At WWDC24, we had the opportunity to catch up with two amazing profiles in person to find out more about what motivates and drives them to develop apps with Apple.
In Conversation with Jiang Tongyu – Two time SWIFT Student Challenge Winner
18-year old Singaporean, Jiang Tongyu, is one of this year’s 50 Distinguished Winners in the global SWIFT Student Challenge – one of only 5 Singaporeans to win, but the only one to be lauded a Distinguished Winner. Having won the SWIFT Student Challenge in 2023, this is the first time Tongyu has been bestowed the Distinguished Winner title. Speaking with her at WWDC24, we learnt that her love for coding sparked from playing games on the iPad with her sibling when she was younger. Practicing for a talent show with her friends in school gave her the indescribable feeling of “being a part of something bigger”, and inspired her to create ‘Tambourine Story’. “Creating games bases on capturing a feeling is difficult and it is challenging to translate a one-dimensional feeling into a game”, quipped Tongyu when asked about what was most challenging about making game apps. Tongyu mentioned that she would want to further develop Tambourine Story into an app with longer gameplay after her ‘A’ Levels and launch it on the App Store.
In Conversation with Manon Dave – Chief Product Officer at Mindvalley
Mindvalley is a life transformation app that is focused on holistic wellbeing that brings episodic content and cutting edge techniques to the people. Touted the best of its kind in the world, Mindvalley teaches people the things that matter the most in life through the different aspects in the app that is intertwined with Apple’s ecosystem. With more than 2 million registered users across EMEA and Asia, Mindvalley taps on Apple’s technologies to bring a community-like experience to users.
“Authors (celebrity speakers) are accessible through Mindvalley’s in-person events, which is a differentiator to other apps out there”, mentions Manon, when talking about what sets Mindvalley apart in the industry. Manon shared that “Mindvalley developed a Day One Vision Pro app that brought fully immersive meditation through photo-realistic environments to Vision Pro users, hyper-realistic public speaking venues where Vision Pro users can practice public speaking, and episodic content in a shared immersive space where Vision Pro users can tap on SharePlay to watch content together across timezones while being together ‘in-person’.” when talking about coming up with a Day One Vision Pro app when it launched in 2023. Mindvalley plans to further develop its app in sync with the latest WWDC24 announcements to bring greater value to its users.
Chatting with these dynamic profiles at WWDC24 gave us a little peek into what to expect in the near future, and we’re excited to see what developers will come up with in tandem with the latest software updates across Apple’s ecosystem.
Check out our latest experience with Apple Vision Pro here.
