Apple’s Vision Pro The mixed reality headset is coming to the real world on February 2nd, and all the reviews so far have shown it to be a huge set of contradictions. He is capable, but clumsy. Powered but tied to battery. Exciting, but so, so expensive.
Perhaps most importantly, it’s a device that Apple praises for its software potential, but the company’s demos of the Vision Pro so far reveal that it will feature a small number of compatible apps at launch. That’s a big deal for an Apple product, whose predecessors — like the iPhone — owed much of their success to the app ecosystems that flourished around them.
“It’s amazing technology, but it’s also very clearly a development kit,” AR/VR developer Brielle Garcia said in an email to WIRED about the Vision Pro. “The price is too high for consumers, and there are no real applications for them yet.”
The Vision Pro costs $3,499 for the base model, and that doesn’t include accessories like prescription lenses or a carrying case. And while the Vision Pro is highly anticipated, it enters a sluggish market for VR headsets. It also comes at a time of bad blood between Apple and its developers, with the company increasing fees for out-of-app purchases. All this creates an undesirable environment for Vision Pro applications.
One developer, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern that Apple might blacklist his company, says the excitement about developing something for the Vision Pro faded once they realized the device’s limitations. “These are the headphones we’ve been waiting for a long time. When the shine wore off, I mean, we had a lot of questions.”
It didn’t help that, in their experience, Apple didn’t really encourage developers to dive in. While other companies will try to lure developers to their platforms, Apple’s approach has been “almost the opposite,” says the developer. “They want us to jump through a lot of the hoopla to even be in the conversation about maybe developing this type of thing.”
Apple did not respond to a request for comment about the apps on the Vision Pro.
“Any developer who’s started working with Vision Pro will know what they’re signing up for,” says Leo Gebbie, principal analyst of connected devices at consumer research firm CCS Insight. He says Apple has a track record of being heavily involved in app quality control, especially on new hardware. “They’re basically giving them this brand new tool with a whole set of rules and regulations about how they want people to build the app. And Apple even dictates how they want people to talk about apps. They’re basically saying, please build for our hardware, which is likely to be sold in very limited numbers.”
Developers, says Gebbie, are then faced with the dilemma of investing significant time, effort and money into developing an app for an audience that is, at least for the foreseeable future, quite small.