Apple TV+ wins Academy Award for The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse





“Friday Night Baseball” resumes on Apple TV+ on April 7





Apple introduces Shop with a Specialist over Video





10 questions with the Live Activities team – Discover


With Live Activities, your app can provide up-to-date, glanceable information — like weather updates, a plane’s departure time, or how long it’ll be until dinner is delivered — right on the Lock Screen. What’s more, thanks to lively features like the Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, Live Activities can also be a lot of fun.

Apple evangelists, designers, and engineers came together at Ask Apple to answer your questions about Live Activities and the Dynamic Island. Here are a few highlights from those conversations, including guidance about sizing and styling, when to dismiss a Live Activity, and why widgets and Live Activities are different (except when they’re not).

How do I update a Live Activity without using Apple Push Notification service (APNs)?

Your app can use a pre-existing background runtime functionality, such as Location Services, to provide Live Activity updates as you see fit. You can also use BGProcessingTask and background pushes to provide less frequent updates to your Live Activity. Keep in mind that these background tasks aren’t processed immediately by the system. You can read more below:

Displaying live data with Live Activities

The 4-hour default to dismiss a Live Activity is too long for my use case. What are the guidelines for dismissing a Live Activity after it ends?

When ending a Live Activity, you can provide an ActivityUIDismissalPolicy to tell the system when to dismiss your UI. Alternatively, you can choose to dismiss the Live Activity immediately or after a certain time has passed.

How can my app detect when someone dismisses a Live Activity?

Your app should use the activityStateUpdates async sequence to observe state changes for each Live Activity.

When an app is force quit, is the associated Live Activity dismissed?

Live Activity life cycles aren’t tied to the host app’s process, so they’ll stay if the app is force quit. Your widget extension’s life cycle is also separate. It’s entirely possible that different instances of the widget extension are called to render views for the same Live Activity, so it’s important not to store any state locally in the widget extension.

How do Live Activities and widgets differ?

Live Activities and widgets both provide glanceable information at a moment’s notice. Live Activities are great for displaying situational information related to an ongoing task that someone initiated. Good examples include food deliveries, workouts, and flight departure times. Widgets can provide glanceable information that’s always relevant. Good examples include to-do lists, this week’s weather forecast, or how close someone is to closing their rings on Apple Watch.

While both Live Activities and widgets rely on WidgetKit to lay out their UI, they’re structured a bit differently. Live Activities are a single view that updates programmatically, while widgets consist of a timeline of preconstructed views.

Should my Live Activity attempt to change the background color of the Dynamic Island?

The Dynamic Island is most immersive when you don’t provide background color or imagery — think of it purely as a canvas of foreground view elements. More design guidance is provided in the Human Interface Guidelines.

Human Interface Guidelines – Live Activities

Do Live Activities support interactive buttons?

Live Activities on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island don’t support interactive buttons or other controls. Including buttons in your Live Activity could confuse someone into thinking they’re able to interact with the view. For this reason, you should avoid displaying anything in your UI that resembles a button.

The best user experience exists within your app, which is why all interaction with a Live Activity results in opening your app. A Live Activity’s Lock Screen presentation and expanded presentation can include multiple links into your app, so you can provide different destinations, depending on the context of your Live Activity.

Are Live Activities the only way to support the Dynamic Island?

Your app can implement other system services, such as CallKit and Now Playing, that display system UI in the Dynamic Island. However, Live Activities are the only way for your app to provide its own UI in the Dynamic Island.

Is it possible to add animations to the Dynamic Island?

While there’s no support for arbitrary animations in your Live Activity views, your app can change how a Live Activity’s content updates from one state to the next. Read more in the “Animate content updates” section of the article below.

Displaying live data with Live Activities

Where can I find more documentation about Live Activities?

The ActivityKit documentationprovides a wealth of information about implementing Live Activities, including how to update and end a Live Activity using APNs. In addition, the Human Interface Guidelinesoffer design guidance and recommended sizes for the various presentations. You can also find some inspiration in the Food Truck sample project from WWDC22.

