Christina WarrenYou want to know why visionOS has no devs/apps? A big reason that I’ve long argued is that Apple abused the goodwill it had wirh its developer community over capricious IAP/linking strategies. Apple assumed devs needed Apple more than Apple needed devs. And for the iPhone, maybe that’s true. But for new platforms, it isn’t. When you actively kick someone every time they come to hang out, don’t be surprised when they don’t come to your house anymore.
Buck@buck lol. All 12 Apple Vision Pro defenders can cope. And I’m wearing an Hermes Apple Watch with the stainless steel band so them calling me poor doesn’t work either. I just chose not to buy a dev kit. And it’s a great dev kit. Just not one I could justify. And I can justify almost anything (see Hermes Apple Watch with $1000 stainless steel band)
@film_girl 😅 -- I think it might have dwindled down to 11 of them now 😁. Your Watch sounds pretty sweet!
@buck It is so so beautiful and so so unnecessary. I don’t even say anything about it to flex, just that someone on MR said I must be poor if I couldn’t justify $4500 (taxes, apple care, 512GB storage) on a dev kit. And I’m not rich enough where $4500 is like $450, but for me it wasn’t about price but whether I’d actually use it.
@film_girl I can't stand it when folks on MR default to some variation of "must hate X because they can't afford it" .. Should be moderated away if you ask me. It's a totally toxic "contribution" to the forum.
shac ron ₪@film_girl That doesn’t explain the lack of major corporate-developed apps. More likely is that few people/companies see AVP development as a worthwhile investment.
@shac Sure it does. Why would Netflix want to embolden an ecosystem from a partner that hates them? Same for Spotify, YouTube, and plenty of big game makers. The investment piece is real but the other part is why should Netflix make a competitor's platform better when that competitor treats them like shit. If users were there, Netflix would be too. But it’s a chicken and egg thing and AVP lost b/c of price and platform readiness.
Jeff C. 🇺🇦@film_girl That’s certainly part of it, but a big part is that — even if Apple were a perfect friend to developers — the Vision Pro in its current iteration was and continues to be a niche platform with very few users.
It’s too heavy and too expensive.
/ iOS developer and Vision Pro owner
@jeff I fully agree with you! It’s def not the only reason at all. But this was the first new Apple platform since the iPhone (and arguably Mac OS X) where developers just didn’t show up. And that’s more than just the price being too high and the device being too much of a dev kit. It’s devs saying “the gold rush isn’t worth it unless we have to be there”
Collin Donnell@film_girl @jeff I think the Vision Pro is also just a lot less compelling as a concept than the iPhone and the work to support it is high. It’s the first new Apple thing I haven’t really had any interest in buying.
@collin @film_girl I think it’s pretty cool, but very much in a “this is a taste of something that could be amazing one day” sense.
And by “one day” I mean at least a half decade or so after I bought it. Possibly a full decade.
I didn’t feel that way with any other modern Apple platform.
Greg Pierce@film_girl Apple just overrates its value in the equation. I develop apps for users. The iPhone delivered users, and thus was compelling. If visionOS had users, developers would care. It’s never been about Apple.
Cameron Mulder@film_girl Apple needs to fix this. I feel like both the Apple Watch and appleTV could be so much better if developers investment more in those platforms.
Aaron 
@film_girl Netflix intentionally omitting VisionOS is all anyone needs to know about how “developer relations” are going in Cupertino.
James O’Loughlin@film_girl I think it’s more that VR and MR development is hard and the native path is limited right now (Window app types excluded), Unity requires a Pro license ($2k a year) and Unreal Engine support is done by one guy at Epic on the weekends. Plus it’s $3,500, market size is ~420k. This is a perfect scenario for Apple to justify all the 15-30% commissions reasoning of its their costumers and build more native first party apps to make Vision Pro so good no one can ignore it.
@jamesoloughlin I mean yes that’s part of it. But the bigger players who you expect to show up, your Spotify’s, YouTube’s, Netflix’s, won’t even do the QA to get the iPad apps working. And I don’t blame them! It’s petty but also, why build a platform for a partner/competitor that treats you like shit. There is a real cost to making the apps work and keeping them working. But a big part too is that this is rent coming due. And it’s time to collect.
@film_girl Spotify and Netflix aside. Google is interesting in they have a YouTube Horizon OS app and an Android XR YouTube app apparently whenever that ships so that’s clearly singling Apple out 😂
Karl Baron@jamesoloughlin @film_girl Last week Apple showed up in Godot’s GitHub offering to help add AVP support so at least someone there appears to get it
Craig Hockenberry@film_girl iPhone > iPad > Apple Watch > Vision Pro
Each platform iteration is smaller ecosystem.
It’s remarkable that they don’t see it.
@chockenberry yup! Diminishing returns, a lot of upfront investment, a small userbase that will never be massive unless there is a huge price cut, and you have to deal with a partner who disrespect you at all turns. I bet many of those companies would require payment to make their apps for AVP at all. I bet some of them (NBA, Disney+, Amazon even tho it’s just an iPad app) did get paid in some way (even if it wasn’t a direct transaction) to show up. I can’t blame them.
