My project involves no camera passthrough and relies heavily on sprites, but I've been discouraged from using the aging (and possibly dying) SpriteKit or SceneKit as my rendering engine by Apple engineers (here) so I'm exploring other options. Is it possible to display 2D sprites fluidly using this framework in a non-AR context? Is it possible to create, say, a 2D platformer using just RealityKit?

About a month ago I asked whether I could use HDR in SpriteKit. This wasn't a well-phrased question since HDR seems to mean different things in different questions, which probably led to my question going unanswered. What I meant to ask was whether it's possible to use assets that have a color gamut that many modern devices are capable of displaying (XDR is somewhat standard among mid- to high-end devices). In other words: Is SpriteKit keeping up with the hardware? If not, what framework options do I have that can quickly display large Rec. 2020 images? Do any of the Core frameworks offer this capability?

Hello, I'm making an app where users can create a multimedia object and other users can use in-app currency (purchased via in-app purchase) to gain access to the object. They can also choose to subscribe to a creator to encourage and support their content creation. Tokens can be converted to cash and sent to creators. It is unclear to me whether this violates app store rules. After reading through the App Store Guidelines and searching through the forums (this thread was close to what I was looking for), I have yet to arrive at a clear answer. The Guidelines state that "tipping" content creators is acceptable, but this isn't exactly what I'm looking for in a creator marketplace. The Business section doesn't contain anything else that seems relevant, and this makes it seem like only voluntary tipping of content creators is accepted. The commerce engineer in the thread linked above discourages using in-app currency, but that doesn't seem to work for my use case (the thread's creator wants to use the IAP mechanism). Furthermore, IAP cannot be created programmatically (i.e. by users) and is error-prone. It must be stressed that I'm not trying to deny giving Apple its 15-30% share, since users must buy in-app currency using Apple's IAP (this is not a multi-platform app). Cash in the app's economy has only one entry point, and that is via Apple's IAP. I have asked a similar question recently, but received no response. This is probably because I didn't phrase it well enough and didn't attach the correct tags. Creating the infrastructure for a creator marketplace app is a lot of grueling work, and I would very much like to know whether my app will be rejected for it before I embark on this quest. Any help would be greatly appreciated. tl;dr - Is the ability to make in-app currency purchases of creator content a violation of app store rules?

A follow-up to Scrolling sticker browser on a Messages App sheet causes sheet to move, re-formulated and posted here after distilling the issue ScrollView behaves as though the Sheet is constantly expanded and transfers the drag gesture to the Sheet when scrolled to the top (i.e. when first displayed), causing the user to move the Sheet and not the ScrollView when attempting to scroll up or down. If this should be filed as a bug, let me know. Notes The problem doesn't exist if the sheet has only one detent, but since Messages App Extensions must be adjustable in phone portrait, this does nothing for me Adding a Rectangle with hitTesting disabled doesn't solve the issue Adding competing high priority DragGestures doesn't fix it One partial solution is having ScrollViewReader scroll down a tiny bit upon appearing, but the issue re-emerges after the user has scrolled to the top. Code to reproduce: struct Playground: View { @State private var detent = PresentationDetent.fraction(1/3) @State private var isSheetPresented = true var body: some View { Rectangle() .fill(Color(.systemGray5)) .sheet(isPresented: $isSheetPresented) { VStack { Text("ScrollView-in-Sheet Experiment") .padding() ScrollView { ScrollViewReader { scrollProxy in VStack(spacing: 0) { ForEach(0...10, id: \.self) { i in Rectangle() .fill(.white) .frame(height: 50) .id(i) .overlay { Text(i.description) } } } } } .frame(height: 200) .padding() } .background { Color(.systemGray6) } .presentationDetents([.large, .fraction(1/3)], selection: $detent) } } }

My project has uses an AVAudioEngine with a very simple setup: A Speech recognizer running on a tap on the engine's input with separate AVAudioPlayerNodes handling playback. try session.setCategory(.playAndRecord, mode: .default, options: []) try session.setActive(true, options: .notifyOthersOnDeactivation) try session.setAllowHapticsAndSystemSoundsDuringRecording(true) filePlayerNode ---> engine.mainMixerNode bufferPlayerNode --> engine.mainMixerNode engine.mainMixerNode --> engine.outputNode //bufferPlayer.scheduleBuffer() is called on its own queue The input works fine since the buffers can be collected into a file and plays back correctly, and also because the recognizer works fine; but when I try to play the live audio by sending the buffer to the bufferPlayer on this or another device, the buffer audio plays at a very low volume, sometimes with severe distortions. If I lower the sample rate via AVAudioConverter, the distortions get worse. I've tried experimenting with the AVAudioSession category options, having separate AVAudioEngines, and much, much more, yet I still haven't figured this out. It's gotten to the point where I've fixed almost all the arcane and minor issues in my audio system, yet I still can't play back my voice properly. The ability to both play and record simultaneously is a basic feature of phones--when on speaker mode, a phone doesn't need to behave like a walkie-talkie. In my mind, it's inconceivable that the relatively new AVAudioEngine doesn't have a implementation for this, since the main issue (feedback loops) can be dealt with via a simple primitive circuit. Live video chat apps like FaceTime wouldn't be possible without this, yet to my surprise I found no answers online (what I did find were articles explaining how to write a file while playback is occurring). Is there truly no way to do this on AVAudioEngine? Am I missing something fundamental? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated

Private Access Tokens (PATs) are headlined as something that can eliminate CAPTCHAs, but also includes app-to-server communications in its use cases. Because of this, they seem to perform a very similar function to DeviceCheck, since both aim to attest to the health of the device in question. I don't really understand the difference between the two and find this confusing. Since PATs are newer and more general, I'm more inclined to adopt them, but where does this leave DeviceCheck? Is it redundant? How does App Attest fit into all of this? If my goal is to minimize if not eliminiate fraudulent/malicious use of my app's APIs, should I use Private Access Tokens, DeviceCheck, and App Attest simultaneously to maximize my protection? If not, what is accepted to be the best practice? I admire Apple's dedication to privacy and security, but as a new developer I feel Apple could make it easier for their app developers to find out and implement the latest best practices.

