Apple’s much-anticipated Imaginative and prescient Professional headset will formally land in shops on February 2, marking the start of a brand new period in “spatial computing.” With yesterday’s launch day announcement, Apple additionally launched a brand new Xcode replace to assist builders get their apps prepared.
The brand new replace means builders can now finalize and submit their visionOS apps to the App Retailer. As first famous by 9to5Mac, Apple has additionally revealed a brand new web page on its Apple Developer web site with new tips for apps for the Imaginative and prescient Professional.
On the web page, the corporate particulars its suggestions and necessities for Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional apps to be provided on the App Retailer. The web page contains details about how builders ought to check their apps, create icons, put together screenshots, and extra.
Name visionOS App ‘Spatial Computing Apps,’ Not AR or VR
Apple’s new tips insist that builders not check with their new apps with phrases like AR (augmented actuality), VR (digital actuality), XR (prolonged actuality), or MR (combined actuality). As a substitute, Apple says visionOS apps must be known as “spatial computing apps.”
From the Apple Developer web site:
Spatial computing: Consult with your app as a spatial computing app. Don’t describe your app expertise as augmented actuality (AR), digital actuality (VR), prolonged actuality (XR), or combined actuality (MR).
The rules could possibly be thought-about relatively odd, being that Apple itself has been referring to the Imaginative and prescient Professional with phrases like augmented actuality and digital actuality when describing the headset’s capabilities.
It must be famous that lots of Apple’s Imaginative and prescient Professional advertising supplies name Imaginative and prescient Professional a “spatial computing” platform. Nevertheless, in the course of the product’s unveiling in June, Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner referred to as the product an “totally new AR platform.”
Apple’s tips additionally embrace details about how builders ought to identify their apps in addition to how one can describe them. The machine maker tells builders when utilizing the “visionOS” to you’ll want to use a lowercase “v.”
Apple’s specs on what to name the Imaginative and prescient Professional are principally a branding determination, as calling the headset a “spatial computing platform” helps set Apple’s new headset aside from AR/VR headsets provided by different firms, resembling Meta’s mixed-reality headsets, which the corporate refers to because the “metaverse.” Apple world advertising VP Greg Joswiak has been quoted as saying that metaverse is “a phrase I’ll by no means use.”
Apple’s developer web site additionally contains details about creating screenshots, how one can convey environment, ensuring environment don’t distract from the app, and in addition ensuring the environment are “uncluttered and freed from any objects or supplies that will embrace delicate content material, private data, or mental property.”
Apple additionally tells builders to maintain the app window straight in screenshots, to depict uncluttered environment, and to seize clearly rendered photos.
App icon necessities embrace that an app icon ought to seem as a round 3D object, with a background layer and one or two extra layers. App icons for appropriate iPadOS and iOS apps ought to seem as sq. belongings with rounded corners. App icons can increase barely when seen.
The Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional will probably be out there beginning at $3,499 (U.S.) with 256GB of storage. Pre-orders for Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional will start on Friday, January 19, at 5 a.m. PT, with availability starting Friday, February 2.