Apple is turning developers against Vision Pro before it even arrives
macworld.com
macworld.com
I don't know if this will work for Vision Pro because there's still no evidence of mass market appeal for VR or AR technology. Even Facebook's money and marketing muscle hasn't been able to make Meta VR mainstream. Nor is Playstation VR going to get widespread adoption or significant software support until Sony starts bundling it with Playstations which would be very risky by making Xbox dramatically cheaper.
I think companies are making VR devices because they're appealing to their engineering department not because they actually have reason to believe there's consumer demand for such tech. But the popular alternatives to invest in are things like crypto and generative AI that also have open questions about whether the product is actually useful to the mass market.
Apple's $5k headset is not a popular platform yet, nor will it be as popular as smartphones anytime soon.
Companies want to push their apps to Apple/Google because everyone has a smartphone in their pocket at all times and has their eyes glued to it most of their spare time meaning shopping, product sales and advertising $$$.
Compared to that, even if the headset would be half price, very few people will be as absorbed into it as much as they are into phones, therefore companies are in no rush to port their apps to Apple's headset.
And I'm saying this as someone who has a VR headset and is bullish on VR. It's difficult to beat the convenience and portability of a smartphone with a clunky headset you wouldn't wear on the street.
Maybe when headsets will be as slick and as functional as Iron Man's E.D.I.T.H. glasses they'll be able to fully replace smartphones for eyeball time, but we're very far from that future, as the current iteration is more of a tethered virtual TV/monitor rather than a fully immersive stand alone AR experience device, and silicone and battery technology isn't advancing fast enough anymore to bring Iron Man tech to reality anytime soon, let alone make it affordable.
So I think devs are right in giving the headset the cold shoulder for now until it becomes a mass market product with mass appeal that people wouldn't mind wearing on the street.
The 3.5k is entry-level.
Once you've upgraded it and added the required accessories you end up around 5k.
My reflective thoughts are first if you make a solid piece of software Apple should be hiring you to integrate your product into their main software stack.
Secondly, particularly to your last point, I think this encourages short development cycles and continually pushing something new.
Since if you build a good innovative product you run the risk of Apple undercutting it like you said. Unfortunately this means that there's less incentive to maintain and update a software product in exchange for developing and selling something new.
Awesome. I will build some apps and make the 30% then. Even if it's short term it's still a lot of money. Thanks.
*by illegally excluding competing platforms
Apple makes a device and sells that.
AND having more consumers means more available people for the developers to sell their product to.
Can't all be like Balmer "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" for Microsoft, which traditionally isn't trying to sell hardware but just software for people to run on their hardware.
So having more software on their platform is necessary to sell more of their product (for Microsoft/Windows).
Marketing/selling products to developers, or enthusiasts in general, is a loosing strategy. They're a small niche that's too finicky and very difficult to please as every one of them expects different things tailored specifically to their own weird usecase that nobody else has, they have little brand loyalty and a high skillset meaning they're likely to drop you and port their shit to the competition or build their own self hosted alternative the moment you don't please them anymore. Not worth it if you're in the business of making shit tones of money.
Making products to please the Average Joe consumers is way more profitable. That's why most niche enthusiast brands end up either going bust, or making a deal with the devil and selling off to giant mega corps, or just emulating the giant mega corps, while abandoning the enthusiast userbase that made them popular. See OnePlus, Pebble, etc.
A lot of money has been spent, and a lot of companies have shut their doors, because they were so caught up in the cool tech that they never stopped to question if it was something people would actually want… and it turned out the answer was no did.
Every company should be starting with the customer in mind. Making things good for the developers, is also something that should be done with the customer in mind. Happy developers mean a richer ecosystem of apps, which makes the devices more useful, which is good for the customer.
The real content is the mention of two other headlines from earlier this week or last:
- Apple's wacky EU App Store compliance - The various big-name apps that won't be on the Vision Pro
You could even imagine that Apple start requiring iOS app developers with more than X million users to also provide a Vision Pro optimized version of the app. To provide a better user experience, of course.
Apple does not lack imagination on ways to leverage their ecosystem, I'm not worried about them one bit.
The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers
Apple really needs to justify this spending to the end user by having more convincing use cases than watching movies in it.
If I was Apple, I would offer extreme incentives for developers with a proven track record on the App Store, going even as far as offering free headsets for those who have over a specific amount of sales on App Store or apps with over certain DAU and good reviews. At the end of the day, Apple makes at least a 15% commission from sales and even if they were to give out free Vision Pro headsets, they will break even as soon as an app has sales over $23k which is not much at all.
Thus is the Apple way.
Apple could probably make shareholders very happy and customers very unhappy, but they can only get away with that for a quarter or so. Their success has been in getting shareholders to be patient while they focus on the customer, and eventually the happy customers pay off for the shareholders.