Good Morning! Apple's new visionOS spatial computing platform promises exciting opportunities for developers, but faces adoption challenges. Meanwhile, Linux creator Linus Torvalds unleashed trademark blunt criticism towards a Google engineer over a technical disagreement, despite aiming to improve his communication style. And code editor Zed is now fully open source, with developer collaboration channels, as its company pursues a blended business model.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

A Dev Perspective on Apple Vision Pro

Apple's new platform, visionOS, is opening up a universe of opportunities for developers to create immersive spatial experiences.

One such team is behind the inventive puzzle game Blackbox, which has been rebooted for visionOS. Another is Halfbrick Studios, which has reimagined its popular game Fruit Ninja for the infinite canvas of Apple Vision Pro. The team behind the djay app also shares their experience, stating that Apple Vision Pro represents "the culmination of everything" for their app.

Developers can apply for an Apple Vision Pro developer kit to quickly build, test, and refine their apps, ensuring they deliver amazing spatial experiences in visionOS. Apple also offers direct support to developers, providing information about upcoming events, testing opportunities, and other programs to support the creation of incredible experiences for this platform.

However, the transition to this new platform has a lot of challenges. Some developers have expressed concerns about the size of the platform and whether it will attract enough users to justify the investment. There are also questions about whether developers will be able to seamlessly switch between projects for the iPhone and Vision Pro, or if it will create separate platforms requiring specific knowledge.

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Linus Torvalds Flames Google Kernel Developer Over Filesystem Suggestion

Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently unleashed a fiery email rebuke towards Google developer Steven Rostedt over a disagreement regarding filesystem inodes. The debate centered around whether inode numbers, which act as unique identifiers for filesystem metadata, should be handled uniformly across all files and directories.

Torvalds argued strongly against Rostedt's proposal to make all inodes have unique numbers, claiming it would overcomplicate things and that inodes are no longer as vital on modern filesystems. He accused Rostedt of failing to understand the core reasons behind certain VFS layer functions related to inodes and copying code without grasping why it works the way it does, calling Rostedt's suggested approach "garbage."

The heated exchange stood out for its intensity and abrasive tone, reminiscent of Torvalds's past criticized public commentary that led him to take a break in 2018 and apologize. While Rostedt acknowledged not fully comprehending the context around inodes, Torvalds did provide specific technical feedback on better ways to handle the issue going forward.

In a likely reference to the stress the clash placed on Torvalds, Rostedt later noted the irony of putting off work on a document regarding maintainer burnout to debate inode minutiae. However, Torvalds quickly moved on, announcing the Linux 6.8-rc2 release and expecting hits on stability bugs to taper off.

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Zed Code Editor Now Fully Open Source

Zed, the advanced code editor built by Zed Industries, has just been open sourced under GPL and AGPL licenses. This means the core editor and server-side components are now available for developers to view, modify, and redistribute.

The UI framework powering Zed, called GPUI, has also been open sourced under the Apache 2 license. This allows it to be used in commercial applications without copyleft restrictions.

In the spirit of openness and community building, Zed Industries is launching a new collaboration feature called Zed Channels for real-time coding and chat. They will use Channels to host live hacking sessions called "Fireside Hacks" where anyone can join to code on Zed together. This transparent development model will give developers insight into Zed's progress.

While the code is now fully open, Zed Industries plans to sustain itself by offering proprietary services and products integrated with the open source editor, such as private Zed Channels and server-side compute for AI features. They believe this commercial model need not conflict with the open ecosystem.

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TypeScript 5.4 Beta Announced with Helpful Improvements

TypeScript 5.4 beta was recently announced, bringing several helpful improvements for developers. A key enhancement is preserved narrowing in closures following last assignments. This allows TypeScript to leverage control flow analysis for more precise types in nested functions.

For example, in the past, TypeScript couldn't safely narrow types in closures if the variable was mutated. Now it checks if the mutation happens after the last assignment.

Additional highlights include the NoInfer utility type to disable unwanted type inferences, Object.groupBy and Map.groupBy declarations, better require() call support, checked import attributes and assertions, a quick fix for adding missing parameters, and breaking changes around constraints and intersections.

5.4 will be the last version before 5.0 deprecation targets like target: ES3 become errors. So if using those, plan to update code.

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Apple is Quietly Buying AI Companies

Apple has quietly been acquiring AI companies, showing a pretty clear dedication to developing AI technology. Despite Siri’s begin really bad right now, Apple has been making significant efforts behind the scenes to improve its AI functionality. The company has been working on generative AI, on-device machine learning, and privacy-focused conversational AI, signaling a major update for Siri in the upcoming iOS 18.

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