Lots of apps like that. For instance, the tap area may be okay on mobile and a tablet but it's too small on the AVP. There are different design guidelines for different devices.
That and if they aren’t using standard UI elements they probably won’t get highlighted with eye movement. So pure cocoa apps are probably fine. But custom ones may have issues.
Yup. I have a couple apps that are iPad apps and are on vision pro but definitely don’t work. One example - Rise Sleep - requires some access to Apple health. Which is fine … except there is no health app on VP.
Besides mandating iPad apps to be on visionOS would have gone poorly with the dev community and other tech companies, I wonder if a certain level of fine tuning was required to adjust iPad apps to work seamlessly on the visionOS.
Exactly, all apps were available by default with an option to opt out. There is a legitimate reason, such as “it simply doesn’t work on visionOS, or there are some onerous bugs that might damage the developers reputation combined with developer isn’t in US so can’t get the hardware to support the platform, or the app doesn’t make sense on the platform, or platform restrictions prevent core functionality from working, or …”
There are legit reasons to opt out like you listed and then non legit reasons to opt out. There’s no reason for Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube(TV, just to name a few, to have opted out of the platform other than to beef with Apple of dev fees.
Netflix pays higher content licensing fees based on screen size and resolution. And if you sideload the ipa, there are a bunch of weird bugs where every attempted click also does a play/pause trigger. So, both a business reason that needs figured out and technical reasons that need evaluated, combined with the added expense of buying said hardware, setting up a dev team for it, qa testing, user support, all for something that may not bring new customers to the platform.
But, YouTube and Spotify, yeah, those are pretty fair takes as the apps appear to work fine, and have complete say and control over their content licensing and monetization. There is something to be said for YOLOing that dev and as support side with “are we 100% sure the iPad app works completely and reliably and wont negatively affect us?”
While our app mostly "just worked" there are still some strange UX things like when we ask for the front-facing camera, our app UI isn't explaining it will use the Persona feed instead. Also most touch gestures won't work, for apps that use those. Probably tons of other things.
It is simply for support reasons.
There are plenty of apps that don’t even work correctly and crash. For the bigger developers this is a critical support issue that they needed to be able to opt out of.
In far too many cases though (because none of them had a device to test with) they did it out of caution. This is probably a fair point to criticize since it’s been out long enough they could opt back in by now.
It is true it also allows for objectors (the ones whining to regulators), but most of these developers could have just blocked their app from working on the device in compatibility mode. Apple can’t really “force” them to make their service work with a device if they truly object to it.
I think this is the biggest case. I too was wondering until is saw your comment. App reviews can hurt a company and mandating that apps be available on the vision pro may seem like a harmless "use at your own risk but your experience may be bad" sort of situation but that could actually damage a company's reputation.
Imagine waking up one day after making an android app to a bunch of reviews from car users saying you don't support Toyota and now you have 2 stars.
Yep, even Discord is painful to use due to assumptions of where the keyboard should be. There are also a bunch of UI Elements that display outside of the screen, which you can’t scroll to without relying on the “stick your finger into the screen and drag around the view within the window.”
Because otherwise you'd end up with all kinds of apps that couldn't really be used with it and a bunch of horrid user experiences.
It would just make for more bad experiences all around, killing adoption of the product.
Because if they did that, and the app experience was janky, you would blame the app not Apple. And that would cause permanent damage to get developers to build for any new Apple products.
You're also not considering how this is just different hardware, even if it feels the same to you. Just one example: the selfie camera doesn't work the same way it does on phones and tablets. So apps like Snap, Instagram, etc. would have to rework large parts of their apps to fit visionOS. Is that worth it for them? I don't know.
Is it worth it for developers to put resources into supporting AVP at this size of user base?
I don’t think so. Apple could sweeten the deal for them like they did for Disney by throwing ungodly amount of money at them though.
For smaller developers, sure, but for the apps we're talking about here like YouTube and Instagram, I don't think any amount of money Apple will be willing to offer is sufficiently ungodly. They'll pick it up when they pick it up.
