EDIT: See cma's comment below which adds more info: apps that use their own render still support foveated rendering too.
All of this is: Apple taking further control of the experience.
This seems prudent, because as personal as smartphones are, a headset like the Vision Pro dials that up tenfold. Considering what third parties have done with just the information surfaced in mobile operating systems, or heck even the web, I shudder to think of what they'd do with gaze data and a high fidelity color 3D map of your surroundings.
In this particular case I think perhaps a better approach would be to allow apps to bypass App Store restrictions so long as their source code is public and binaries match that code. This would naturally deter those with shady intentions, allow FOSS projects to thrive, allow both manual and automated third party vetting of apps, and help users better know what they're getting into.
(source: "Discover Metal for immersive apps - WWDC23 - Videos - Apple Developer " https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10089/)
If they try to hide it by restricting access to reading the foveation texture, you can be sure anti privacy apps like Immersive Facebook will try tricks like recovering it from GPU timestamp queries (render two transparent triangles covering the screen in separate draw calls, find which took the longest, subdivide and repeat).
A restriction for which I am thankful.
>Vision Pro is destined to keep being a toy fully steered by Apple.
I trust Apple a lot more than I trust the "let's figure out how to fingerprint users based on how they scroll and other metrics and use it to sell ads" crowd.
>You can't access eye tracking,
A restriction for which I am thankful.
>so say good bye to foveated rendering.
Vision Pro does foveated rendering.
The Vision Pro does not provide foveated rendering if you do not go through the Apple renderer. There's some extremely vague wording regarding Metal supporting it, without any API documentation out.
Apple isn't telling me that I can't be trusted. Apple is telling me that it's a stupid idea to trust third-party developers with unfettered access to my data, and they're not even a little bit wrong. This has been happening at least since the "Foursquare is uploading and storing every user's contacts" fiasco well over a decade ago.
> Now can the adults use their devices?
Of course. Feel free to bring to market your wonderful headset that allows VC-funded startups to create a never-ending torrent of privacy hellscape diarrhea apps you can enjoy until they implode.
>The Vision Pro does not provide foveated rendering if you do not go through the Apple renderer. There's some extremely vague wording regarding Metal supporting it, without any API documentation out.
That's because the API has yet to be released to developers. Perhaps you can wait until it is to get your mouth all frothy, sunshine.
You do realise you're describing 99% of the iOS app store here right?
In fact, while the Android app store is curated in an even worse manner, I find that Android does offer a lot more high-quality ad-free open source software on platforms like F-Droid. Because the iOS developer subscription makes it hard for FOSS developers to do their work for free so things become more monetised.
I do. And I also realize how much worse it'd be if Apple didn't gate user data behind OS-level user consent dialogs.
It's third party devs doing that, not Apple. They've proven themselves unworthy of trust more times than can be counted. Where there is room for abuse, abuse will happen. We might be numb to it, but it happens all the time on desktop operating systems. Examples include Adobe putting files in corners of the system it has no business touching, practically every modern AAA game installing rootkits and scanning our filesystems, and until just a few years ago Dropbox installing a kernel extension on macOS.
The only devs that deserve any trust are FOSS devs but there isn't good FOSS software for every use case.
Is there any headset that does allow this currently? Doesnt seem like any kind of differentiating factor
The Vision Pro is pretty much the only one that doesn't, because Apple thinks of their users as children.