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News
Hello visionOS Developer
I like these relatively new round-up posts that Apple has been posting. This one is (predictably) chock full of great visionOS links, so I thought I'd include the whole thing here. Make sure you don't miss the write-up of the most popular Q&A from Vision Pro lab sessions.
Code
Reading and Writing Spatial Video with AVFoundation
What does MV-HEVC mean to you? I hadnāt heard of it, either, until I read this great post from Finn Voorhees on the additions to AVFoundation that allow reading and writing of spatial video files.
Perception: A back-port of @Observable
If you've been unable to adopt Observable yet due to it needing Swift 5.9 and the latest runtime environment, then Brandon Williams and Stephen Celis have something for you. š
Exploring visionOS Accessibility Gestures
I've not read much about accessibility in visionOS yet, so I was happy to see this article covering some accessibility-specific gestures from Rudrank Riyam. I hope to see him (or someone else!) dive deeper into this topic, as I'd like to learn more.
Calling Swift from C++ code
This might not be immediately useful, but Iām always heartened to see better interoperability between Swift and any other language! Thanks to Uli Kusterer for posting about this!
Design
Adapting your App Icon to visionOS
It only struck me how different visionOS icons were from other Apple platforms when I saw Flora Damiano showcase them all side-by-side in her latest post. If youāve been putting off the āDesign visionOS iconā item in your task list until now, start by reading this post! š„½
And finally...
As with the answer to most questions, the answer is it dependsā¦
Comment
Get ready! š
The time for wondering when āearly next yearā might happen is over, as Apple announced availability for its newest platform earlier this week, and itās only three weeks away! š
Does that mean you can submit apps to the store already? Yes, it does, and if you canāt wait to see what the App Store looks like on launch day, then Steve Troughton-Smith has a good Mastodon thread where he invited people to talk about their in-development visionOS apps.
Itās easy to be sceptical about whether Vision Pro will be a success, and I canāt say I donāt have some of those feelings, too! The widespread and mainstream adoption of an AR platform is a huge task from where we are now, and thereās no guarantee itāll succeed, even with twoĀ¹ of the biggest companies in the world putting themselves behind it.
But the product that will be available in stores in a few weeks isnāt the āwidespread adoptionā version of this type of device. The first few iterations over the next few years are here to lay the foundations for widespread adoption. Naturally, Apple isnāt going to pitch it like that. Theyāll want everyone to know this is āthe best Vision Pro weāve ever madeā, which is the truth, and which builds on the previous ābest AR device weāve ever madeā, which was holding up an iPhone or iPad at armās length.
The other half of the adoption story is software, of course, and thatās where we developers come in. If youāre submitting an app in the next week or two and debut in the visionOS App Store on day one, and if spatial computing does go mainstream, it will be partly thanks to you! š
Ā¹ Iāve not used a Meta Quest 3, but I understand its AR capabilities are significantly improved over previous versions.
Dave Verwer