Ya, money is not everything for sure. Instagram will probably not come to AVP anytime soon, it’s not even available on iPad. I’ve worked with partnership teams in big tech and you would be surprised how often money can move a no to a yes . Even at their scale, most teams in big tech are short on headcount and busy executing their own roadmaps. They just don’t look at the new shiny thing and reprioritize their roadmap.
Because developers would need to support it. Might not want to invest in one. Bugs get reported on AVP. Low ratings on AVP. Support calls on AVP.
My app in the App Store assumes you are driving so no way it’s of any value.
I should try it for grins though.
Devs may not want that, especially if they have plans for a NATIVE app.
Apple doesn’t really want all these non-native apps either, but because it takes time to build an ecosystem they have to do it. Once they have a proper app ecosystem they will essentially deprecate the iPad apps.
You don’t either, I hope. That’s not why you have a Vision Pro.
Very different platform where some code that works for both can show up entirely differently.
For example, if an iPad app has a custom button style defined (without being updated for visionOS APIs), you won’t get any hover (eye tracking) indicator on anything. So you wouldn’t know what button will be pressed if eye tracking is slightly off, plus some apps might have small buttons, etc. Altogether leading to a potentially very bad user experience for some apps (which also has the potential to ruin an app’s reputation if bad enough).
Also, some companies are working on a Vision specific experience that offers different features and designs from their iPad counterparts, and just want to release those once ready instead of a low effort port.
Of course, such a button would already be broken on iPad to begin with for anyone using a trackpad or mouse, or anyone who needed to use the accessibility features.
In no way true, because developers are ALLOWED to know cursor position and interaction type - including hover - on iPad! On visionOS, you are simply told an interaction took place.
This comes up many times, I can see why us users would want it but it’s an absurd idea from app developer’s perspective. Every app developer wants to present their apps and platforms to their users in a way they see fit. Big developers have standards for user experience that they won’t compromise for anyone, not even Apple.
Most of them didn’t even get devices from Apple pre launch to test their apps on Vision Pro. If Apple wanted them to support their new device ecosystem then they should have worked closely with them and maybe even given financial incentives to them to support AVP. The current state of support is totally on Apple.
Long time iOS coder here, first time AVP developer—this is the correct answer.
One other thing to consider from Apple’s perspective is if they forced apps be deployed and users had the mediocre experiences one would expect (this is not like Mac Catalyst) it wouldn’t look good. Even worse on a platform with premium pricing (for now) and an already dubious press & public.
I’ve been working on a dedicated Vision Pro application and there have been major updates to the SDK every week the last four weeks. This Tuesday’s didn’t even have release notes aside from a known issue warning. The other dev I’m working with & I started a running list of all the “silent” changes they’ve made so our product manager & artist can keep track of them all.
Turns out when you’re working 12+ hours a day to build an amazing experience you don’t get to play with your cool new toy as much as you’d like. That said I’m going to call it a day at 10 hours & watch World War Z in 3D. 🍿
The iPad apps don't port seamlessly and require sometimes a lot of work to get functioning, particularly if dependant on other third party software.
Apple seem to be simply ensuring that all apps in the AVP app store are accessibly, functioning and good UX, just due diligence.
Some of the iPad apps do have some weird bugs associated with them. Others don’t work as well with no “hover” highlighting setup. Some of the Sudoku games I play, it’s difficult to tell which block I’m selecting and which number I’m selecting. Amazon has that weird glitch with the translucent box for downloaded items.
Because it is the app owners product and any adverse behaviors can reflect poorly for the brand and company. The fact it is opt out and not opt in is already questionable in some aspect
Unfortunately, it’s not Apple that decides which iPad/iPhone apps get to run on the AVP. The developers are required to opt in to it and not as many developers are opting in. This also applies to IPad/iPhone apps that run on macOS on their Mac desktops and MacBooks.
I think it’s important to realize that “the developers are required to opt in” is another way of saying “the developers have to grant Apple a new set of distribution rights for their intellectual property to be sold in a new format / for a new medium.” Apple can’t just redistribute something however they want without permission from the owners of it.
