With pre-orders open, we know which of Apple’s Vision Pro apps will be pre-installed – but we also know some major third-party apps have no current plans to support the device.
While there’s still time for things to change, it’s already clear that some developers have made a deliberate decision to stay off Vision Pro, going so far as to block their iPad apps from running. That’s likely for three reasons …
Vision Pro apps – what you will and won’t get
We noted earlier that Apple has confirmed which of its own apps will be pre-installed in visionOS, enabling customers to use them on day one.
These include everything from basic apps like Mail and Messages through to the Encounter Dinosaurs app, intended to show off the immersive entertainment capabilities of the device.
Where a native app doesn’t exist, you’ll have the option of running iPad apps instead. These will deliver a less polished experience, but will be a lot better than nothing.
But when it comes to major third-party apps, checks jointly carried out by ourselves and MacStories revealed that some major brands have blocked their existing iPad apps from running on Vision Pro – a step which requires them to actively opt out, making it a very deliberate decision.
While the situation could change between now and February 2, when the first orders arrive, it seems clear that some companies have made it their policy not to play.
The lack of native apps is no surprise
The fact that some companies have decided against creating native apps is no surprise. Producing an app which truly takes advantage of the 3D world would not be a trivial undertaking.
No matter how well pre-orders may be going, the potential market for Vision Pro apps is tiny. It’s simply not worth the time, effort, and money for many developers.
But why block iPad apps from running on Vision Pro?
The Vision Pro can run iPad apps, without any additional work by developers. Apple has set things up so that developers don’t even need to tick a checkbox to allow their iPad apps to run on Vision Pro – that happens by default.
However, developers do get the option of opting out, of pro-actively blocking their iPad apps from running on Vision Pro, and some major developers have done just that. Here are just some of the more surprising Vision Pro holdouts:
- MLB
- Netflix
- NFL
- Roku
- Spotify
- The New York Times
- YouTube
There are three likely reasons.
First, companies may not be happy with the Vision Pro experience delivered by their iPad app. The Xcode simulator lets developers get a reasonable idea of how their app would look on Vision Pro, and Apple likely gave major brands the chance to experience the real thing.
Some of them may have simply decided that the VP experience would reflect poorly on their app, but that it didn’t justify the work to fix, any more than a native app would. Better, then, to simply block it.
Top comment by Alex Rogers
It's highly unlikely that we're not going to see a YouTube app at some point, like many other people have said, these companies would rather have time to develop and test the apps (on-device, not the test environment) themselves before releasing anything.
Second – and likely a much bigger factor – they don’t want the support headache. Given that Vision Pro users will represent an infinitesimally small segment of the user base, but potentially generate a disproportionate number of support requests, developers may consider it too much hassle.
Third, and this may be a factor for the likes of Netflix and Spotify, a history of conflict with Apple. Both these companies could reasonably conclude that Vision Pro needs them more than they need Vision Pro, so withhold their apps either as a petty act of revenge, or in the hope of extracting concessions from Apple in the area of in-app subscriptions.
Whether the Vision Pro hold-outs change their minds will likely depend less on demand for this model – which is never going to be huge – but on the pricing of future Apple Vision products. If and when a future model becomes a mass-market consumer product, that’s the point at which not having a Vision app becomes significantly less tenable.
Photo: Apple
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