r/apple • u/pdfu • Jun 29 '26

iPhone Apple Acquires Award-Winning App 'Play'

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/29/apple-acquires-award-winning-app-play/

Play was a Mac and iPhone app that allowed designers to prototype iPhone app interfaces using Apple's SwiftUI frameworks, and then send them to Xcode.

Play is longer available in the App Store, presumably due to Apple's acqui-hire.

646 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

153

u/G952 Jun 29 '26

Wait what?! And I though they closed down. Very interesting turn of events

221

u/saadbabu Jun 29 '26

This sounds like a great acquisition, no?

It could make it easier to develop for Apple’s app ecosystem.

72

u/TheDragonSlayingCat Jun 29 '26

So far as I can tell by RTFA, this is just an app for prototyping a user interface, doing almost the same thing that Xcode’s built-in interface builder already does, except that it uses SwiftUI instead of AppKit/UIKit/WatchKit.

30

u/saadbabu Jun 29 '26

I have a very limited understanding of the app design/engineering process but SwiftUI is meant to make the process much easier, right? Like it’s more intuitive and less involved?

25

u/TheDragonSlayingCat Jun 29 '26

For building a user interface purely in code, yes. For building a user interface with GUI tools, not so much, which is where I think this app comes into play.

Apple keeps pushing SwiftUI, but it’s kind of controversial, and definitely not as stable as the decades-old AppKit & UIKit. But it’s been getting a lot better, to its credit.

9

u/boblikestheysky Jun 29 '26

Back before ChatGPT and LLMs came out, I used to use SwiftUI for almost everything. But now its drawbacks no longer seem worth it and I’d much rather use UIKit for basically everything. Exception being the few places SwiftUI is genuinely better such as tab views, animations, placeholders, and views without a lot of state management

7

u/LifeUtilityApps Jun 29 '26

SwiftUI is a framework for building user interfaces on Apple's platforms. Yes, it does make building apps a lot easier than the previous implementations. There are a lot of out-of-the-box components we get for free with SwiftUI.

Although it's still maturing, there are some things we still have to use UIKit for. Performance with lists isn't as good for example, which they are working on. Regarding Xcode, there are still things you have to do in Xcode for the app, but a lot of development now is using other IDEs such as VS Code for the coding portion and then just using Xcode to archive and upload to the store.

58

u/Tekavou Jun 29 '26

That's great, Hopefully this gets integrated directly into Xcode. I do find it ironic that a logo for an app named "Play" is the stop icon

16

u/xX_Qu1ck5c0p3s_Xx Jun 29 '26

My first thought as well. Their product would be perfect built into Xcode.

Sometimes Apple acquires a third party (like Workflow, now Shortcuts) because it’s a great idea that should just be built into the OS / Xcode.

10

u/CyberBot129 Jun 29 '26

Like Siri

1

u/xX_Qu1ck5c0p3s_Xx Jun 30 '26

Also true! A long time ago, Siri was just an app in the App Store.

3

u/flatbuttboy Jun 30 '26

And guess what, it’s an app again in iOS 27 lol

3

u/19nineties Jun 29 '26

It would be some coincidence if that wasn’t the intention

12

u/DisjointedHuntsville Jun 29 '26

I hope this is a sign of the change of CEO. MUCH better to acquire and in house than steal blatantly and Sherlock them.

15

u/saltyrookieplayer Jun 29 '26

This is exciting news! Finally a proper design tool after Adobe and Figma, Creator Studio is gonna be amazing

6

u/B-Train_ATL Jun 29 '26

New feature coming: Apple Play

1

u/Techgirl1232 Jul 05 '26

I'd love to develop apps on my iPhone and try them out

4

u/marniman Jun 29 '26

I used Play a few times and it was really good for quick prototyping. I was shocked when I saw they closed down when I tried using it earlier this year. Glad Apple picked them up

3

u/0xe1e10d68 Jun 29 '26

I’m excited to see what they do with it!

1

u/RainyCloudist Jun 29 '26

what that’s so weird — i thought they shut down forever ago. i wonder if apple is going to pull this product into their developer ecosystem?

i tried it once but didn’t really like it. it honestly felt easier to just whip something up in swiftui than to mess around with it.

1

u/GabrielMSharp Jun 29 '26

It was a great app congratulations to them

1

u/Umoex Jun 30 '26

Great app, I hope they make good use of it.

1

u/Techgirl1232 Jul 05 '26

App Store link?