@chockenberry and I certainly don’t blame regular devs from saying “not this time,” especially when the platform investment was so high. Apple used to be able to argue “our users spend money” - but even if you got 10% market share for a $2.99 app (via IAP so less 30% off the top), you’re taking what, $85k max ARR for an app that your dev costs just on hardware could eat up 1/4 of that (an AVP and a beefy Mac is $10k) and that’s before labor and support costs!
Louie Mantia, Jr.@film_girl @chockenberry Yeah, I mean— I will happily have the hardware that fits into my life and develop for those platforms. When it comes to procuring more hardware that I don’t even really want to use myself, especially different versions of that hardware? Forget it.
Apple cannot keep squeezing. It’s become clear to everyone that they benefit way more than we do. The balance is way off here.
Greg Kaplan@film_girl @chockenberry tbh I don’t think price cuts would make much difference.
The form factor of headsets prevent them from becoming an essential part of people’s everyday lives.
People have their iPhone always on them because it can fit in their pocket and did a few very essential things really well.
AVP is portable but not mobile. Much of what it can do overlaps what can be done on much better existing products. What it does do uniquely just isn’t essential to most people.
Ricardo Tavares@chockenberry @viticci @film_girl Is this what happens when you treat developers in your ecosystem like pesky parasites?
Timothy King@chockenberry @film_girl I’m not discounting the arguments about Apple’s crappy treatment of developers impacting their willingness to develop for new platforms (esp. w/ AVP), but isn’t the diminishing markets at least as much a function of Apple naturally prioritizing the largest targets first?
Jared White (🏳️⚧️ ally)@chockenberry @film_girl I've long thought about learning Swift & iOS development (way-ay-ay back in the day, I was super into Objective-C & OS X Cocoa, though I never publicly released an app), but honestly the biggest turnoff for me is dealing with the App Store. Nothing about it is appealing to me as a potential dev, and at this point I don't even use the App Store as a *consumer*. I only occasionally download/buy an app because I already have a relationship with that particular developer.
Jonathan Deutsch@chockenberry @film_girl Apple TV is crying in the corner.
@jmfd @film_girl Oh wow, you're right.
It's so bad that I don't see it as a developer platform - it's a box for media companies to put their own spin on shitty UI.
@jmfd @film_girl Now that I think about it, Apple TV was so much better in the beginning when there was no developer ecosystem.
Every service had the same UI and it was wonderful.
Allowing "developers" to brand the UI wasn't an improvement.
@chockenberry @film_girl Agreed.
I'd also add that the more limited remote allowed for more clear interactions (heck, let's talk about the selection halo alone) including less accidents in UI controls too.
@film_girl I do think it’s true that Apple has long-abused the goodwill with developers (both tiny and giant). But I also think that every subsequent platform since the computer has tried merely to fill in gaps that the previous slew of devices left. And I think that results in diminishing returns with every new platform.
iPhone sold itself on what it could do without apps. But iPad shipped with the App Store, and future products did too. They expected developers without consumers seeing value.
@film_girl As I said a few months back—
“Each of us has room for one or two primary devices. For some, it’s a phone and a laptop. For others, it can be a phone and a tablet. Maybe it’s just a phone. But I sincerely doubt many people use three primary devices regularly.”
@film_girl Realistically, it’s not going to be possible to replace a computer or phone going forward. Those are two form factors I don’t think are going away.
Knowing that, why... don’t they just accept that? Give all focus to the two reigning platforms. Make accessories, sure, but don’t build any new product with the expectation that it will have a huge audience (or huge developer response). Developers are attracted to the same things customers are, because they too are customers.
FeedMe Doughnuts@film_girl Our company and all our devs stopped any work on iOS apps due to hair pulling painful inconsistency and lack of care from Apple. We also nuked our dev accounts. Happier bunnies. Back to private work.
Mike Johnson@film_girl IAP/linking.. yup, absolutely, but also.. xcode
Patrick McConnell@film_girl it’s the money. It’s always the money. Most devs and apps make next to nothing building for the largest Apple device market, iPhone. Why should they bother with the smallest?
Sure devs have been abused by Apple’s practices but if the money was there we would build for visionOS.
Vegar Nilsen@film_girl It probably also doesn't help that for those of us in the 180-ish other countries, AVP basically doesn't exist.
Sean@film_girl Surely the main reason is the 3500 dollar price.
OBender@film_girl I wonder if years ago they could have taken the path of not sabotaging the web platform integration across the whole fruit ecosystem, how many cool things people would have made
Josh Jersild@film_girl I had access to a vision pro (not mine, don't have that kind of cash) for a while and *deeply* wanted to develop a project for it, but it was such a pain in the ass to be set up as a developer (especially given there are no macs in my household, just PCs), plus the ... cost? just to write software? for their platform? It's absolutely a masterclass in "how to convince people not to develop software for your platforms"
Daniel Gomes@film_girl That, and the fact that NOBODY asked for Vision Pro.
Better iPhone battery life, 120 hz refresh rate across the board, better cameras with less “hdr effect/water colour photos”, lower prices across the board, more innovation…. Yes.
But VR goggles??? no.