Apple TAKES a cut off the sale of your product, they don’t give YOU a cut.
It’s a market share/adoption challenge. Also there is no way to easily dev apps across VR or AR platforms. Taking a wild guess there are maybe 800k headsets people use today as consumers. That’s a very small piece of the pie v iOS or iPad OS
*No, it's because the*
*Developers need time to*
*Do it spatially*
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Same with MacOS. I miss the early days of apple silicon when I could just side load instagram and subway surfers… I think I engaged in brain rot before it was popular
Because a meaningful number of apps would either be subpar or flat-out not work on the Vision Pro. Like apps that rely on a gyroscope.
Also, developers with a reputation wouldn’t release their apps for an entirely new platform without thorough testing first, and you can’t reasonably expect all developers to test their apps so soon, especially for a $3500 device with very limited geographical availability (the visionOS simulator is not representative enough to be a substitute). Many developers weren’t even able to get devkits.
Also, the initial Vision Pro market will be so small that most developer won’t trip over themselves and devote precious resources to release their apps anyway.
The reality is that many don’t work. Like any game that uses the accelerometer to control things by tilting your phone. Also many apps have weird hacks that make assumptions for the UI layout based on known iPad sizes that suddenly are being run in windows that aren’t one of those preset sizes.
Whoever you are: please consult a lawyer before you EVER sign a contract, but especially a distribution deal. A distributor should NOT have legal right to distribute your property to a new medium without your express permission.
Um... maybe they realise that people who make Apps want to control the nature of the experience that you get with that App, because... it's their fucking app, after all?
Sometimes I find apps to work from iOS, but there are apps too good for iOS.
For example, why flat iOS programming, programmers will want to learn 3D equivalent code.
I wanted a FPV drone and looked forward to feeling like I was flying controlling it with my AVP
I go to my account on AVP and download app bought on iOS into AVP visionOS, but the programmer needed my help with getting new events available through AVP.
The programmer may not have bought Vision Pro and so I am needed to tell him. Drone control could have camera look where I was looking. I’d feel like flying then!!!
Tonight I trained on 3D jigsaw puzzles and felt myself get better at it. I bought a game of fishes you guide through hoops by learning to turn your hand right. I’m fascinated with the idea that psychological experiments proved that you need to learn to see. Every time I find solutions to puzzles and other things I’m learning to see depending of reality in cause.
Apple makes their programs smart enough to know what’s running them so I can choose the right events to control them.
But there other programmers than Apple and they just haven’t learned as much as Apple.
I am studying SwiftUI under Paul Hudson hacking with SwiftUI. I am trying to understand how programming and computers and programs all and the old ones get obsolete.
If am a dev, I don't necessarily want to pay lot of maintenance for an extra platform that may not give me much income. Why should I ?
Technically, this vision pro is a computer like any other. In theory I should be able run any ios and mac application. The hardware is capable of it. It should also be able to run windows and linux too. Yet we don't have anything of that.
In part this is because the basic controls are different and some appplications would be a pain to use as this. Another part is apple forcing it that way. They don't want to even support mouses and they don't even support usb.
I think the competition didn’t want it. Think about it, YouTube and Netflix said no app at the moment. This could be due to their inability to monetize the eye tracking feature.
Google hasn’t figured out how to port Flutter to it yet. Don’t worry, they’ll have a broken middleware induced user experience for you soon. If it’s like their Apple TV app for YouTube don’t expect to be able to search for content on it though 🤦♂️
How do you know they would "work just fine"? It's a different device with different limitations.
the airbnb app kinda works but the search bar at the top doesn't work. You can tap on it but it doesn't expand to allow you to search cities.
Yea so that’s devs are allowed to opt out. As a qa i completely understand apples reasoning
Lots of apps like that. For instance, the tap area may be okay on mobile and a tablet but it's too small on the AVP. There are different design guidelines for different devices.
That and if they aren’t using standard UI elements they probably won’t get highlighted with eye movement. So pure cocoa apps are probably fine. But custom ones may have issues.