Human Interface Guidelines – Live Activities

Displaying live data with Live Activities

Updating and ending your Live Activity with ActivityKit push notifications

ActivityKit

WidgetKit



Meet four women using apps and games to drive culture and create change





Spotlight on: Spatial Audio – Discover


When designing soundscapes for apps and games, the right notes can make all the difference. And when those notes are built to support multichannel audio, they might even turn someone’s head. (Literally.)

Endel and Odio are just two of the many apps and games taking advantage of Spatial Audio. They use multichannel mixes, Core Audio, and AVFoundation to add texture and dimensionality, creating resonating surround-sound experiences that further immerse listeners into the world within their apps.




Design for spatial interaction

Discover the principles for creating intuitive physical interactions between two or more devices, as demonstrated by Apple designers who worked on features for iPhone, HomePod mini, and AirTag. Explore how you can apply these patterns to your own app when designing features for Apple platforms, and…

Endel (pictured above) conjures up personalized and adaptive soundscapes based on biometrics and environment to help people focus and get better sleep. Its inaugural Spatial Audio soundscape — one with the satisfyingly otherworldly name of Spatial Orbit — brings the app’s remarkable mix of art and AI to a new dimension.

“It feels like you’re inside a vast, glittery space,” says Dmitry Evgrafov, Endel cofounder and chief sound officer. “It’s almost like the sonic equivalent of pointillism, where the small dots create a structure themselves and you kind of drown in the thing. It’s a very beautiful state, and it’s not something you can reproduce in stereo.”

Endel’s Spatial Orbit soundscape is “not something you can reproduce in stereo,” says cofounder Dmitry Evgrafov.

When bringing Spatial Audio into their ecosystem, the Endel team’s first task was determining if the technology was compatible with their ever-changing, generative soundscape. That job fell largely to Kyrylo Bulatsev, cofounder and chief technology officer. “[Spatial Audio] meant we had to add one more dimension to the non-static element,” he says. “Besides choosing what sound to play and when, we had to think about where the sound would be and how it would move around you.”

That soundscape also had to hit the “thin line between augmenting an experience and making it distracting,” Evgrafov says. That’s because while most apps (and games and movies and songs) are designed for active engagement, Endel aims to be a perfect background companion — enhancing your experience without pulling from your focus. “Our use case is different from other products that utilize the technology,” says Evgrafov (whom fellow cofounder Oleg Stavisky credits with “all the beautiful sounds in the app”).

It’s almost like the sonic equivalent of pointillism.

Dmitry Evgrafov, *Endel* cofounder and chief sound officer

A pianist and musician with 10 albums to his credit, Evgrafov certainly knows his way around stereo. “But randomization of the position of audio in the space? That’s a whole different beast,” he says.

The first serious prototype of Spatial Orbit was earthbound, set to a realistic jungle scene. “The idea was you’d walk around this magical Garden of Eden and exotic tropical animals would sing around you,” he says. “We had a harp playing by the water, a creek, birds that don’t exist in the real world, stuff like that.”

Similar ideas kept coming: a Gregorian choir that slowly shuffled past you while chanting, field recordings from inside a cave. Although the concepts were cool and the prototypes sounded great, the team kept running up against the same problem. “They weren’t Endel,” says Evgrafov. “They transported you to a place, but that meant people were using the app consciously. They didn’t match what we stood for.”

Like all of *Endel’s* soundscapes, Spatial Orbit soundscape changes with your biometrics, environment, and local time.

The final version of Spatial Orbit does match what Endel stands for — and achieves the synthesis of art and technology that Endel strives for. “The rain [in our soundscape] is almost metaphorical,” says Evgrafov. “It’s got this slightly augmented feel that allows you to just drown a little and be with your thoughts, focus on your book, or whatever you’re doing.”

Tweaking the soundscape was an adventure in itself. “Watching people test Endel is kind of a funny exercise,” laughs Stavitsky. That’s because there’s really not an established way to test an personalized auto-generated soundscape for a group of people all at once.

