[The] company will offer a Vision Pro developer kit, which will be hardware that will "provide the ability to quickly build, iterate, and test on Apple Vision Pro so your app or game will be ready to deliver amazing experiences." The kits will be available by application only.
[...]
For those who can't or don't want to spring for a Vision Pro dev kit, Apple will also host developer labs in six cities (Cupertino, London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo) where the company will offer "direct support" to developers who want to test Vision Pro apps. This service will also be available by application only.
Apple did what it always does: creates a new wave of expectation for a device. All else shall follow. And with the arrival of the Vision Pro, the size of a screen doesn’t matter anymore, because now, we will be living in it.
Even when turning the crown all the way up to maximize immersion, I was still much more aware of my surroundings than in any VR headset. [...] Instead, it’s a first look at something else entirely.
During a demo of the Apple Vision Pro, Apple told me that it does…sort of. As of now, visionOS supports two user accounts: a primary user and a guest account. Apple could change this policy before the actual release next year if its beta research tells them it’s an in-demand feature.
OS 17 introduces a widely requested feature to the Contacts app in the form of a new pronouns field.
[...]
The pronouns field isn’t just useful with contact cards for others; you can add your own pronoun preferences to your personal contact card as well. Once doing so, your pronoun preferences will be shared along with your other contact information when you trade cards with someone.
The first major update is the ability to crossfade between songs, which Apple says will let you smoothly transition between songs so your music never stops. Apple Music iOS users have been waiting for this feature for a while now, making it one of the headlining additions to the Music app in iOS 17.
Fundamentally, Watch interactions are measured in seconds, not minutes. The design language that Apple is encouraging in watchOS 10 seems like it will help make those interactions much more efficient when it comes to helping users see the information they want at a glance and then go back to their day.
Apple has created a new Game Porting Toolkit that’s similar to the work Valve has done with Proton and the Steam Deck. Apple’s tool will instantly translate Windows games to run on macOS, allowing developers to launch an unmodified version of a Windows game on a Mac and see how well it runs before fully porting a game.
[...]
Apple says this is more for evaluating games right now before they’re ported across to macOS, but there’s nothing stopping macOS users from installing this Game Porting Toolkit and trying games out.
We’ve written that the 13-inch Air is the best Mac laptop for most users, since most don’t need what the Pro has to offer. I think that statement still stands, but for those who want to sacrifice just a little bit of practicality for much more luxurious screen real estate, this is likely to be a welcome addition to Apple’s lineup.
For years, access to the iOS developer beta and other developer builds has only been available through a $99/year developer account. Shaking things up this year and increasing access in a big way, Apple has just made the iOS 17 developer beta and other betas free to anyone who registers as a developer.
Unveiled June 5 and now in beta, Xcode 15 offers enhanced code completion to help developers write safer code faster, now referencing all development assets. Projects build faster due to improvements in the compiler and a new linker, optimized for the multicore architecture of Apple silicon hardware.
Apple has acquired Mira, a Los Angeles-based AR startup that makes headsets for other companies and the US military, according to a posts from the CEO’s private Instagram account yesterday seen by The Verge and a person familiar with the matter. Apple confirmed the acquisition.
A tweet went out this morning that suggests a new coaching team that’s made up of Beard (Brendan Hunt), Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) and Nathan (Nick Mohammed) could be in the works for a season four or spinoff of Ted Lasso.
Apple added the "Pro" moniker to the Apple Vision Pro probably to signify there will be a lower-cost version in the future. But, are there be any visionOS feature that will not be available in the Apple Vision Air? If there are anything to cut, I suspect it is all the VR stuff. So no watching Star Wars on Tatooine at night. On the other hand, you will see your charts in Numbers and Excel.
~
Thanks for reading.