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Apple Launches Free Sports App in the US, UK, and Canada

Today, Apple introduced a new iPhone-only app called Apple Sports. The free app is available to download from the App Store in the US, UK, and Canada, and, as Apple describes it in its press release:

gives sports fans access to real-time scores, stats, and more. Designed for speed and simplicity, the app’s personalized experience puts users’ favorite leagues and teams front and center, featuring an easy-to-use interface designed by Apple.

Apple’s senior vice president of Services, Eddy Cue said:

We created Apple Sports to give sports fans what they want — an app that delivers incredibly fast access to scores and stats. Apple Sports is available for free in the App Store, and makes it easy for users to stay up to date with their favorite teams and leagues.

Go Devils!

Go Devils!

The app includes a long list of leagues that can be tracked by sports fans:

  • MLS
  • NBA
  • NCAA basketball (men’s and women’s)
  • NHL
  • Bundesliga
  • LaLiga
  • Liga MX
  • Ligue 1
  • Premier League
  • Serie A

Apple says others will be added over time as their seasons begin, including MLB, NFL, NCAAF, NWSL, and WNBA.

I’ve taken a quick look at Apple Sports, and the design is great. There’s a lot of information but it’s all easily accessible and laid out in an easy-to-understand way. The app also syncs with the My Teams feature of Apple News and Apple TV, pulling my Duke Blue Devils directly from those apps into the Sports app without me having to do anything, which is nice.

Magic Rays of Light: Constellation, Apple TV’s Report Card, and MLS Season Pass Returns

This week on Magic Rays of Light, Sigmund and Devon highlight new Apple Original space adventure series Constellation, recap Criminal Record, and preview the upcoming season of Major League Soccer on MLS Season Pass.

Show Notes

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Devon Dundee | Follow Devon on Mastodon or Threads

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Beautiful Things for Spatial Computing→

I came across this fun website while browsing the Vision Pro community on Reddit: beautifulthings.xyz is a curated collection of 3D USDZ files that you can download for free on any Apple device. On the Vision Pro, these models can be freely placed anywhere in your environment alongside other windows, allowing you to inspect up close, say, a Spider-Man model, a Lamborghini, or, should you feel like it, a first-gen iPod classic.

Here is, for instance, a screenshot of a nice-looking Italian pizza and a Hylian shield just floating around my living room:

Pizza and Zelda? Yep, that's me.

Pizza and Zelda? Yep, that’s me.

According to the website’s creator, more than 100,000 items have been uploaded to the site in the past week alone, and the developers are working on a curated daily feed to showcase the best objects you can view on a Vision Pro.

Fun project, well worth a few minutes of your time even just for opening 3D models of stuff you can’t afford in real life. I hope they’ll consider adding a search functionality next.

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Is Apple Collaborating with SongShift on Migrating Users to Apple Music?→

Speaking of Apple Music, Apple appears to be testing ways to migrate your music library and playlists from other streaming services to its own.

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac, reports on the discovery made by users of the Apple Music for Android beta on Reddit:

Now, Apple appears to be testing native integration with SongShift. According to users on Reddit, there is a new prompt in Apple Music for Android that asks users if they want to “add saved music and playlists you made in other music services to your Apple Music library.” There’s also a new option for doing this through Apple Music’s settings on Android.

SongShift is an excellent third-party app that we’ve covered over the years at MacStories. However, I’d be surprised if Apple winds up partnering with a third-party developer for this sort of new user onboarding experience instead of building a similar tool itself. Regardless of the direction Apple decides to take, a migration tool makes a lot of sense for anyone who is deeply invested in another service but is interested in trying Apple Music.

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Apple Music Replay Updated with Monthly Listening Statistics

Apple has updated its Replay website with monthly totals for top artists, albums, songs, and milestones, giving Apple Music listeners a reason to visit the site more than once a year. The update bears some similarities to the sort of monthly statistics available from sites like Last.fm, although less detailed.

