the inside of the Steam Machine is just as compact as the Xbox Series X in an even smaller cube. The GabeCube, if you like

Steam boasts a 60M-strong playerbase, with 20–40M concurrent players at any one time. For context, somewhere around 30M is the number of Xbox Series X/S consoles that have been sold. It kinda boggles the mind you haven't been able to go somewhere and buy a […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

I really like the swappable face plate on Valve's new Steam Machine /via https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

Valve is providing developer kits for its new standalone SteamOS VR headset, Steam Frame /via https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe

The Steam Deck was just the beginning. Valve is getting serious about putting SteamOS everywhere

BREAKING: This is the Steam Machine, Valve’s new living room game console. Valve is about to challenge Xbox and PlayStation with a PC-based game console, a brand-new Steam Controller, and the new Steam Frame gaming headset. Full details 👇 www.theverge.com/tech/818111/...

I think the writing is on the wall for Bungie, with Destiny falling off a cliff and Marathon, being, well, Marathon. In the time since the original Destiny, most big studios have moved away from in-house game engines and custom tooling, not least because teaching new hires to use it all is a […]

Anybody using an M-series iPad Pro with iPadOS 26.2 beta 1 and an external display? I got a response to a couple of my radars suggesting Control Center (and the Game Mode overlay) should now work on external displays, but I couldn't reproduce in the simulator. I wonder if it's a beta 2 thing?

Apple's immersive aircraft carrier flight deck video is mildly interesting, but it's so entirely obviously US Air Force propaganda. I don't feel like I learned anything from it; there's barely any flight time, and most of the air footage is from sweeping drone shots of the Nimitz

This era of Apple is exemplified by them taking the $29-for-six iPod socks, slapping a designer brand on them and selling them for $200 each

Cathay wave 2! Give me all of them https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/04ptonsp/world-championships-preview-defend-the-great-bastion-with-peasants-astromancers-and-really-loud-guns/ #warhammercommunity

The new LEGO Enterprise 1701-D is gorgeous. I'm not one for the Star Wars display sets, but this gets me going (Definitely not this music though)

You know, apps with In-App Purchase could do with a nutrition label of some kind on the App Store. 'Can be used without signing in to account' 'Provides a time/features-based sample experience' So many 'free' apps provide jack shit out of the box

Apple's going to remove Apple Watch's ability to 'connect to known [WiFi] networks' in the EU, rather than follow the law (which says this should be extended to third-party devices). Some outlets are already reporting this as 'WiFi sync' being removed, which I don't think is the case […]

We all know the Logitech Muse exists only because Apple had a spec for a Pencil/Marker for the Apple Vision Pro, but was completely unable to develop and ship the product in time for the second-gen model launch and had to ask one of their partners to take the leap of faith for them, right?

Looks like the Logi Muse is fully supported by PencilKit in visionOS 26.2, working with both visionOS and iPad apps. It goes from being compatible with nothing to compatible with everything. I don't know what either Apple or Logi were thinking putting this product on the shelves already when […]

All priority inbox email systems mean is 'you're going to miss real emails, all the time', be it Gmail, Apple Mail, AI or otherwise. And you're never going to be able to know whether it has happened, so how could you ever trust it?

visionOS 26.2 marks a bunch of the Apple Pencil APIs as now available on visionOS. So either Logi Muse is going to actually support PencilKit, or Apple has Pencil (or Marker) support in the works

PSA: from what I've seen, Xcode 26.1 ignores your minimum deployment target for visionOS apps, and sets it to 26.1. Re-setting it to the intended version does seem to work. Saw this across a bunch of my projects. I haven't checked if it does this for iOS or other platforms, but that's a nasty […]

It's fun how App Store Connect still calls visionOS 'xrOS'

⭐️ Updated my visionOS 'Safari Tab Bar' sample code to use the new custom hover effects introduced in visionOS 2.0, so the address bar now expands when you look at it (something impossible in earlier versions of the OS) #samplecode https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/SafariTabBar

⭐️ New sample code: VisionImmersiveDockableUIKit "This is a simplified example showing how to spawn a fully immersive scene using UIKit and UIHostingSceneDelegate in visionOS 26. Additionally, it demonstrates using private API to dock the main window in the immersive scene, in a similar way to […]

FB20908229 — [visionOS] Please provide an API to allow window docking for UIKit window scenes #radars

FB20906757 — [visionOS] ImmersiveSpace does not register properly in UIHostingSceneDelegate and can't be invoked #radars

Hey Apple/visionOS/SwiftUI folk: is it right that ImmersiveSpace does not function from inside a UIHostingSceneDelegate rootScene body? I get "No Immersive Space presenting type 'Swift.String' is defined" (same for the 'id' initializer). I was hoping to add […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

