Notices by Steve Troughton-Smith (stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social), page 7

The miniest player

Here's what it looks like when you place a visionOS window flat on a desk. In this case, the mini player I've built for @broadcastsapp

One neat thing you can do on visionOS is programmatically change the size of the window, so you can make a button that does this:

Working on all the auxiliary panels now; new UIKit toolbar is in, and I've given the two editors an initial pass for the new metrics and styles. What I'm finding with visionOS is any layout that doesn't work out of the box suggests more than anything that *I’m* doing it wrong, and I should probably rewrite it for other OSes too. It's good at highlighting focus areas in my apps that need work

I don't think I showed how I'm spawning the mini player window in @broadcastsapp, so here’s a quick one. Once you have the window, you can move it anywhere you like

I haven't officially branched yet, but I think what I'm working on now will become Broadcasts v4.0. So that will be Broadcasts for visionOS, plus the revamp I want to perform on the iPad version's UI, and the payment model changes I've talked about before. Maybe the new watchOS app, if everything else goes well. I'm not sure yet if that will mean a minimum OS version bump, as I am loath to cut off hardware

Another UI down; @broadcastsapp's search screen has been visionOSified

Screenshot roundup for @broadcastsapp at the end of the first week of the visionOS SDK. Honestly, I'm ready to start testing on actual hardware, which is a very expensive-sounding prospect 🫥

Not sure if I'll go with this, but I did a little experimenting with 3D layering/z-depth in @broadcastsapp just to see how a real UIKit app might approach this. I think 'sparingly' is the right answer, but unlike many of Apple's platforms, there really are no physical bounds or rules to tell you not to. It’s a lot easier for a SwiftUI app to use 3D transforms and z-depth, so you'll probably see it used/abused much more in indie apps than e.g. Photoshop or Office

Sadly the most unrealistic thing about scifi movie user interfaces is the idea that OS makers will still let us access a command line 😒

I really think Apple should find a way to bring Terminal to iPadOS and visionOS. Sandbox it, isolate it, enforce signed & notarized binaries if you want, but just make it happen. Both of Apple’s ‘future' computing platforms are hamstrung by decisions made 20 years ago for iPhone, and the world has moved on so much since then

I sure wish Apple’s Mail app had the kind of productization and year over year investment that Notes and Reminders get

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