Thank you for the additional info; I didn't know that PATs could be user-disabled.

I rudely forgot to upvote and select as answer, but better late than never. Thank you again

Thank you I wish Apple unified their documentation so there isn't an old archive that may or may not show up in search engines.

Hi Quinn, I get what you're saying, but that would mean my users would have to get two USB dongles and an ethernet cable as opposed to just using the USB cable they already own. This is complicated by the fact that devices with a Lightning port need to attach the USB dongle to a Lightning-to-USB adaptor. At this point I'm not looking for ways to implement a USB-to-USB connection using just a single USB cable--I just want to know if the system(s) involved permit this sort of direct connection.

Hi Quinn, Your understanding is largely correct, but I should've emphasized something in my earlier post: both generateGIF (containing CGImageDestinationFinalize) and generateAPNG don't work. From this I assumed there's some other factor at play other than my poor coding skills. Happy new year!

Thank you for the reply, but I wasn't able to read it in time to participate in any relevant lab. Is there another way to talk to an App Review Specialist or anyone other authority on the matter? I'm new to the App Developer Program (a few days old) and am willing to spend Code-Level Support tokens to get an answer.

Thank you very much for your time, Quinn; I hope you have a wonderful day.

Very much appreciated, Eskimo. One final follow-up; and this is related to a possible alternative I posted in my original question: If I have one device set up a hotspot, and have the other connect to it, would I be able to use the resulting network as though both devices are sharing an infrastructure Wi-Fi? Would it be a better fit for low-latency streaming using the Network framework as you suggested? I will take your suggestion and set up a few tests. Thank you kindly for your time.

I understand. To keep my app simple, I do not expect the devices to be connected to the same infrastructure Wi-Fi, i.e. neither device is shown as connected to any Wi-Fi network when their System Preferences is opened. I expect them to generate a local peer-to-peer connection, with the session being purely and directly between them. I apologize if I'm not clear with my terminology; I'm relatively new at this, even though I consider myself to be tech savvy. Your patience is appreciated.

Hi Eskimo, elated to elicit a response! I only care about local peer-to-peer for this specific use-case. Right now I'm playing around with the "Streaming an AR Experience" sample code to see if I can further lower the cross-streaming latency, but ideally it would be as if the two devices were actually one (which I wrongly assumed to be an easy goal since the devices would be right next to each other during the entire session). If two devices are communicating via Multipeer Connectivity (local p2p), is it possible for one of the devices to establish new, separate channels with other devices? These channels will be used for ultra-low-bandwidth activities.