Apple: Vision Pro Will Have 600+ Native Apps Ready at Launch

The “Only […]. 200 Native Apps” in the headline is a little strange. The 2019 Road to VR Oculus Quest review listed 53 launch apps, incl. preinstalled ones like Oculus TV or Browser. Admittedly the Quest launch titles, mostly PCVR/Oculus Go ports, look a lot more interesting than the AVP 3rd party apps. Many of those seem to be just small utilities, easy to make “native” (without any XR features) with minimal effort. The “minimal effort” also applied to about 1/3rd of the Quest launch titles ported from Oculus Go with only minor changes.

Initially the most used native apps will probably be the Apple TV, Photos and Messages apps that at least provide an improved experience over a small phone screen. Not sure how many want to use Mail or Notes without an external keyboard. Freeform (creative journal/idea board) works better with a touch screen, Keynote (PowerPoint) targets only a small audience. And why would one listen to stereo music on a ~600g HMD (with spatial sound) instead of much more comfortable 4g AirPods?

The “Encounter Dinosaurs” AR app will be used to impress people trying the HMD for the first time, and otherwise ignored, like most VR/XR tech demos. Maybe the AR Mindfulness app will be in high demand to calm the nerves of those who just dropped USD 3500+ on a HMD mostly to watch movies. But for quite a while the “first movers” will probably use mostly the same non-native, non-XR apps as on their iPhones.

They need to unify/commonize (if they haven’t already) iPhone/iPad gui interface APIs with Vision Pro, considering there isn’t anything particularly specific to “spatial computing” — all are 2d surfaces basically, with a fancy compositor. Then they would have the entirety if iOS portfolio for the vision pro, making it infinitely more useful.

And this is the advantage of having an ecosystem that connects to your other devices, services and content will bring. If you’re going to spend 50 billion building a meta verse instead of apps and services, then it’s going to put you at a disadvantage.

Quest is a nice device. But it lacks in this area. When Samsung and Google show up, it’s going to be another device that has all the apps and services and content built in day one. That will just be improved and added over time. That’s going to come from their galaxy phones note phones and tablets. While adding new things to the experience.

As I’ve said before, this is where the war truly begins. And it’s not in VR.

LOL what a nice pile of trash apps for $4k device…and they say “PSVR2 has no games”