[The rain has] this slightly augmented feel that allows you to just drown a little and be with your thoughts, focus on your book, or whatever you’re doing.

Dmitry Evgrafov

“We invented the process and the toolset,” says Evgrafov. It involved a lot of people wandering Endel’s Berlin offices… and elsewhere. “It was also a lot of me in public spaces just staring at nothing, like a cat.”

In the end, Spatial Orbit captures that elusive mix of innovative technology and artistic resolve. “When we realized the science was there and that it still checked all the Endel boxes, it was a big relief,” says Evgrafov. “We thought, ‘OK, we can be non-intrusive and Spatial at the same time.’”

Download Endel from the App Store

Odio also focuses on creating great ambient soundscapes — but with a sci-fi twist. “I want our composers to imagine inventing planets and filling them up with sound,” says Joon Kwak, the app’s Seoul-based cofounder. “We want to walk people through these new planets.”

The app’s soundscapes, which can evoke anything from a crashing waterfall to a buzzy digital backdrop to the spooky calm of the deep sea, use head tracking and multichannel audio to create a truly mesmerizing mix. (The app is also a visual feast, with each soundscape accompanied by ever-shifting techno-tinged art.)

But you’re no passive listener in these audio realms. The individual elements that make up each soundscape can be manipulated through an imaginative, playful UI that lets you reposition each audio element (like that waterfall) anywhere you like.

*Odio*'s soundscapes evoke everything from nature sounds to buzzy digital environments — and each comes with gorgeous, ever-shifting art.

Befitting its futuristic feel, Odio’s backstory is one of serendipitous meetings, well-timed hardware and software releases, and a stroke of good fortune. Kwak conceived the app’s initial version as a graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Originally known as Virtual Sky, the prototype contained the bones of what would become Odio, but was largely grounded in real-world sounds. It also required a mess of hardware and special equipment — all of which was rendered pretty much irrelevant once AirPods with Spatial Audio arrived.

“I was depressed for a while,” laughs Kwak. “I was like, ‘I’ve been working on this for months, and now it’s pointless!’ But then I thought about it more deeply and realized, ‘Oh, this just means I don’t need to provide hardware,’ and it was actually great.”

Kwak partnered with Volst, a company that was interested in a 3D soundscape app. With the building blocks in place, Odio’s UI developer and designer, Rutger Schimmel, took on the challenge of bringing Kwak’s project to life — a process that went much faster than expected.

I want our composers to image inventing planets and filling them up with sound.

Joon Kwak, *Odio* cofounder

“We knew the AirPods had [surround sound] support, but we were skeptical,” he says. “We thought, ‘OK, they have head tracking, but it’s probably just for first-party stuff.’ But we were still excited, so we quickly set up an Xcode project to get the data from the AirPods to the device.”

They had a prototype up and running on the headphones within minutes. “We were blown away by how easy it was,” Schimmel says. “And in about an hour we decided on excellent 3D audio frameworks from Apple that were the perfect foundation for what we were working on.” Coding began in January. By April, the team had a Swift-built demo ready to go.

To build an Odio soundscape, composers like Kwak, Odio sound designer Max Frimout, and a team of outside musicians collaborate — generally in Logic Pro — by blending ambient sounds, synthetic bells and whistles, and music.

Odio’s composers create the soundscapes, but it’s up to you — and this clever UI — to place them where you like..

After the soundscapes are completed and duly field-tested in coffee shops, parks, and subways, the artists hand their files over to Schimmel. For a role that involves cutting-edge design, immersive audio, and incredible degrees of customization, Schimmel’s toolbox is surprisingly uncluttered: AVAudioEnvironmentNode (AVKit) for creating the 3D audio environment, CMHeadphoneMotionManager (Core Motion) to access headphone motion data, and Sentry for error tracking and QA.

“Everything else in Odio is created from scratch in Swift — from data management to interacting with soundscapes to real-time buffering the interactive sound files,” Schimmel says.

The result is a remarkable example of the power and simplicity of designing for Spatial Audio. “Honestly,” Schimmel says, “most of the hard work is done by the composer.”

