> Apple told developers their existing iPhone and iPad apps would be made available to Vision Pro users automatically unless the developer edits their apps’ availability in App Store Connect. (…)
> Likely, many app developers are just allowing their existing apps to be ported over until the Vision Pro has a big enough user base to warrant the extra attention.
If the Mac App Store on Apple Silicon is any indication, many developers mays indeed allow their iOS apps to run, but they probably won’t be the ones you want the most.
I wonder if services like YouTube / Netflix / Spotify could work together to choke out / stifle the adoption of this or any new platform by deliberately choosing to not make their apps work on it
I would argue the opposite. This is just a much better TV. That’s what I will be using mine for, as a media consumption device.
The productivity/vr stuff is a new use case. It’s REALLY hard to get people to change their behavior. I’m sure I’m eventually be used for all kind of stuff like job training and whatever but at first, it’s just a 10x better screen.
It seems like that would only work for platforms where music, TV, and movies are central to why people buy it, like smart TVs or smart speakers. That doesn't seem true for a VR headset.
Only? That seems remarkable for this point in its lifecycle. It feels very much like there is still a product-market fit to be determined here and many app developers are likely still trying to determine how this new device fits with their product
Compared to when Apple announced the Ipad and it's SDK this is abysmal (percentage wise) even though its a niche market and not a lot of units will be sold. Apple is expecting developers to clamor to be an early adopter, but the developer and customer experience with Apple, the Apple tax and the approval process, future IP theft/similar products developer under the "Created by Apple", I think people feel its not worth the effort for a product that might flop with no games or killer apps. Right now it's a hands-free Ipad.
>I don't know what the first "wow" app was for the iPhone other than games?
It was that beautiful touch screen + real apps, namely email and a browser. Before that, the number of devices with an email client not controlled by BlackBerry and a full on browser was very small.
I think WHICH apps are designed for the Vision Pro will matter more than how many. I don’t know about other people, but I don’t care if Uber Eats exists on my VR headset, but I do care if Netflix and YouTube aren’t on it, especially if it costs like $4000 with taxes.
The wild speculation about the Vision Pro is kind of maddening. It hasn't launched yet, and it won't for over a week.
The articles about sales figures are equally crazy. No-one knows how many Vision Pro's Apple has sold, except Apple, and if they claim that they do, they are just pulling numbers out of thin air.
People writing these articles have zero intention of being accurate and entire attention to snagging clicks from the building hype. They don't care about anything so long as there is a quick buck to be made from fake claims
Most of the "apps" seem to be just watching video on the thing. It's mostly a desktop screen you can wear. There are only three apps listed that actually use VR/AR - What's the Golf, Super Fruit Ninja, and something called Game Room.[1]
It's still too clunky for wide use, like the last round of VR gear. Carmack wrote, after the Oculus debacle, that these things need to get down to swim goggle size to get any traction, and down to eyeglass size to go mainstream. He's probably not wrong.
I was expecting Apple to come up with something closer to the eyeglass form factor if they got into this area. Something like NReal's product in form factor, but higher resolution.[2] NReal's glasses look more like an Apple product than the actual Apple product.
I don't understand the form factor in this space. When walkmans were popular no one was trying to mount the tape decks to our heads. Couldn't they make some glasses that only had displays and run everything (battery, compute, etc) from a phone that was WIRED to the glasses?
No mattery how much advancement in microprocessor and display tech happens I'll never want the weight of a battery on my face. Heck, normal glasses are heavy enough without adding any extra bulk. So until medium range wireless power transmission that can be safely beemed at my head becomes a reality I think someone should work on optimizing a portable wired solution.
I agree mostly, but I've been pretty impressed by the Bigscreen Beyond. To me, that is more than small enough to be mainstream, but maybe that's just because I'm judging it by the amount of size/weight it dropped compared to Meta/Valve's offerings (acknowledging that their requirement for a personalised, 3D printed plate to be put on the front is fairly inelegant).
I think at that size, fully wireless is the chokepoint on further adoption.
I don't think that's particularly surprising to anyone. This is such an unproven platform, and no one is really risking market share or revenue by taking a "wait and see" approach to launching an app for a $3,500 device that will have extremely limited distribution to start.
