Welcome to DeveloperEconomics’ weekly news roundup. In this edition Oculus previews a new untethered headset, Cyanogen shifts business strategy to a modular OS program and online furniture store Wayfair releases its first API. Read on for the full news rundown.

Oculus working on cheap untethered headset

Oculus revealed plans to release an untethered VR headset during its developer conference last week. The new VR device is intended to sit between mobile and full PC experiences, without relying on a separate smart device, like Google Daydream. The device is currently in a prototype stage and Oculus has remained silent on a release date.

Cyanogen shifts to Modular OS program

Cyanogen has appointed a new CEO and says it will shift its business model toward a Modular OS program. The new Modular OS program gives developers more freedom to borrow from Cyanogen’s technology, removing the limitations of the full Cyanogen OS stack. The company previously admitted it was having difficulty scaling its userbase and laid-off 20% of its staff earlier this summer.

iOS 10 adoption outpacing all other iOS versions

iOS 10 is now installed on 66% of active devices, according to marketing firm Fiksu. The adoption of the latest version of Apple’s mobile OS has been faster than all previous versions, according to the company. A Fiksu representative said: “We’ve never seen this kind of acceleration in the adoption curve for an iOS upgrade.” Apple’s official numbers dispute Fiksu’s and claims the OS has reach 54% of devices.

Oculus introduces $499 VR-ready PC

Oculus showed-off an VR-ready PC costing just $499, during its developer summit last week. The rig meets new Oculus minimum requirements, enabled by asynchronous spacewarp technology, which lets 45 frames per second look like 90 frames per second. The new price point is half the cost of the VR-ready PC Oculus introduced last year.

WaveMaker enhances app tool API integrations

WaveMaker has updated its platform to allow enterprise devs to create hybrid mobile apps. The update supports integrations of apps on any stack, including Java, .NET, PHP, Python and Node.js. WaveMaker says its new platform also doesn’t require the deployment of server-side components, required to access data from systems independent of the technology stack.

Wayfair launches 3D model API

Online furniture retailer Wayfair has released its first API. The API gives developers access to over 10,000 “realistic” 3D furniture and décor models. Wayfair says it’s also working on its own VR and AR app that allows customers to view its catalogue of furniture in their own home.

NetBeans 8.2 releases ahead of Apache hand-off

Oracle has released version 8.2 of NetBeans. Version 8.2 is the last NetBeans release before the Java IDE leaves Oracle and becomes part of the Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator Project. New features include ECMAScript 6 support, Docker Support, PHP7 support and NodeJS enhancements.

Facebook open-sources Yarn, a JavaScript package manager

Facebook in collaboration with Exponent, Google and Tilde has open-sourced Yarn, a new Javascript package manager. Facebook are already using Yarn in production. It greatly improves speed compared to the official npm client and adds security by comparing checksums of the modules installed.

Visual Studio Code updated with TypeScript 2.0

Microsoft released version 1.6 of the code editor, bringing TypeScript 2.0 and more. Other improvements include Format on Save, Switch Windows (partially addresses this issue), search term history and more.

Facebook launches Workplace, enterprise social networking

Facebook has launched Workplace, an enterprise-focused messaging and social networking service. Workplace has chat, live video and audio calling, multi-emotional reactions and automatic translation services. Workplace has the Graph API for building custom integrations

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