Here’s what Apple had to say about the new features:

Once logged in [to Apple Music], users can check out their top songs, top albums, top artists, and milestones of the month, every month. They can also listen to their personal top songs chart of the year with their Replay Mix, which updates weekly.

The update extends the existing Replay site’s beautiful, interactive design. Selecting milestones provides additional details about the music you were listening to when you reach each one.

Currently, only January’s statistics are available. The site says February statistics will appear in early March. However, the monthly stats have been added for 2023, too, so you can browse last year’s musical obsessions as you wait for February’s. The deeper year-round statistics are a welcome addition to Replay. I still wish I could access all of this inside the Music app itself, but I love the new level of detail about my listening habits.

A Comprehensive Guide to Gaming on the Apple Vision Pro

The lack of any kind of port significantly limits the type of gaming you can do in the Apple Vision Pro – or does it? Sure, even one USB-C port would make a big difference to gamers looking to play titles outside the App Store, but there is a surprisingly wide array of ways to play almost any game on the Vision Pro with the help of a combination of apps and hardware. The solutions run the gamut from simple to complex and span a range of price points. I’ve tried them all and have pointers on how to get started.

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Six Colors’ ‘Apple in 2023’ Report Card

For the past nine years, Six Colors’ Jason Snell has put together an ‘Apple report card’ – a survey to assess the current state of Apple “as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple”.

The 2023 edition of the Six Colors Apple Report Card has just been published, and you can find an excellent summary of all the submitted comments along with charts featuring average scores for different categories here.

I’m happy that Jason invited me again to share some thoughts and comments on what Apple did in 2023. As you’ll see from my comments, I was very disappointed with the iPad – there was literally no new hardware last year and only minor changes in software – and more intrigued by what’s happening in macOS land. This, I think, will be a recurring theme on MacStories in 2024: as I move my workflow to the Vision Pro with the Mac as an accessory to it, I expect I’ll be using macOS a lot more as a result. In 2023, I was also very impressed with iPhone hardware, somewhat annoyed with the lack of changes to the AirPods line, and surprised by the updates in tvOS 17.

I’ve prepared the full text of my answers to the Six Colors report card, which you can find below.

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Vision Accessibility on Apple Vision Pro→

I have low vision. A kind you can’t really correct for with glasses or contacts. I also bought Apple Vision Pro at launch. Why would I do this? Well because I’m a nerd who wants to see the future, but also because I was fascinated to see how Apple would handle accessibility for this new product. Apple’s track record on accessibility in the past decade has been stellar, in my opinion, with their teams adding powerful options every year and ensuring every new platform has accessibility support built in from the start.

After watching Apple’s WWDC23 session on visionOS accessibility, I knew accessibility on visionOS was an important point for them. But even after consuming as much information on the platform as I could, I knew I had to try it for myself to know the answer to the important question: how well does it work for me?

Terrific overview of the Accessibility features of visionOS and Vision Pro by Zach Knox.

It’s no surprise to learn that Apple’s Accessibility team did some amazing work for this new platform too, but it’s impressive to see that on day one of the Vision Pro there are already dozens of Accessibility features and accommodations in place. And keep in mind that these are Accessibility options that work with Apple apps and third-party ones, right out of the box. This is the kind of ecosystem advantage and platform integration that newfound tech reviewer Zuckerberg probably forgot to mention in his video.

See also: Tom Moore’s story on trying the Vision Pro with one eye only, Peter Saathoff-Harshfield’s Mastodon thread, Shelly Brisbin’s story for Six Colors, and Ryan Hudson Peralta’s fantastic overview (via 9to5Mac) of using the Vision Pro without hands, which I’m embedding below.

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AppStories, Episode 371 – Exploring visionOS→

This week on AppStories, we move on from hardware to explore visionOS, where it hits, where it misses, and what we’d like to see in the future from the OS.

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On AppStories+, we discuss the developer strap and how it could potentially gain new features in the future, as well as the idea of using a headless Mac as a Vision Pro accessory.

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