Hello, I'm a Canadian living in Hong Kong who has attempted to enroll in the developer program. After submitting my Canadian passport as identification, I was told it's not valid ID for the region (Hong Kong) and that I should submit something else.  I have several concerns that I would like answers to so I can figure out how to proceed: I'm very likely to move back to Canada in the near future and would like to know if there are any issues associated with switching between App Store regions? Issues like having to pay for enrollment twice, or legal/regulatory problems, or anything else? Another concern I have is my app being somehow subjected to censorship or some regulation that escapes my common sense, since Hong Kong is part of China.  My apps are not political but this is still a point of concern given the recent crackdowns on its tech and education sectors--it's not entirely unthinkable that something will strike down my app out of the blue, for no fault of my own. My app is intended for a global audience, but I fear having my developer account tied to Hong Kong (China) will come back to haunt me in some way. Am I fretting over nothing? There's also the payment issue--can payouts from my app be sent to an bank account of my choosing, or does it have to be in the region I'm tied to? Thank you in advance for your time.

I'm looking to use high-quality and large images as animated sprites via SpriteKit. Is it possible to display sprites with HDR colors in SpriteKit? What about SpriteKit via SceneKit or RealityKit? I've looked all around and it seems as though *.PNG is the only accepted image format, and it doesn't seem to have HDR support.

I'm looking to use high-quality and large images as animated sprites via SpriteKit. Right now the default maximum size of a texture atlas is 4096*4096, which is at least an order of magnitude below what I need. There's an option to create custom maximum sizes, but the tiny default and the age of the SpriteKit framework is giving me second thoughts even though I'd very much like to stick with an Apple framework and not have to rely on another party like Unity. Before I invest my time and energy into SpriteKit I'd like to know whether the decade-old framework, running on modern hardware (A11 and newer), can support massive texture atlases while maintaining decent performance (~30 FPS). If not, is it possible to implement something similar in less antiquated frameworks, such as RealityKit (non-AR). Thanks in advance for your time.

Hello, I have an @EnvironmentObject variable that publishes 30 times per second but the view that depends on that data must be limited to 20 frames per second. The publishing rate cannot be controlled, so I must control the rate at which SwiftUI refreshes that view in order to achieve the desired effect. I tried using TimelineView(.periodic(from: .now, by: 1/20)), but the restriction gets ignored due to the published data; I also considered Combine's timer, but it isn't based on real time. Are there any other methods I can use to force SwiftUI to refresh certain views at certain real time intervals, in essence controlling its FPS?

I’m trying to build a simple app that will allow users to create items in-app and buy/sell access to them. Users can buy tokens from the App Store that can be used to fund these purchases (e.g. 1 token = 100 coins), and can also be used support the development of these items (e.g. give creator 1 coin a week). The creators can then cash out the coins once a certain amount is reached, via Stripe or some other external payment provider. Is this allowed under the current rules of the app store? Is it possible to implement using CloudKit? If this isn’t allowed, is it possible to allow users to share content on the app’s “store” for other users to browse and download, and can that be done just using CloudKit? This is my first-ever app and I don’t know left from right when it comes to back-ends. I will greatly appreciate any pointers.

My app uses SpriteKit and requires the use of SKTextureAtlas for performance. However, it uses user-generated content, which means that atlases don’t initialize using bundled images, but instead have to recreate all sprite sheets, leading to long loading times. Is it possible to save the sprite sheets made from user-generated content to disk so that SKTextureAtlas can load them instead of recreating all sprite sheets upon every initialization? Is there any alternative solution to this problem? For example, is there a way to dump a bunch of images into memory to use as a texture pool and keep them there until deallocated?

I'm a new developer and I can't decide whether CloudKit or Firebase is more suited to my app's needs. The general vibe I'm getting from multiple sources is that CloudKit is purely for storage, but that seems off to me, so I'm hoping to find some hints or answers with regard to my specific use-cases. My app allows users to create multimedia objects that are stored somewhere and displayed in the app's marketplace, with use access granted to those who decide to spend tokens on them. These multimedia objects can go up to a few gigabytes. Ownership of these objects are tracked via a user account database. Am I correct in assuming that my app's CloudKit public database can be used to store, check user request validity, and distribute these multimedia objects? Can it also be used for the management of user accounts and overall token counts? Additionally, is it possible for the app's administrators to pipe data out of the public database for analysis and to payment processor APIs? Any help would be greatly appreciated

The 10th-Gen iPad differs from its predecessors by having a camera that's located at the top of its landscape orientation. This is a headache for me since my app needs to know the rough camera location given the device's orientation for AR purposes. I can find out whether the device is a tablet or not, but I can't find out whether it's an iPad 10. Are there any direct or indirect ways for me to find out whether a camera is placed for portrait or landscape use?

