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ALVR Beta Brings SteamVR Games with Joy-Con Support to the Vision Pro→

Ian Hamilton writing for UploadVR about his experience playing Half Life: Alyx with Nintendo Joy-Con and the Apple Vision Pro:

The tracking quality is far from ideal and I couldn’t get the gravity gloves to pull objects. Those limitations make much of Half-Life: Alyx still off-limits at present. The hand tracking is so sluggish, for example, I wouldn’t want to engage in combat like this. Still, I enjoyed exploring a laid back look through the early parts of Half-Life: Alyx on Vision Pro’s untethered system with developer commentary turned on. And that this works at all is a remarkable testament to the ingenuity of open-source developers.

Hamilton, who tested other games like Beat Saber, too, used ALVR, an open-source project that allows SteamVR games to be played on the Vision Pro over Wi-Fi and just released a beta visionOS app.

As with a lot of these cutting-edge experiments, the number of games that are playable using ALVR is limited. However, as a proof of concept, it’s interesting to see Joy-Con, which are supported by visionOS, working in concert with hand tracking. As limited as the experience is now, ALVR points to a potential hybrid solution for gaming on the Vision Pro that combines the natural interactions of hand tracking with the precision of controllers.

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The Next Time You Use a Videogame Emulator, Thank Steve Jobs→

Source: [Retroplace](https://www.retroplace.com/en/games/169639--connectix-virtual-game-station).

Source: Retroplace.

We’ve covered videogame emulation on Apple devices many times over the years, but today, I have a fun story from the archives about the Mac and emulation.

As Chris Brandrick explains on overkill.wtf, the Mac played a pivotal role in developing the U.S. case law that holds that emulators are ‘fair use’ under copyright law:

Believe it or not, but back in 1999 Apple’s Steve Jobs went on national TV and spoke glowingly about a new piece of emulation software that made playing PS1 games on your Macintosh a reality. 

Yes, then iCEO Jobs not only took to the airwaves on U.S. news network CNBC to brag about how this new emulator “lets your Mac play Sony PlayStation games” (noting that “you can’t even get this on Windows”), but he also took to the stage at that year’s MacWorld Expo touting the $49 ‘Virtual Game Station’ software to the Mac masses.

The software Jobs demoed on stage at Macworld was Connectix Virtual Game Station, which was developed by Aaron Giles and allowed Sony PlayStation CD-ROMs to be played on Mac like the G3 iMac. Sony promptly sued Connectix, the company behind the emulator, and got a preliminary injunction against its distribution, which was later overturned on appeal. Sony ultimately bought Connectix Virtual Game Station to take it off store shelves.

Also linked in the story is a terrific video overview of the history behind Connectix Virtual Game Station by Definitive Mac Upgrade Guide:

The entire story is fascinating in light of Nintendo’s recent actions against Yuzu, an open-source Switch emulator, which resulted in the Yuzu project being taken down and has had ripple effects in all corners of the emulation world.

So, the next time you fire up an emulator, think of Steve Jobs and the fight he helped kick off that sits at the foundation of videogame emulation everywhere.

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The European Commission Announces an Investigation into Apple and Other Gatekeepers’ Compliance with the DMA→

The European Commission (EC) has opened non-compliance investigations against Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon in connection with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). With respect to Apple, the EC is investigating the company’s approach to uninstalling system apps, changing default settings, and prompting users to pick alternate services, including browsers and search engines.

According to the EC’s press release:

The Commission is concerned that Apple’s measures, including the design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple ecosystem, in contravention of Article 6(3) of the DMA.

The EC is also investigating the fee structure that Apple has implemented in connection with alternative app stores:

Apple’s new fee structure and other terms and conditions for alternative app stores and distribution of apps from the web (sideloading) may be defeating the purpose of its obligations under Article 6(4) of the DMA.

The EC’s press release helpfully reminds Apple and the other DMA gatekeepers that:

In case of an infringement, the Commission can impose fines up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide turnover. Such fines can go up to 20% in case of repeated infringement.

‘Turnover’ is an accounting term typically used in Europe that, for these purposes, is the functional equivalent of total revenue. The EC says that it intends to conclude the investigation announced today within 12 months.

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AppStories, Episode 376 – Shortcuts Wishlist (2024 Edition)→

This week on AppStories, we take a hard look at Shortcuts to discuss what needs fixing and the new features we hope to see Apple announce at WWDC this year.