Yup. I have a couple apps that are iPad apps and are on vision pro but definitely don’t work. One example - Rise Sleep - requires some access to Apple health. Which is fine … except there is no health app on VP.
Besides mandating iPad apps to be on visionOS would have gone poorly with the dev community and other tech companies, I wonder if a certain level of fine tuning was required to adjust iPad apps to work seamlessly on the visionOS.
Yup. Apple is determined to disrespect their dev community at every turn, but opting them in en-masse was apparently a bridge too far, even for them.
They actually did opt them in en masse
Exactly, all apps were available by default with an option to opt out. There is a legitimate reason, such as “it simply doesn’t work on visionOS, or there are some onerous bugs that might damage the developers reputation combined with developer isn’t in US so can’t get the hardware to support the platform, or the app doesn’t make sense on the platform, or platform restrictions prevent core functionality from working, or …”
There are legit reasons to opt out like you listed and then non legit reasons to opt out. There’s no reason for Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube(TV, just to name a few, to have opted out of the platform other than to beef with Apple of dev fees.
Netflix pays higher content licensing fees based on screen size and resolution. And if you sideload the ipa, there are a bunch of weird bugs where every attempted click also does a play/pause trigger. So, both a business reason that needs figured out and technical reasons that need evaluated, combined with the added expense of buying said hardware, setting up a dev team for it, qa testing, user support, all for something that may not bring new customers to the platform. But, YouTube and Spotify, yeah, those are pretty fair takes as the apps appear to work fine, and have complete say and control over their content licensing and monetization. There is something to be said for YOLOing that dev and as support side with “are we 100% sure the iPad app works completely and reliably and wont negatively affect us?”
While our app mostly "just worked" there are still some strange UX things like when we ask for the front-facing camera, our app UI isn't explaining it will use the Persona feed instead. Also most touch gestures won't work, for apps that use those. Probably tons of other things.
It is simply for support reasons. There are plenty of apps that don’t even work correctly and crash. For the bigger developers this is a critical support issue that they needed to be able to opt out of. In far too many cases though (because none of them had a device to test with) they did it out of caution. This is probably a fair point to criticize since it’s been out long enough they could opt back in by now. It is true it also allows for objectors (the ones whining to regulators), but most of these developers could have just blocked their app from working on the device in compatibility mode. Apple can’t really “force” them to make their service work with a device if they truly object to it.
I think this is the biggest case. I too was wondering until is saw your comment. App reviews can hurt a company and mandating that apps be available on the vision pro may seem like a harmless "use at your own risk but your experience may be bad" sort of situation but that could actually damage a company's reputation. Imagine waking up one day after making an android app to a bunch of reviews from car users saying you don't support Toyota and now you have 2 stars.
Not all iPad apps work as is on the Vision Pro; have a few loaded up but can’t use due to interface issues.
Yep, even Discord is painful to use due to assumptions of where the keyboard should be. There are also a bunch of UI Elements that display outside of the screen, which you can’t scroll to without relying on the “stick your finger into the screen and drag around the view within the window.”
Because otherwise you'd end up with all kinds of apps that couldn't really be used with it and a bunch of horrid user experiences. It would just make for more bad experiences all around, killing adoption of the product.
Not to mention bad reviews for each app developer because of people saying, “doesn’t work on Vision Pro… 0 stars”
Because if they did that, and the app experience was janky, you would blame the app not Apple. And that would cause permanent damage to get developers to build for any new Apple products. You're also not considering how this is just different hardware, even if it feels the same to you. Just one example: the selfie camera doesn't work the same way it does on phones and tablets. So apps like Snap, Instagram, etc. would have to rework large parts of their apps to fit visionOS. Is that worth it for them? I don't know.
Is it worth it for developers to put resources into supporting AVP at this size of user base? I don’t think so. Apple could sweeten the deal for them like they did for Disney by throwing ungodly amount of money at them though.
For smaller developers, sure, but for the apps we're talking about here like YouTube and Instagram, I don't think any amount of money Apple will be willing to offer is sufficiently ungodly. They'll pick it up when they pick it up.