We went to a couple of halloween parties this week, and there was one constant: nobody has ever heard of iPhone Air. Even people who had upgraded to the 17 or 17 Pro series. Everybody wanted to see, hold the Air, and a number of them said they would have picked the Air had they known about it […]

FB12487424 — [visionOS] Please expose 3D position/z-depth, 3D transform to UIKit views Re-upping this radar filed on *beta 1* of visionOS in 2023 that never got a reply. So I added a sample project #radars

It might be just me, but Xcode 26.1 seems to have thrown a grenade into the visionOS build process. Getting things to build with the right deployment targets and the correct images in the assets catalog is a mess

Widget development is just as frustrating on visionOS as it is on iOS, it seems. Why there isn't some developer-level 'refresh and reindex all widgets' button, I will never understand

Anybody got any interesting visionOS TestFlights running? I'm unable to buy paid apps 'cause of the unsupported country situation, but I do want to check out a bunch of stuff to help understand the platform

Back from the Louvre 👀

Fun fact: visionOS 26 (finally) added the ability for UIKit apps to spawn volumetric and immersive scenes, and SwiftUI window groups. See UIHostingSceneDelegate, and 'What's new in UIKit' from WWDC25

FB20879658 — Podcasts on visionOS does not have eye-tracking highlights for chapter selection

@stroughtonsmith I worked at Dropbox on Mac CI (fairly recently still), there's so few resources there to work on the core app for currently supported platforms let alone add one that would have next to no users. Chicken and the egg is real. It's especially real for companies that need to […]

Somebody remind me whose visionOS app I need to install to see my spatial persona in a window

Logi Muse, the stylus announced for Vision Pro, doesn't work like an Apple Pencil at all. You can't interact with UI, you can't draw in PencilKit apps, you can only use it in apps specifically updated to support it. That makes it an easy avoid for now. It feels like a prototype of a […]

The new highly-detailed Personas on Vision Pro are based on gaussian splatting, which is the first time I've heard the phrase from Apple. As I've said before, gaussian splats are gonna drive all kinds of amazing new things. Just wait till Apple starts using it for Maps… […]

Today I received an incredible surprise care package containing a 1TB Apple Vision Pro (M2), official case, weighted ResMed dual strap, and developer strap, all for which I am incredibly thankful. 🤯 Finally, after 2 years, I will be able to dive in to […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

The Mac Catalyst equation would change dramatically if the Mac gains a touchscreen and Mac apps need to support both mouse and touch modes, and transition between them at runtime. Maybe this is why you start building all your pro apps for iPad — because you know someday future Mac versions will […]

I sure wouldn't mind paying a single subscription price to access all of Apple's pro apps across all platforms. I'm currently subbed to FCP for iPad, and paid god-knows-what for Final Cut Pro/Studio over the years on the Mac

As an iPad user who has been used to years of abandonment, suddenly seeing the platform get so much action is a little bewildering 😅 It's like we spent 15 years slowly climbing to the top of the rollercoaster, and soon we'll be in free-fall @viticci

I don't know what Apple's plans are for Pixelmator, but iPad needs a true Photoshop and Adobe is unable to deliver. I wish Apple would invest in their pro apps and do the highest-possible-quality photo editing, vector illustration, and desktop publishing for the platform. Not baby apps. Real […]

Keep going and do Xcode https://mastodon.social/@daringfireball/115447175725037606

Microsoft has been trying to put Windows on new form factors now for 30 years, and every single time it's been a career-ending disaster. Nobody wants Windows on a console; exhibit A: that trainwreck of a handheld they just released […]

If you're missing the WWDC days of yore (and I mean pre-iPhone era), go take a look at how Apple's developer days content is going. Even has (pre-canned) Q&A with presenters, and @settern is a great host. It's the most human I've seen Apple in years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leGqoF8HJxU

Bloody hell, this year's Golden Demon has some incredible entries — the standard has gone through the roof and is now in space #warhammercommunity #warhammer https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/n4tadgwz/golden-demon-2025-winners-at-spiel-essen-revealed/

Not being a student of history, I didn't know all that much about the French Revolution, especially the timescales involved. It took less than ten years for France to relapse and revert to having a king again (Napoleon)? And a further 70 years before it shifted to a democracy? That's a […]

A full 60% of that Napoleon movie* is dedicated to portraying him as a rampant sex pervert and weirdo cuck with mommy issues 😅 I don't think the writers hold the French in high regard either… (*I did indeed watch the extended cut)

FB20829360 — Files/SpringBoard does not let you put an app container or iCloud container folder into the Dock #radars