Happy new year! My app has the ability to generate stickers so I'm trying to connect two separate Messages extensions: The sticker browser and the app extension. The former is a repository and the latter is where stickers are made. It would be easy to create these two extensions and have them stand separately, like Apple's Memoji, but I'm trying to find a way to better streamline the user experience, such that they can navigate from the browser to the extension and back seamlessly. As far as I can tell, there's no indication that this is possible, but also nothing to indicate that it isn't. Similarly, are there ways to navigate from the main app to a messages extension, or go the other way? From what I've read, there's no known way to do the former but there was a way to do the latter that no longer works. tl;dr - Is it possible for users to press a button to go from a MSStickerBrowserViewController to a MSMessagesAppViewController (both belonging to the same app group) or back? Or go from the main app to either or back?

Is there a way to extract the list of words recognized by the Speech framework? I'm trying to filter out words that won't appear in the transcription output, but to do that I'll need a list of words that can appear. SFSpeechLanguageModel.Configuration can be initialized with a vocabulary, but there doesn't seem to be a way to read it, and while there are ways to create custom vocabularies, I have yet to find a way to retrieve it. I added the Natural Language tag in case the framework might contribute to a solution

Hello, I had a WWDC Lab with two CloudKit engineers who asked me to file a "Feedback Request" for critical information regarding CloudKit. I've filed the FB and have also decided to post a forum post to increase my chances of having these critical questions answered. If allowed, I will also post responses to my FB here. CKAssets I would like to know how large assets attached to a CKAsset can get before being rejected by the system. If the figure differs for private and public databases, please also let me know. CloudKit pricing information There used to be pricing information available on the website, but there's basically no information now. This makes it hard to calibrate user upload limits for my app in order to avoid overage fees. I'm not looking to game the system, (something this strange opaqueness is likely meant to prevent); I'm just looking to avoid a situation where competitors and vandals abuse my the content upload system so I get smacked by large bills out of nowhere. A rough figure of how many GB of data each active user adds to my app's CloudKit public database would suffice. While we're at it, if I have two apps that share a public database (if that's possible), do the active user counts of both contribute to the public database's free threshold?

Hi all, My app uses SpriteKit views which are rendered into images for various uses. For some reason, the same code performs worse on a newer CPU than on an older one. My A13 Bionic flies through the task at high resolution and 60FPS while CPU usage is <60%, while the A15 Bionic chokes and sputters at a lower resolution and 30FPS. Because of how counterintuitive this is, it took me a while to isolate the call directly responsible--with UIView.drawHierarchy commented out, both devices returned to their baseline performances. guard let sceneView = skScene.view else { return } let size = CGSize(width: outputResolution, height: outputResolution) return UIGraphicsImageRenderer(size: size).image { context in let rect = CGRect(origin: .zero, size: size) sceneView.drawHierarchy(in: rect, afterScreenUpdates: false) } Does anyone know why this is the case, and how to fix it? I tried using UIView.snapshotView, which is supposedly much faster, but it only returns blank images. Am I using it wrong or does it simply not work in this context? sceneView.snapshotView(afterScreenUpdates: false)?.draw(rect) Any hints or pointers would be greatly appreciated

I'm a new developer who is looking to make my first app easier to manage on my end by staying in the Apple ecosystem. My ideal backend is just pure and simple CloudKit. This should help me cut down on costs and increase my security, or so I thought. The more I looked into the issue of mobile app security --more specifically, preventing fraudulent access to backend APIs-- the more it seems like CloudKit is a disaster waiting to happen. While data in transit is encrypted and there's even end-to-end encryption for private DBs, securing an app's public DB in the presence of modified apps is a daunting, if not impossible task. My assumption is that a modified app cannot be trusted to make honest assertions about itself, the device, or its iCloud account, and can potentially lie its way into restricted areas of the DB. If an app is compromised, CloudKit queries from that app can be used to make malicious queries or even changes to the databases. I'm hoping App Attest, even with its potentially circular logic, can at least make life harder for fraudsters, competitors, and vandals (when combined with other security measures like jailbreak, debugging, hooking, and tampering detections), but I have not found a single mention on how App Attest might be used to protect CloudKit. There doesn't even seem to be a verified way for me to build a third party server that can handle App Attest and then tell CloudKit to allow a user through (with all the security hazards a new developer faces when configuring an authentication server). The message seems to be: App Attest is important, but you can't use it with CloudKit, so build your own server. Questions Is my assumption that a compromised app can make malicious queries or changes to an app's CloudKit DB correct? Can App Attest be made to protect a CloudKit public DB, with or without the involvement of a third-party server to handle attestations?