This is a follow-up to my previous question: How to attribute/credit Apple Fonts added to app? In that previous post, I misremembered what I did and said I found fonts via macOS' FontBooks, when instead I came acrossUIFont.familyNames. Since these are included via UIKit, the legal implications should be different. I looked at various license agreements that govern iOS app development but haven't found anything mentioning fonts. Since these are included as part of UIKit, its reasonable to assume that developers are allowed to include these fonts--but in what ways? Am I allowed to let users create, say, documents with these fonts? Am I only allowed to display these fonts? There are 84 fonts, and judging by their FontBook entries, there is a wide range of licenses and restrictions. It seems unnecessarily harsh to have every iOS developer verify each one and figure out which they can legally keep if they want to offer their users access to all (for, say, a text-editing app). There must be some overarching rule that supersedes/encapsulates them, but this rule isn't clear to me after hours of research. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't think Apple expects every app developer to consult their lawyers on whether they can use system fonts. I'm about to send an email to Apple's legal team (I will post their response here if allowed), but in the meantime I want to hear what other devs think about this. In Xcode, entering UIFont.familyNames returns the following: ["Academy Engraved LET", "Al Nile", "American Typewriter", "Apple Color Emoji", "Apple SD Gothic Neo", "Apple Symbols", "Arial", "Arial Hebrew", "Arial Rounded MT Bold", "Avenir", "Avenir Next", "Avenir Next Condensed", "Baskerville", "Bodoni 72", "Bodoni 72 Oldstyle", "Bodoni 72 Smallcaps", "Bodoni Ornaments", "Bradley Hand", "Chalkboard SE", "Chalkduster", "Charter", "Cochin", "Copperplate", "Courier New", "Damascus", "Devanagari Sangam MN", "Didot", "DIN Alternate", "DIN Condensed", "Euphemia UCAS", "Farah", "Futura", "Galvji", "Geeza Pro", "Georgia", "Gill Sans", "Grantha Sangam MN", "Helvetica", "Helvetica Neue", "Hiragino Maru Gothic ProN", "Hiragino Mincho ProN", "Hiragino Sans", "Hoefler Text", "Impact", "Kailasa", "Kefa", "Khmer Sangam MN", "Kohinoor Bangla", "Kohinoor Devanagari", "Kohinoor Gujarati", "Kohinoor Telugu", "Lao Sangam MN", "Malayalam Sangam MN", "Marker Felt", "Menlo", "Mishafi", "Mukta Mahee", "Myanmar Sangam MN", "Noteworthy", "Noto Nastaliq Urdu", "Noto Sans Kannada", "Noto Sans Myanmar", "Noto Sans Oriya", "Optima", "Palatino", "Papyrus", "Party LET", "PingFang HK", "PingFang SC", "PingFang TC", "Rockwell", "Savoye LET", "Sinhala Sangam MN", "Snell Roundhand", "STIX Two Math", "STIX Two Text", "Symbol", "Tamil Sangam MN", "Thonburi", "Times New Roman", "Trebuchet MS", "Verdana", "Zapf Dingbats", "Zapfino"]

I need to find a way to allow recording from the mic while outputting two different sound streams to two different devices (speaker and headphones). I've done a fair bit of reading around using AVAudioSession.Category.multiroute but haven't found any modern examples. @theanalogkid posted a nice example using obj-C nine years ago, but others have noted that the code isn't readily translatable to Swift. To make matters worse, this is one of the very few examples on how to properly use multirouting. The official documentation is lacking, to say the least, and the WWDC 2012 session is, well, old enough to attend middle school and be a Taylor Swift fan, but definitely not in Swift. The few relevant forum posts here are spread over this middle schooler's life span and likely outdated, with most having no responses other than the poster's own plightful echo. They don't paint a pretty picture of .multiroute's health, with a recent poster noting that volume buttons don't work in this mode, contacting DTS and finding that there's no fix; another finding that it just doesn't work for certain devices, etc. Audio is giving me enough of a headache so I'd like to avoid slogging through this if possible. .multiroute feels like the developer mode of AVAudioSession, but without documentation. tl;dr - Without using .multiroute, is there a way to allow an app to output two different devices while simultaneously recording audio? If .multiroute is the only way to achieve this, can someone give me a quick rundown of how this category works?

Why? Why stop there? (Why not ipod.and.imacg3? applenewton.and.vision.pro?) I get why the older ipod symbols exist but these new pairings are odd. If anyone ever sees these restricted symbols in the wild, or even just someone using a Vision Pro and an iPod (Touch) together in a way that's not contrived, please do let me know!

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?