The Apple Vision Pro isn’t the easiest sell, at least for now. As a concept, VR goggles still pose more questions than they answer. As a category, they’re still searching for purpose. As a specific product, the Vision Pro is the most technologically advanced of its kind, but it starts at $3,500. Its long-term success will depend in large part on early buyers figuring out what it’s actually good for and on app developers meeting them where they’re at. Are we gaming? Socializing in virtual reality? Attempting human interaction in augmented reality? Are we sliding into isolation? Sitting at our desks crushing slide decks? Going to coffee shops? An app-centric approach is what ultimately made the iPhone a trillion-dollar business, and Apple would very much like for something like that to happen again.
One problem. While Apple fans are doing their part — the Vision Pro’s relatively small first run quickly sold out in preorder — some companies aren’t so excited to work with Apple this time around. Mark Gurman reports:
Three of the world’s most popular streaming services — Netflix Inc., YouTube and Spotify Technology SA — have already signaled that they won’t be launching visionOS software or enabling their iPad apps to run on the Vision Pro.
Other key developers, including iOS and iPadOS mainstays like Google and Meta Platforms Inc., also appear ready to shun the new platform at the outset. That’s a break from the past.
There’s a bit of wait-and-see thinking on display here, to be sure. The Vision Pro is a new device being prepped for Apple’s equivalent of a soft launch, its manufacturing run for the first year estimated in the mere hundreds of thousands.
But these particular abstentions come with plenty of backstory and more than a little bad blood. Spotify has been at war with Apple over App Store subscription policies for a decade now. The original iPhone launched with a native YouTube app; now, Google runs the other most popular smartphone platform in the world and competes with Apple in dozens of different markets, including advertising. Aside from operating most of the most popular social platforms in America, Meta is the current market leader in VR and mixed-reality headsets, with products that will be competing directly with the Vision Pro the moment it hits the market. In recent years, Apple has used the App Store to enforce tracking restrictions that abruptly erased billions of dollars of advertising revenue for Meta, Google, TikTok, Snap, and others before multiplying its own advertising revenues; fought tooth and nail against Epic Games in a lawsuit challenging its 30 percent revenue cut for App Store purchases (its appeal was recently rejected by the Supreme Court, but Apple is finding exceedingly literal ways to comply with lower court orders); and asserted a generally expansive view of its right to charge app developers fees on money they make using its platforms. Apple has drawn scrutiny from EU regulators and the Justice Department, which is reportedly preparing a “sweeping” antitrust case against the company for, among other things, locking users in with iMessage.
For a hardware company, size is usually an asset. Apple can throw lots of money, talent, and reputation behind a new product category. In this case, it’s also a liability. If you’re anybody but Apple, it’s irresponsible not to be a little bit suspicious of, or at the very least careful with, one of the largest companies on earth. As a result, early Vision Pro customers are probably going to be installing a lot of iPad apps on their new headsets.
The Epic Games lawsuit hints at another obstacle for the Vision Pro. Simpler VR headsets have been on the market since 2013 and cumulatively sold tens of millions of units. This first wave of companies — primarily Meta (via its Oculus acquisition), but also Sony, HTC, and Valve — landed on gaming as the first-use case for VR headsets, with some success. Apple is clearly pitching the Vision Pro as more than a gaming device, and its mixed-reality technology as something more versatile than VR, but Apple’s weird relationship with gaming and strained relationship with the games industry could preclude Vision Pro customers from doing the one thing millions of people already know they enjoy about face computers. Mac gaming has failed to materialize for decades. iPhone gaming is big business that is effectively sealed off from the rest of the industry. The Apple TV — touted by Apple at every update as a competitor for dedicated gaming consoles — remains, nearly ten years after its own App Store launched, a C-tier gaming device. In 2020, Valve released the first new Half Life game in more than 15 years in support of its VR headset; Apple is launching the Vision Pro with a sequel to Fruit Ninja.
This might not matter in the end — there are still plenty of developers who are happy to work with Apple, and if the headset sells well and prices come down, few will want to miss out. Apple remains very good at selling hardware, and all it would take is a couple of surprising, compelling use cases to convince millions of people to buy a new Apple device. But it’s also in new territory here. Apple is, by market cap, 17 times the company it was when the iPhone launched, less a rocket ship everyone in tech is desperate to board than a space colony (Ringworld type, obviously) from which they’re plotting an escape.
Early reviews suggest that the Vision Pro has an impressive range of features and some interesting theoretical use cases, but that it sits a bit heavy on the head, with an external battery pack that’s unwieldy to carry around. It’s not unlike the company itself, circa 2024: conceptually all-consuming, unsure what comes next, and saddled with some awkward baggage.
