Apple has announced more details on Vision Pro availability. In a press release today, Apple announced that Vision Pro will be available beginning Friday, February 2 at all Apple Store locations in the United States. It will also be available from Apple’s Online Store.
Pre-orders for Vision Pro will begin Friday, January 19 at 5 a.m. PT.
“The external battery supports up to 2 hours of general use, and up to 2.5 hours of video playback,” Apple says. “Video playback tested in conjunction with an Environment, using 2D movie content purchased from the Apple TV app.”
This certainly isn’t a dramatic change in Vision Pro battery life, but it means users will be able to watch longer films, more TV episodes, or more YouTube videos before they have to connect to power.
The Apple Vision Pro will get three “spatial games” when it launches on February 2. Game Room, Super Fruit Ninja, and Apple Arcade standout What the Golf? will all launch on the platform, though Apple hasn’t shared many details about them yet.
Apple says that readers will cost $99, while prescription lenses are $149. Footnotes from Apple indicate that both are available only online, not in stores, a “valid prescription is required,” and not all prescriptions are supported.
On the heels of announcing pre-order and launch date information this morning, Apple has shared a new ad for Vision Pro. The fast-paced ad features clips of characters in popular movies and TV shows over the years putting on “headsets” of varying different designs.
It’s also a play on the first iPhone ad from 2007.
The company is asking developers not to refer to visionOS apps using terms such as AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), XR (extended reality), or MR (mixed reality). Instead, Apple says that visionOS apps are “spatial computing apps.”
The request is somewhat contradictory, since Apple itself has been referring to Vision Pro as a product with augmented and virtual reality technologies.
Released today, the one new change in Xcode 15.2 is “support for the visionOS SDK to create apps for Apple Vision Pro.”
The European Commission made "material factual errors, in concluding that the applicant's five App Stores are a single core platform service," Apple said in its plea to the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe's second-highest.
The company in its argument to the EU competition enforcer said it operates five App Stores on iPhones, iPads, Mac computers, Apple TVs and Apple Watches, with each designed to distribute apps for a specific operating system and Apple device.
A Chinese state-backed institution has devised a way to identify users who send messages via Apple Inc.’s popular AirDrop feature, Beijing’s government claims, as part of broader efforts to root out undesirable content.
The Beijing institute developed the technique to crack an iPhone’s encrypted device log to identify the numbers and emails of senders who share AirDrop content, the city’s judicial bureau said in an online post. Police have identified multiple suspects via that method, the agency said, without disclosing if anyone was arrested.
Apple has announced that it will be opening a new retail store in the Hongdae neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea on Saturday, January 20 at 10 a.m. local time. To celebrate the occasion, Apple has released a special wallpaper for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac that can be downloaded for free by visiting the store's page.
You can certainly use Clear to make to-do lists — you can set a reminder on any item, which is handy — but it’s really not a task manager app like Todoist or Things. Those apps have tags and recurrences and projects and big ideas about getting things done. Clear, Ryu says, is instead meant to simply be a private place for your thoughts. “I feel like thoughts deserve a beautiful vessel,” he says, “and we really go out of our way to make Clear a beautiful vessel, not just visually or aesthetically but to feel satisfying to fill up.” The app itself suggests you use it for making a gratitude list, ranking your favorite Pixar movies, keeping a dream diary, and more.
If you have a Mac with M1 or M2 silicon, Authy says you’ll still be able to download the iOS version of the app on your device. Otherwise, Authy recommends switching to the mobile version instead.
It’s a real bummer to feel like I’ve been ripped off by a much bigger company as they pitch something I’ve worked hard on as a free feature in their app. There’s some irony there.
What a dick.
The primary story remains Apple’s unpredictable policing of the App Store, capriciously rejecting apps from even well-known developers. But the secondary narrative here is of bullies: Apple, yes, but also Hansson. It should have been easy for both Apple and Hansson to make this situation look good in the face of yet another dumb App Review move, but neither chose that route.
Game designer Sean Bates found an iPhone in a bush Sunday that had fallen from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 when it lost a part of its fuselage shortly after takeoff. The phone was undamaged, still on, and had the end of a sheared-off charging cable plugged in. Bates posted pictures of his discovery that afternoon, one of which included the screen showing a still-open email with a baggage receipt.
I really liked the iPhone introduction commercial, where you see clips and clips of people saying 'hello' to their soon-to-be-obsoleted phones, to be replaced by the iPhone where we talk and text and whatsapp and signal and wechat and teams and zoom and facetime.
I feel the Vision Pro commercial, where you see clips and clips of people… er… putting on googles and helmets to… well… get ready to be bring down the death star and gather the infinity stones and go back to the future? Or is Apple telling us to put on the headset to play games where we pretend to be pilots or superheros or time-travelling scientists?
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this commercial really doesn't matter.
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Thanks for reading.