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Making a Macintosh Studio→

I’ve lost track of how many MacStories readers have sent me this over the past few days (thank you; you know me well), and, unsurprisingly, the latest project by Scott Yu-Jan is extremely my kind of thing. Scott 3D-printed a Macintosh-like shell to host a Mac Studio with an iPad mini used as its display thanks to wired Sidecar. It’s magnificent:

Obviously, as someone who relies on Sidecar on a daily basis now, I find this project a masterpiece in creativity and taking advantage of Apple’s ecosystem. I would pay serious money to have a version of this for my Mac mini and 11” iPad Pro.

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Demystifying Digital Wallets and Apple Pay→

One of the many allegations in the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against Apple is that Apple stifles competition by:

effectively block[ing] third-party developers from creating digital wallets on the iPhone with tap-to-pay functionality, which is an important feature of a digital wallet for smartphones. As a result, Apple maintains complete control over how users make tap-to-pay payments with their iPhone. Apple also deprives users of the benefits and innovations third-party wallets would provide so that it can protect “Apple’s most important and successful business, iPhone.”

(DOJ Complaint at ¶ 104).

In a post a couple of days ago, John Gruber suggested that the DOJ is off-base because he doubted banks or other credit card companies would obfuscate credit card numbers the way Apple does. In fact, as Matt Birchler, who works in the payments industry, explains, many U.S. banks and other companies do (or did) the same thing, using something called a DPAN:

It’s notable that it’s called a DPAN and not “the Apple Pay number” – it’s a generic term, and that’s because this is a standard feature of digital wallets everywhere, not just Apple Pay. Google Pay and Samsung Pay are the biggest other digital wallets in the U.S. and they both do exactly the same thing. While it’s not technically using a DPAN since the payment runs through different companies, Amazon Pay and Shop Pay buttons also obscure the actual FPAN (full card number) from merchants.

And it’s not just tech companies using DPANs – U.S. banks do too:

Numerous banks from Walls Fargo to Chase to Bank of America have (or had) digital wallets, all of which used DPANs to protect your plain text account number. Paze is what a few big U.S. banks use today and it of course uses DPANs as well.

It’s not surprising that there is confusion about Apple Pay. Apple doesn’t tell customers about DPANs. Instead, the company uses its unique mix of hardware, software, and excellent marketing to make its payment system feel like magic.

In addition to DPANs, Birchler covers:

  • The differences between FPANs and DPANs
  • The extent to which you can be tracked using your Apple Pay purchase history
  • How much personal data Apple Pay transmits to merchants

The post is an excellent read that dispels common myths and confusion about Apple Pay clearly and concisely. It’s the exact kind of explanation of the industries Apple is accused of monopolizing that I hope we see more of as the DOJ’s lawsuit proceeds.

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MacStories Unwind: Okay, I Have a Whole Thing→

This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico watched Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and has a request for listeners, and my favorite new TV show is The Gentlemen.

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Job Simulator Devs Say They Feel ‘Vindicated’ By Apple Vision Pro’s Approach To VR→

Henry Stockdale, of UploadVR is at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this week and interviewed Andrew Eiche, the CEO of Owlchemy Labs, creators of Job Simulator and other VR games:

Asked about the studio’s hand tracking focus and how Apple Vision Pro uses hand tracking as its primary control method, Eiche believes Apple’s system feels like “huge vindication” for Owlchemy’s strategy.

Eiche told Stockdale:

We had this similar pinch gesture in our previous hand tracking demo without knowing what Apple was going to do at all, so it’s great to see that we’ve all coalesced around this one interaction.

When we first tried the Apple Vision Pro, we were like, ‘yes!’ This is like what we have been hoping for in many cases. Making an app on a headset is difficult right now on every headset because you have to start from scratch. With Apple, you can use Swift UI. You can use all of these different tools to build an app to get the base layer. And then you add everything on top of it and it’s interesting. So yeah, it felt like a huge vindication.

Job Simulator first launched on Sony’s PlayStation VR in 2016, so it’s interesting to hear that its veteran VR development team independently arrived at a similar interaction scheme as Apple’s Vision Pro designers and engineers.

In addition to Job Simulator, Owlchemy Labs announced last month that it is also working on bringing Vacation Simulator to the Vision Pro.

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Apple Has Built a New Home for ‘Manuals, Specs, and Downloads’→

Apple has consolidated documentation for its products, including manuals, technical specifications, and downloads on a new webpage that was first discovered by the Japanese-language website Mac Otakara and reported on this morning by MacRumors.

Most of what you’ll find on Apple’s new page was previously published elsewhere, but the new structure of the page is an improvement. It’s simple to drill down by product category to find information on the device for which you need information or use the prominent search field below the product icons. As you may spot from the screenshot above, I’ve not only bookmarked the site, I’ve also addd it to my Safari Favorites bar.

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