A good indicator is the word count limit. If you take a look at the Swift Student Challenge submission form, you'll see that there's two non-optional text boxes that have: a limit of 500 words for describing your App Playground (seems to have increased from last year! hooray! 🎉), and a limit of 200 words for describing how you used your coding skills "Beyond the Swift Student Challenge". I believe these are the main essays, based on the word limit and the prompt itself. At least, these are the questions for which I responded in the form of an essay during my previous years' submissions. Other text prompts, essays There is a prompt asking you to describe your app in one sentence, in a concise manner. You definitely don't want to write an essay for this one. Depending on whether you used open source software, other than Swift, or content that you don't have ownership rights to, you will have two 200-word boxes to explain your use. I assume you’re not supposed to write an essay for these; likely the limit is set this high to allow enough space. There is also an App Store (optional) entry which is not mandatory and doesn't influence the judjing process. I think you can write an essay here as well, if you've published apps to the App Store before. Also, there is a Social Media (optional) entry. Based on its' description, I assume you don't have to write an essay about your socials, but I believe it rather has the 200-word limit so that you're able to link everything you want. Maybe you can provide a short description for each? Some closing remarks Finally, I don't think you're required to write an essay close to the word limit, but personally, I always tended to write more than 300 words (which I believe used to be the limit for the App Playground essay), and had to shrink it down. Write as much as you think it's needed to describe your app and yourself. If anyone else has any tips on the essays, I'd also be willing to hear them! :) Note: I am not a judge. I am a previous years' participant, also planning to also submit an app this year. I am writing from my experience, but take this with a grain of salt! Use your own judgement and, don't forget, be yourself! Good luck!

Depends if you're selecting the Swift Playgrounds option (will run on an iPad), or Xcode (will be judged in Simulator). Screenshot of the relevant submission item: Here's the same question answered on another thread.

I agree with Claude31. I would add that, even if exploring all features of your app may take more than 3 minutes, an idea would be to have a short onboarding that highlights the main features & what it can do. I intend to do this on my own submission as well, since I believe it contributes to a pleasant user experience. A similar context: think how a user may learn about a newly installed app's general idea & features quickly.

let’s say if I explain my intention behind using the framework well in my submission video/essay would it still be considered? Quinn’s answer above explains it really well, I personally think it’s a good idea to think about how you want your judges to experience your app in those 3 minutes. I’d just like to add One More Thing™️: if you still have questions about the judging process, maybe it’s also a good idea to ask them in one of the Swift Student Challenge online sessions hosted by Apple. At least, that’s what I would do. In fact, I think I’ll actually do that.

Somebody asked about PhD students, and the answer was yes.

That's odd. Maybe try to email swiftstudentchallenge@apple.com (found in the Swift Student Challenge Terms and Conditions) and see if they can help...

Thank you for your response, Quinn! [quote='820949022, DTS Engineer, /thread/772116?answerId=820949022#820949022'] I don’t see how that’d even be theoretically possible. [/quote] Perhaps something like signing with a public-private key common to all SEs. But that kind-of-diminishes the randomness of that specific P-256 key. Theoretically, if kept secret, the private key should be secure. [quote='820949022, DTS Engineer, /thread/772116?answerId=820949022#820949022'] I recommend that you explore App Attest. [/quote] That seems to address this, thanks! Since this is for the Swift Student Challenge, I think I won't be able to use it (my "demo" playground wouldn't have a specific app ID, and it also does not have internet access), but I think I can mention this as a further security enhancement in a real-world app.

I just tested this; I've been able to register and I received an email. When successful, the page says "Registered", while also providing a cancellation button and a Webex link. Did you try registering again (and maybe sign out first)?

Well, the rules say this: Your app playground must be built with and run on Swift Playgrounds 4.5 or later, or Xcode 16 or later. You may incorporate the use of Apple Pencil. I think this doesn't stop you from using only up-to-Big Sur SDK features, and developing it in Xcode 13 (the latest one available for Big Sur machines). However, you'll need to find out a way to convert your Xcode project to the Xcode 16 format before submitting it (i.e., perhaps open it in Xcode 16 when you finish developing it, on a device that you can borrow, running macOS Sonoma 14.5 or later). I'm not sure if Xcode 13 had support for App Playgrounds (I think it did), but that needs to be checked. You can create an App Playground by going to File > New > Project > iOS > App Playground.

Just checking, have you tried the solutions mentioned on this thread from last year? Also, this recent thread may be useful to you as well.

Hi @victoriapetrova, Sorry for the really late reply, I'm not sure why I didn't notice it. Hopefully you've fixed this by now already, but if not, have you tried running cleaning your build folder? Also, someone said this on the other thread, though I have not verified this myself: I assume you might have stored your mlmodel in a folder called 'Resources.' According to a stack overflow, having a folder named "resources" in the application bundle will cause code sign to fail.

I don't think there's any API for that, but I'm not entirely sure (sso don't count on this). But either way, the sensor fusion algorithms are there to improve it, so I'm not sure if you would get better results from that. and fails in low light conditions Do you think raw depth data would be better than the sensor fusion-processed data?

I think I figured why this happened, but I believe the UI/UX could be improved. It appears that I did not click the "Done" button and just closed the app, so the key did not get saved. I think it would make sense if this info was automatically saved, especially since there is a "delete" button on the exact same page. I think this behavior may confuse users.

Regarding your first question: [quote='761970021, lhj0880, /thread/761970, /profile/lhj0880'] Does the Secure Enclave utilize its own independent memory for storing keys and other sensitive data? [/quote] As described in the Apple Platform Security guide: Although the Secure Enclave doesn’t include storage, it has a mechanism to store information securely on attached storage separate from the NAND flash storage that’s used by the Application Processor and operating system.

For anyone who stumbles upon this thread, the vulnerability has been fixed in macOS 14.6.