What _is_ very disappointing here is that Apple hasn't invested much effort in making novel first-party apps for the Vision Pro. They should have seen this circumstance coming and been prepared with some creative powerhouse demonstrations of the power of the platform.
The most frustrating example to me is Maps. It looks to me like the Maps app for Vision Pro is literally the same as the iPad version - meaning, if you view a city or satellite photo in "3D" in Maps on Vision Pro, it will render a 3D projection onto a flat 2D "window" in AR space. What a huge missed opportunity for Apple to build an amazing experience.
Instead we get a bunch of dull productivity apps, and then "Experience Dinosaurs". With all of Apple's money, resources and creativity, it's pretty astonishing they didn't spin up 10 teams of 5 engineers each to build some other novel capabilities to ship on day 1.
On one hand there's that risk. On the other hand, Apple has a track record that seems to inspire commitment that few other companies can. If an app released early gains early success it may have significant longer term returns for an up-front risk. Since this is an unproven platform, early success will come with additional trust, which will further help chances that people will use your app later.
>The most frustrating example to me is Maps. It looks to me like the Maps app...
Can I ask sincerely here why this bothers you? To me the dominant use case for Maps is when I'm driving / traveling somewhere - and from what I can tell, I can't practically use this new device while driving or walking. Could there be a cool use case for "virtual travel" experience built on Maps? Sure - but good luck to whomever would spend $4000 on one of these for that entertainment.
Nobody’s going to buy it just for that, but Apple has some pretty good street view style imagery available that they could let you walk around in. I remember when I used to pull out my Vive for people they were wowed by the Google Earth app where you basically walked over kinda flat buildings, and I bet Apple could do way better than that.
(Shoot, maybe they should give the Apple TV screensaver team some 3D cameras and let them shoot some landscapes to walk around in. Still not worth $3K, but cool nonetheless)
Geez the downvoters have been out of control the past few days! Hey - whoever you are who has the heavy hand on the downvote button, maybe realize that some of us want to engage in real debate and critique and may even have differing opinions and ideas? The world is made a richer place when we respectfully engage with one another.
I use Apple Maps (and Google Maps) on my computer quite a bit. Planning travel, vacations, hikes, looking for restaurants or stores, curiosity about something I saw from a plane or while driving, etc.
> To me the dominant use case for Maps is when I'm driving / traveling
I used maps for these also, but most of the time I spend on/in maps is just exploring. E.g. read a news article about something happening somewhere? Open the place in a map and have a look around.
I mean, considering the thing's not out yet, I feel like 150 apps designed specifically for that hardware is pretty good.
Not to over-hype it, but the iPhone didn't have 3rd party app support at launch either.
I think a $3,500 price tag is laughable, as is the idea that it could replace an actual computer while still needing to be light enough for long-term use and run off a battery, but I'm sold on the AR thing.
What changed it for me was trying out the Meta Quest 3 and moving around panels in 3D space. And they'd stay there! As if they really existed irl! You could have as many "monitors" as you want (in practice).
Guessing this might be a bug with the emulator, but if it isn’t seems really weird. They’ve been present on the iPhone since soon after it launched in one form or another.
This device almost has a feeling like the phone Apple co-launched with Motorola back in the day… put something out there that kind of winks in the direction of where you are going. It primes the market and you get a lot of early feedback in a sandboxed way.
Geez the downvoters have been out of control the past few days! Hey - whoever you are who has the heavy hand on the downvote button, maybe realize that some of us want to engage in real debate and critique and may even have differing opinions and ideas? The world is made a richer place when we respectfully engage with one another.
In general the days of the App Store gold rush are long gone. The only ones making any real money from the ecosystem now are large corporations selling subscriptions/ads for their existing services and crapware games pushing microtransactions and/or fueling gambling addictions. I don't see how any independent developer could even be convinced to build for the Vision Pro. What return would they get for their time and effort? It's instead YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, Fortnite etc. that will decide its fate.
54 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] thread> Likely, many app developers are just allowing their existing apps to be ported over until the Vision Pro has a big enough user base to warrant the extra attention.
