into the hands of developers so soon after WWDC. Building apps for Apple Vision Pro uses many of the same technologies and tools developers are already familiar with, like Xcode, SwiftUI, RealityKit, ARKit, and TestFlight. However, with excitement for Apple Vision Pro still high, now is the perfect time to get the new visionOS SDK and tools in developers’ hands as they plan for the device’s release next year.
Apple’s services have become an increasingly important part of the company’s product lineup, but they didn’t get a lot of time at WWDC this year. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some interesting new features coming with OS releases and beyond. There are a wide variety of updates coming that promise to better integrate services, allow for greater user customization and sharing, plus provide other day-to-day enhancements.
Perhaps the best example of Apple’s approach to services this year is Apple Podcasts, which will add new software features and act as the glue that integrates other services. My favorite upcoming feature is Podcasts’ new queueing system. Episodes of shows can be added to a listening queue from any list of episodes by long-pressing on an episode or using the More menu and choosing ‘Add to Queue,’ which appends the episode to the bottom of your queue.
Tapping the queue button from the Now Playing screen reveals the Playing Next screen, which includes the current episode at the top, along with any upcoming episodes that you’ve queued for playback with drag handles for reordering the list. If you finish everything in your queue, Podcasts reverts to Up Next, the app’s automatically-generated list of suggested next episodes. The Playing Next screen also includes a triangular disclosure button for revealing chapter titles in podcast episodes that include them. Tapping a chapter title skips to that chapter.
This week on AppStories, we consider the impact that this year’s OS releases will have on third-party apps.
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On AppStories+, we dig into the details of iOS 17’s StandBy feature and I share my thoughts on why the Vision Pro’s upcoming launch feels more like the iPhone’s debut than the iPad’s.
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