Over 1.5 million more are compatible for Apple's headset. Apple announced there are now over 1,000 apps, designed specifically for Vision Pro. The...
Apple announced there are now over 1,000 apps, designed specifically for Vision Pro. The announcement came from Greg Joswiak, Senior VP of Marketing at Apple, who also added there are over 1.5 million compatible apps for the headset.
The apps are available in a dedicated visionOS App Store, and there have been over 600 available since day one, which was 12 days ago. Some key platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify said they will not develop a dedicated app, though, and users have to use the services through the Safari browser.
The Google-owned video service later changed its stance and revealed a Vision Pro app is “on the roadmap”. Some say YouTube did a full 180 after seeing the success of the headset, but there is also a chance of missed royalties after a third-party app is already gaining track, and users are paying $5 for it.
Interestingly the $/£5 YouTube app being referenced in the article was whipped up by Christian, the dev of Apollo for Reddit. A post on his website details how’s he managed to get a relatively custom UI and video player using what appears to be browser extensions and the YouTube public API.
I don’t see these ever getting cheaper than a smartphone, and probably a flagship smartphone at that. I think it will be a major blocker for adoption outside of niche contexts and tech bros’ homes.
It just depends on how many people buy them. Personally, I think VR has reaches its critical mass for users. Without some sort of major changes to the tech, most people who want a headset already have one and those that don't have probably considered one and figured it's not for them. This is one of the boldest business decisions Apple's made in a decade+ and I can't say I see the rationale behind it other than "we have a trillion dollars and can R&D whatever we want"
How many of these are productivity rather the 'content consumption'. I doubt people will actually get any work done on it. Sure, you can mirror your screen and work on a mountain-top, but that's not much of a use-case and would get old quick.
Interestingly, I checked the App Store last night to see if anything new and interesting was there and found one app that I hadn't seen previously. I didn't check sports apps or a couple of other categories. If there's over 1k built for AVP (rather than iPad apps that are allowed to run on it), they're hiding them well.