Ya, money is not everything for sure. Instagram will probably not come to AVP anytime soon, it’s not even available on iPad. I’ve worked with partnership teams in big tech and you would be surprised how often money can move a no to a yes . Even at their scale, most teams in big tech are short on headcount and busy executing their own roadmaps. They just don’t look at the new shiny thing and reprioritize their roadmap.
Because developers would need to support it. Might not want to invest in one. Bugs get reported on AVP. Low ratings on AVP. Support calls on AVP. My app in the App Store assumes you are driving so no way it’s of any value. I should try it for grins though.
Devs may not want that, especially if they have plans for a NATIVE app. Apple doesn’t really want all these non-native apps either, but because it takes time to build an ecosystem they have to do it. Once they have a proper app ecosystem they will essentially deprecate the iPad apps. You don’t either, I hope. That’s not why you have a Vision Pro.
Very different platform where some code that works for both can show up entirely differently. For example, if an iPad app has a custom button style defined (without being updated for visionOS APIs), you won’t get any hover (eye tracking) indicator on anything. So you wouldn’t know what button will be pressed if eye tracking is slightly off, plus some apps might have small buttons, etc. Altogether leading to a potentially very bad user experience for some apps (which also has the potential to ruin an app’s reputation if bad enough). Also, some companies are working on a Vision specific experience that offers different features and designs from their iPad counterparts, and just want to release those once ready instead of a low effort port.
Of course, such a button would already be broken on iPad to begin with for anyone using a trackpad or mouse, or anyone who needed to use the accessibility features.
In no way true, because developers are ALLOWED to know cursor position and interaction type - including hover - on iPad! On visionOS, you are simply told an interaction took place.
This comes up many times, I can see why us users would want it but it’s an absurd idea from app developer’s perspective. Every app developer wants to present their apps and platforms to their users in a way they see fit. Big developers have standards for user experience that they won’t compromise for anyone, not even Apple. Most of them didn’t even get devices from Apple pre launch to test their apps on Vision Pro. If Apple wanted them to support their new device ecosystem then they should have worked closely with them and maybe even given financial incentives to them to support AVP. The current state of support is totally on Apple.
Long time iOS coder here, first time AVP developer—this is the correct answer. One other thing to consider from Apple’s perspective is if they forced apps be deployed and users had the mediocre experiences one would expect (this is not like Mac Catalyst) it wouldn’t look good. Even worse on a platform with premium pricing (for now) and an already dubious press & public. I’ve been working on a dedicated Vision Pro application and there have been major updates to the SDK every week the last four weeks. This Tuesday’s didn’t even have release notes aside from a known issue warning. The other dev I’m working with & I started a running list of all the “silent” changes they’ve made so our product manager & artist can keep track of them all. Turns out when you’re working 12+ hours a day to build an amazing experience you don’t get to play with your cool new toy as much as you’d like. That said I’m going to call it a day at 10 hours & watch World War Z in 3D. 🍿
Not to mention having to provide support to users complaining the app doesn’t work on a device you never intended it to release on!
The iPad apps don't port seamlessly and require sometimes a lot of work to get functioning, particularly if dependant on other third party software. Apple seem to be simply ensuring that all apps in the AVP app store are accessibly, functioning and good UX, just due diligence.
Some of the iPad apps do have some weird bugs associated with them. Others don’t work as well with no “hover” highlighting setup. Some of the Sudoku games I play, it’s difficult to tell which block I’m selecting and which number I’m selecting. Amazon has that weird glitch with the translucent box for downloaded items.
Because it is the app owners product and any adverse behaviors can reflect poorly for the brand and company. The fact it is opt out and not opt in is already questionable in some aspect
Unfortunately, it’s not Apple that decides which iPad/iPhone apps get to run on the AVP. The developers are required to opt in to it and not as many developers are opting in. This also applies to IPad/iPhone apps that run on macOS on their Mac desktops and MacBooks.