Download Odio from the App Store




Discover geometry-aware audio with the Physical Audio Spatialization Engine (PHASE)

Explore how geometry-aware audio can help you build complex, interactive, and immersive audio scenes for your apps and games. Meet PHASE, Apple’s spatial audio API, and learn how the Physical Audio Spatialization Engine (PHASE) keeps the sound aligned with your experience at all times — helping…




Immerse your app in Spatial Audio

Discover how spatial audio can help you provide a theater-like experience for media in your apps and on the web. We’ll show you how you can easily bring immersive audio to those listening with compatible hardware, and how to automatically deliver different listening experiences depending on…



Explore Spatial Audio – Discover


Discover how you can bring a new dimension of sound to your apps and games with Spatial Audio. We’ll show you how you can easily bring immersive audio to listeners with compatible hardware, help you take advantage of the PHASE and Audio Engine APIs, and offer recommendations on tailoring your project’s experience to tell stories in new, exciting ways. We’ll also share how apps like Endel and Odio added Spatial Audio to deliver incredible sound.

Videos




Immerse your app in Spatial Audio

Discover how spatial audio can help you provide a theater-like experience for media in your apps and on the web. We’ll show you how you can easily bring immersive audio to those listening with compatible hardware, and how to automatically deliver different listening experiences depending on…




Discover geometry-aware audio with the Physical Audio Spatialization Engine (PHASE)

Explore how geometry-aware audio can help you build complex, interactive, and immersive audio scenes for your apps and games. Meet PHASE, Apple’s spatial audio API, and learn how the Physical Audio Spatialization Engine (PHASE) keeps the sound aligned with your experience at all times — helping…




Design for spatial interaction

Discover the principles for creating intuitive physical interactions between two or more devices, as demonstrated by Apple designers who worked on features for iPhone, HomePod mini, and AirTag. Explore how you can apply these patterns to your own app when designing features for Apple platforms, and…

Feature stories




Spotlight on: Spatial Audio

Learn how developers are creating immersive surround-sound experiences.




Behind the Design: Odio

Discover how this app conjures up its 3D soundscapes.

Resources

PHASE

Audio Engine



Apple invites Ted Lasso fans to “believe” with new Today at Apple session



The two-time Emmy Award-winning comedy series is returning to Apple TV+ on Wednesday, March 15, followed by new episodes every Wednesday through May 31. After its global debut on Apple TV+, Ted Lasso earned back-to-back Emmy Award wins for its freshman and sophomore seasons. It has also been recognized with an esteemed Peabody Award, a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series, and three Critics Choice Awards, sweeping all categories in which the series was nominated.

Ted Lasso stars Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso, an American football coach hired to manage a British soccer team — despite having no experience. But what he lacks in knowledge, he makes up for with optimism, underdog determination — and biscuits. The Apple Original comedy also stars Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed, Anthony Head, Toheeb Jimoh, Cristo Fernández, Kola Bokinni, Billy Harris, James Lance, and Juno Temple.

Viewers can catch up on seasons one and two of Ted Lasso, now streaming globally on Apple TV+ on the Apple TV app.



Developer Spotlight: Rootd – Discover


When Ania Wysocka started having panic attacks as a university student, she turned to the first resource she thought of. “My instinct was to look for an app that could explain what was happening to me,” she says.

But when the hypnosis and therapy apps she downloaded didn’t have what she was seeking, she decided to create Rootd, whose lo-fi vibe matches its simple mission: to demystify panic attacks and bring on-the-spot relief.

Rootd offers a primer in the biology of anxiety, as well as breathing tools, journal prompts, and guided visualizations narrated by Wysocka herself. “The whole concept of Rootd is to befriend your fear and face it head-on,” says the British Columbia–based creator.

We caught up with her to discuss her own history, the power of perseverance, and how she learned to build an app from scratch.

With robust resources and a cute blue monster, Rootd offers ways to help navigate anxiety.

With robust resources and a cute blue monster, Rootd offers ways to help navigate anxiety.

