apple

The recent legal actions against Apple have started to crack the walled garden. Other companies, however, are targets of similar actions, but fewer issues due to a difference in business strategy. Rather than creating lock in on hardware, there is a pseudo lock in within the ecosystem. Microsoft and Google offer their apps/services on all platforms, whereas Apple has limited the majority of their apps/services to their hardware. This kind of vendor lock in makes it difficult to change platforms, which is Apple’s goal....

Prior to iOS 11, developers could leverage SFSafariViewController to interact with Safari in app view a remote view controller for authentication. However, because this is a view controller, it can be hidden from the user. As a result, malicious actors abused this API to track end users without their consent. Apple’s strategy to combat this was to limit the data sharing capabilities of this API to only the app (i.e. creating a sandbox)....

As communicated at WWDC, Apple has published the list of APIs it now deems sensitive and frameworks/apps must include a justification for using them. The APIs are divided into five categories: file timestamp access, system boot time access, disk space access, active keyboard access, and user defaults. As with some other recent attempts by Apple to prevent fingerprinting and tracking, legitimate use cases get caught in the crossfire. Take for example the file timestamp access APIs (both metadata and stat/fstat) and needing to reconcile data on device and a server....

As telegraphed, WWDC this year introduced a new product and platform: Apple Vision Pro and visionOS. Apple calls this “Spatial Computing” instead of AR/VR and they technology behind it (hardware and software) is pretty impressive. I’m still of the mindset that there is no killer set of features that’ll make this go mass market, and as a result, will still be very expensive and niche. Funnily enough, the sessions refer to this as xrOS (the original leaked name), visionOS, and “Apple’s spatial computing platform” which means that marketing came in really late and changed the name....

Another year, another WWDC anticipatory waiting time. Uncharacteristically, Apple has somewhat telegraphed what to expect from the big event this year: The Augmented Reality Headset. As Project Titan continues to not come to fruition, Apple’s next big thing is xrOS (leaked way back in 2019 as StarBoard) and xrOS runs on a headset similar to the Oculus Rift and Valve Index. What we expect to see is how it is controlled (gestures and/or Siri)....