In a move that will both demonize and delight Dolby in equal measure, Apple has just released its debut spatial audio format and related codec. While this is not Apple’s first rodeo in audio technology, this does mark the company’s first dedicated immersive audio codec, and it puts Apple squarely in the same sandbox as Dolby, along with some other former partners. Announced during a closed-door developer session at WWDC 2025, the new format – dubbed Apple Spatial Audio Format (ASAF) – is supported across the Apple ecosystem (tvOS, iOS, iPadOS, macOS), but its real playground is visionOS, where it will be the default for Immersive Video content. ASAF is compressed using the Apple Positional Audio Codec (unhelpfully abbreviated…