What’s your personal experience with panic attacks?

I was in my fourth year of university and hanging out at a friend’s house when I experienced my first one. My heart started racing and I felt overcome with feelings of doom. As a young, relatively healthy person, it was terrifying and confusing. My doctor said everything was OK with me. I said, “Then how do you explain what happened?” They were quick to move on to the next patient.

What did you do to track down the explanation?

I looked in academic journals, but they were all written in medical jargon and not very helpful. I ended up seeing a counselor and reading the work of Claire Weekes. She was one of the first doctors to say that panic disorder does exist, that in a panic attack you enter a cycle of fear in which you’re constantly expecting it to happen again. That resonated.

How did you figure out how to turn that insight into an app?

It was years after my first panic attack, when I’d collected enough information and started feeling much better, that I went for it. I’d thought through the wireframes, design, and marketing, but I definitely didn’t know the techie stuff. I worked with a developer I’d known from a former job; he knew the nuts and bolts of building an app. It took a lot of trial and error. It required a lot of perseverance. Things kept falling apart, and we needed to just rebuild.

After you launched Rootd, how did you get the word out?

You don’t actually need to spend millions of dollars putting ads on buses. My main marketing strategy early on was App Store optimization via keyword optimization, which I learned about by reading articles online. The keywords that go into the body of the product description are like gold. You want to make sure you’re using all the space you can as strategically as possible.

What was your intention behind the app’s relatively simple design?

When you’re in a state of distress, you don’t need flair. You need focused and simple. The big red button is called the Rooter. You know how a huge oak tree in a storm will barely move, while a plant in the ground can topple over? Our goal is to get you to be the oak tree, so you feel confident you can withstand everything coming at you.

Download Rootd from the App Store

Learn more about the App Store Small Business Program

Originally published on the App Store



App Store pricing upgrades have expanded to all purchase types – Latest News


In December, we announced the most comprehensive upgrade to pricing capabilities since the App Store first launched, including additional price points and new tools to manage pricing by storefront. Starting today, these upgrades and new prices are now available for all app and in‑app purchase types, including paid apps and one‑time in‑app purchases.

  • More flexible price points. Choose from 900 price points — nearly 10 times the number of price points previously available for paid apps and one‑time in‑app purchases. These options also offer more flexibility, increasing incrementally across price ranges (for example, every $0.10 up to $10, every $0.50 between $10 and $50, etc.).

  • Enhanced global pricing. Use globally equalized prices that follow the most common pricing conventions in each country or region, so you can provide pricing that’s more relevant to customers.

  • Worldwide options for base price. Specify a country or region you’re familiar with as the basis for globally equalized prices across the other 174 storefronts and 43 currencies for paid apps and one‑time in‑app purchases. Prices you set for this base storefront won’t be adjusted by Apple to account for taxes or foreign currency changes, and you’ll be able to set prices for each storefront if you prefer.

  • Regional options for availability. Define the availability of in‑app purchases (including subscriptions) by storefront, so you can deliver content and services customized for each market.

Get ready for enhanced global pricing updates in May

The App Store’s global equalization tools provide a simple and convenient way to manage pricing across international markets. On May 9, 2023, pricing for existing apps and one‑time in‑app purchases will be updated across all 175 App Store storefronts to take advantage of new enhanced global pricing. The updated prices will be globally equalized to your selected base country or region using publicly available exchange rate information from financial data providers. These price points will also follow the most common conventions in each country or region so that prices are more relevant to customers.

You can now update your current pricing to take advantage of the enhanced global pricing using App Store Connect or the App Store Connect API. If you haven’t made price updates for your existing apps and one‑time in‑app purchases by May 9, Apple will update them for you using your current price in the United States as the basis. If you’d like a different price to be used as the basis, update the base country or region for your apps or in‑app purchases to your preferred storefront. You can also choose to manually manage prices on storefronts of your choice instead of using the equalized price.

Learn how to select a base storefront

Learn how to set in-app purchase availability

Learn how to view the new pricing