If I encrypt user data with Apple's newly released homomorphic encryption package and send it to servers I control for analysis, how would that affect the privacy label for that app? E.g. If my app collected usage data plus identifiers, then sent it for collection and analysis, would I be allowed to say that we don't collect information linked to the user? Does it also automatically exclude the relevant fields from the "Data used to track you" section? Is it possible to make even things that were once considered inextricably tied to a user identity (e.g. purchases in an in-app marketplace) something not linked, according to Apple's rules? How would I prove to Apple that the relevant information is indeed homomorphically encrypted?

I'm trying to make a magnifying glass that shows up when the user presses a button and follows the user's finger as it's dragged across the screen. I came across a UIKit-based solution (https://github.com/niczyja/MagnifyingGlass-Swift), but when implemented in my SKScene, only the crosshairs are shown. Through experimentation I've found that magnifiedView?.layer.render(in: context) in: public override func draw(_ rect: CGRect) { guard let context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() else { return } context.translateBy(x: radius, y: radius) context.scaleBy(x: scale, y: scale) context.translateBy(x: -magnifiedPoint.x, y: -magnifiedPoint.y) removeFromSuperview() magnifiedView?.layer.render(in: context) magnifiedView?.addSubview(self) } can be removed without altering the situation, suggesting that line is not working as it should. But this is where I hit a brick wall. The view below is shown but not offset or magnified, and any attempt to add something to context results in a black magnifying glass. Does anyone know why this is? I don't think it's an issue with the code, so I'm suspecting its something specific to SpriteKit or SKScene, likely related to how CALayers work. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. . . . Full code below: import UIKit public class MagnifyingGlassView: UIView { public weak var magnifiedView: UIView? = nil { didSet { removeFromSuperview() magnifiedView?.addSubview(self) } } public var magnifiedPoint: CGPoint = .zero { didSet { center = .init(x: magnifiedPoint.x + offset.x, y: magnifiedPoint.y + offset.y) } } public var offset: CGPoint = .zero public var radius: CGFloat = 50 { didSet { frame = .init(origin: frame.origin, size: .init(width: radius * 2, height: radius * 2)) layer.cornerRadius = radius crosshair.path = crosshairPath(for: radius) } } public var scale: CGFloat = 2 public var borderColor: UIColor = .lightGray { didSet { layer.borderColor = borderColor.cgColor } } public var borderWidth: CGFloat = 3 { didSet { layer.borderWidth = borderWidth } } public var showsCrosshair = true { didSet { crosshair.isHidden = !showsCrosshair } } public var crosshairColor: UIColor = .lightGray { didSet { crosshair.strokeColor = crosshairColor.cgColor } } public var crosshairWidth: CGFloat = 5 { didSet { crosshair.lineWidth = crosshairWidth } } private let crosshair: CAShapeLayer = CAShapeLayer() public convenience init(offset: CGPoint = .zero, radius: CGFloat = 50, scale: CGFloat = 2, borderColor: UIColor = .lightGray, borderWidth: CGFloat = 3, showsCrosshair: Bool = true, crosshairColor: UIColor = .lightGray, crosshairWidth: CGFloat = 0.5) { self.init(frame: .zero) layer.masksToBounds = true layer.addSublayer(crosshair) defer { self.offset = offset self.radius = radius self.scale = scale self.borderColor = borderColor self.borderWidth = borderWidth self.showsCrosshair = showsCrosshair self.crosshairColor = crosshairColor self.crosshairWidth = crosshairWidth } } public func magnify(at point: CGPoint) { guard magnifiedView != nil else { return } magnifiedPoint = point layer.setNeedsDisplay() } private func crosshairPath(for radius: CGFloat) -> CGPath { let path = CGMutablePath() path.move(to: .init(x: radius, y: 0)) path.addLine(to: .init(x: radius, y: bounds.height)) path.move(to: .init(x: 0, y: radius)) path.addLine(to: .init(x: bounds.width, y: radius)) return path } public override func draw(_ rect: CGRect) { guard let context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() else { return } context.translateBy(x: radius, y: radius) context.scaleBy(x: scale, y: scale) context.translateBy(x: -magnifiedPoint.x, y: -magnifiedPoint.y) removeFromSuperview() magnifiedView?.layer.render(in: context) //If above disabled, no change //Possible that nothing's being rendered into context //Could it be that SKScene view has no layer? magnifiedView?.addSubview(self) } }