What It’s Really Like to Build Vision Pro Apps Today

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Matt Hoerl is a designer building things that feel inevitable once they exist. He founded Beautiful Things in 2024, a studio crafting AI native spatial experiences for the Apple Vision Pro. His visionOS apps have been globally featured by Apple Editors and selected as “Best in Education” and “Best in Design.” In this conversation we look at:
His impressions about WWDC and what it unlocks for developers and users
We went to the moon to experience Beautiful things
Several ways in which the team has implemented AI in their apps
The second biggest wish Matt wants from Apple

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CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST
💼 Linkedin:   / matthew-hoerl  
🔗 Website: https://www.beautifulthings.xyz/
BT Template: https://github.com/augmenos/Beautiful...
Pathways: https://developer.apple.com/visionos/...
Tom’s Github of visionOS resources: https://github.com/tomkrikorian/aweso...

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CONNECT WITH ME
🐤X (Twitter):   / gabroxr  
💼 Linkedin:   / gabriele-romagnolixr  
🔗Link-in Bio: https://beacons.ai/gabroxr

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PAST EPISODES
🎙️Show Website: https://www.xraispotlight.com/
🟢Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7HLkRmF...
🍎Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:44 WWDC Highlights
05:01 Persistent Objects & Widgets
11:04 Social Presence in Virtual Space
13:00 Exploring the Beautiful Things App
17:28 File Size & Optimization Benchmarks
20:00 Developer Experience on VisionOS
22:50 Is Building for Vision Pro Worth It?
25:33 Adding AI to 3D Objects
28:00 Talking Objects & Character Intelligence
31:07 Monetization
33:27 Gaussian Splatting
40:20 Advice for New VisionOS Developers
43:05 Resources, Open Source & Collaboration
45:16 Future Devices
47:45 Final Thoughts