If the Mac App Store on Apple Silicon is any indication, many developers mays indeed allow their iOS apps to run, but they probably won’t be the ones you want the most.
The productivity/vr stuff is a new use case. It’s REALLY hard to get people to change their behavior. I’m sure I’m eventually be used for all kind of stuff like job training and whatever but at first, it’s just a 10x better screen.
That being said I don't know what the first "wow" app was for the iPhone other than games?
It was that beautiful touch screen + real apps, namely email and a browser. Before that, the number of devices with an email client not controlled by BlackBerry and a full on browser was very small.
Another platform means another thing you test and commit to supporting, and the Vision Pro is even more niche.
The articles about sales figures are equally crazy. No-one knows how many Vision Pro's Apple has sold, except Apple, and if they claim that they do, they are just pulling numbers out of thin air.
Most of the "apps" seem to be just watching video on the thing. It's mostly a desktop screen you can wear. There are only three apps listed that actually use VR/AR - What's the Golf, Super Fruit Ninja, and something called Game Room.[1]
It's still too clunky for wide use, like the last round of VR gear. Carmack wrote, after the Oculus debacle, that these things need to get down to swim goggle size to get any traction, and down to eyeglass size to go mainstream. He's probably not wrong.
I was expecting Apple to come up with something closer to the eyeglass form factor if they got into this area. Something like NReal's product in form factor, but higher resolution.[2] NReal's glasses look more like an Apple product than the actual Apple product.
[1] https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/01/22/apple-vision-pro-ap...
[2] https://us.shop.xreal.com/products/xreal-air
No mattery how much advancement in microprocessor and display tech happens I'll never want the weight of a battery on my face. Heck, normal glasses are heavy enough without adding any extra bulk. So until medium range wireless power transmission that can be safely beemed at my head becomes a reality I think someone should work on optimizing a portable wired solution.
I think at that size, fully wireless is the chokepoint on further adoption.
What _is_ very disappointing here is that Apple hasn't invested much effort in making novel first-party apps for the Vision Pro. They should have seen this circumstance coming and been prepared with some creative powerhouse demonstrations of the power of the platform.
The most frustrating example to me is Maps. It looks to me like the Maps app for Vision Pro is literally the same as the iPad version - meaning, if you view a city or satellite photo in "3D" in Maps on Vision Pro, it will render a 3D projection onto a flat 2D "window" in AR space. What a huge missed opportunity for Apple to build an amazing experience.
Instead we get a bunch of dull productivity apps, and then "Experience Dinosaurs". With all of Apple's money, resources and creativity, it's pretty astonishing they didn't spin up 10 teams of 5 engineers each to build some other novel capabilities to ship on day 1.
Can I ask sincerely here why this bothers you? To me the dominant use case for Maps is when I'm driving / traveling somewhere - and from what I can tell, I can't practically use this new device while driving or walking. Could there be a cool use case for "virtual travel" experience built on Maps? Sure - but good luck to whomever would spend $4000 on one of these for that entertainment.
(Shoot, maybe they should give the Apple TV screensaver team some 3D cameras and let them shoot some landscapes to walk around in. Still not worth $3K, but cool nonetheless)
I used maps for these also, but most of the time I spend on/in maps is just exploring. E.g. read a news article about something happening somewhere? Open the place in a map and have a look around.
e.g. https://www.google.com/maps/place/63%C2%B050'40.6%22N+22%C2%...
Not to over-hype it, but the iPhone didn't have 3rd party app support at launch either.
I think a $3,500 price tag is laughable, as is the idea that it could replace an actual computer while still needing to be light enough for long-term use and run off a battery, but I'm sold on the AR thing.
What changed it for me was trying out the Meta Quest 3 and moving around panels in 3D space. And they'd stay there! As if they really existed irl! You could have as many "monitors" as you want (in practice).
Guessing this might be a bug with the emulator, but if it isn’t seems really weird. They’ve been present on the iPhone since soon after it launched in one form or another.
Why on earth is everyone so mad that Apple didn't drop the Apple Tax? The court said they didn't have to.
Such a weird disinformation bubble around this issue.
I want one, but if it sticks I can see a world where an AI persona is giving me a personalized layoff message in 10 years time.