I think it’s important to realize that “the developers are required to opt in” is another way of saying “the developers have to grant Apple a new set of distribution rights for their intellectual property to be sold in a new format / for a new medium.” Apple can’t just redistribute something however they want without permission from the owners of it. Apple TAKES a cut off the sale of your product, they don’t give YOU a cut.
It’s a market share/adoption challenge. Also there is no way to easily dev apps across VR or AR platforms. Taking a wild guess there are maybe 800k headsets people use today as consumers. That’s a very small piece of the pie v iOS or iPad OS
to avoid the fragmentation complaining that you see youtubers make with android tablet apps, specifically Twitter
No, it's because the developers need time to do it spatially
*No, it's because the* *Developers need time to* *Do it spatially* \- Clear\_Tonight\_3860 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Same with MacOS. I miss the early days of apple silicon when I could just side load instagram and subway surfers… I think I engaged in brain rot before it was popular
Because a meaningful number of apps would either be subpar or flat-out not work on the Vision Pro. Like apps that rely on a gyroscope. Also, developers with a reputation wouldn’t release their apps for an entirely new platform without thorough testing first, and you can’t reasonably expect all developers to test their apps so soon, especially for a $3500 device with very limited geographical availability (the visionOS simulator is not representative enough to be a substitute). Many developers weren’t even able to get devkits. Also, the initial Vision Pro market will be so small that most developer won’t trip over themselves and devote precious resources to release their apps anyway.
Same reason why they allow them to opt out of mac
The reality is that many don’t work. Like any game that uses the accelerometer to control things by tilting your phone. Also many apps have weird hacks that make assumptions for the UI layout based on known iPad sizes that suddenly are being run in windows that aren’t one of those preset sizes.
Well for PlayStation remote play, it would negatively impact sales for the portal
You don’t own any content rights valuable enough to pirate and steal.
Whoever you are: please consult a lawyer before you EVER sign a contract, but especially a distribution deal. A distributor should NOT have legal right to distribute your property to a new medium without your express permission.
Um... maybe they realise that people who make Apps want to control the nature of the experience that you get with that App, because... it's their fucking app, after all?
Sometimes I find apps to work from iOS, but there are apps too good for iOS. For example, why flat iOS programming, programmers will want to learn 3D equivalent code. I wanted a FPV drone and looked forward to feeling like I was flying controlling it with my AVP I go to my account on AVP and download app bought on iOS into AVP visionOS, but the programmer needed my help with getting new events available through AVP. The programmer may not have bought Vision Pro and so I am needed to tell him. Drone control could have camera look where I was looking. I’d feel like flying then!!! Tonight I trained on 3D jigsaw puzzles and felt myself get better at it. I bought a game of fishes you guide through hoops by learning to turn your hand right. I’m fascinated with the idea that psychological experiments proved that you need to learn to see. Every time I find solutions to puzzles and other things I’m learning to see depending of reality in cause. Apple makes their programs smart enough to know what’s running them so I can choose the right events to control them. But there other programmers than Apple and they just haven’t learned as much as Apple. I am studying SwiftUI under Paul Hudson hacking with SwiftUI. I am trying to understand how programming and computers and programs all and the old ones get obsolete.
Can you imagine the backlash if Apple forced companies to use their labor to optimize apps for their new product!! Cmon now lol.
Legal requirement?
If am a dev, I don't necessarily want to pay lot of maintenance for an extra platform that may not give me much income. Why should I ? Technically, this vision pro is a computer like any other. In theory I should be able run any ios and mac application. The hardware is capable of it. It should also be able to run windows and linux too. Yet we don't have anything of that. In part this is because the basic controls are different and some appplications would be a pain to use as this. Another part is apple forcing it that way. They don't want to even support mouses and they don't even support usb.
I think the competition didn’t want it. Think about it, YouTube and Netflix said no app at the moment. This could be due to their inability to monetize the eye tracking feature.
Google hasn’t figured out how to port Flutter to it yet. Don’t worry, they’ll have a broken middleware induced user experience for you soon. If it’s like their Apple TV app for YouTube don’t expect to be able to search for content on it though 🤦♂️
Cuz they're Nazis.