The first screenshots and videos of apps being built for Vision Pro show just how easy it is to port iOS apps to Apple’s upcoming augmented reality headset.

Apple just released the visionOS software development kit last Wednesday, and already people are refitting their iPhone apps for Apple’s new mixed-reality platform and sharing the results online.

The apps include Broadcasts, which lets you tune in to internet radio and livestreams — and leave a little Now Playing window anywhere in your virtual space. With cooking app Crouton in visionOS, you can place timers all around your kitchen. And Tasks, a powerful to-do app, works exactly as it does on your Mac and iPhone.

In my opinion, this is what will ultimately make visionOS succeed where similar mixed-reality platforms failed: It builds heavily on the same technologies that underpin iOS. If you can build an iPhone app, you can build a Vision Pro app.

Here’s a gallery of what some popular indie apps look like running on Vision Pro.

This post is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of Mac app subscription service Setapp.

One of the amazing benefits of selling software on the internet is that you can reach customers from all over the world. So why would you cut out a huge potential market just by assuming everyone who wants to use your product speaks English?

In fact, ignoring other markets can be one of the biggest marketing oversights software companies make.

This post is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of Setapp.

As indie developers, we can get too caught up in how things work — what features our product has, what users can do with it. It often seems like if we can just explain how our product works, everyone will become a devoted user.

We spend lots of time pulling together onboarding videos and tutorials. But there’s a whole other front in the battle of promotion and conversion: making an emotional connection between a potential user and your product and brand.

Cult of Mac is at WWDC and AltConf, fishing for ProTips. The world’s biggest gathering of Apple developers is a rich hunting ground filled with alpha geeks, experts par excellence. What’s a ProTip? A ProTip is a nugget of knowledge, a little bit of expertise from someone in the know — a pro.

SAN FRANCISCO — Designers can be a picky bunch, always ready to pick apart a colleague’s creation or slap down an idea with some withering snark.

But interaction designer Dave Wiskus is prescribing an attitude adjustment for his fellow creative types, especially those who seem to be engaged in some sort of bitchy competition to come off as the smartest person in the room.

“Just say no to cynicism,” he said Thursday during his talk at AltConf here. “It’s the enemy of everything.” (You’ll also want to avoid irony, sarcasm and passive aggression, which Wiskus called “gateway drugs” that can lead to full-on cynical addiction.)