Apple’s hardware isn’t the main advantage of the Vision Pro

Apple’s Vision Pro headset boasts a hefty $3,499 price tag, but it offers some major advantages over the competition. The device features dual 4K displays, runs on one of the best laptop chips in the business, and includes advanced eye- and hand-tracking technologies. Yet, one of its biggest advantages is Apple’s developer ecosystem. iPhone and iPad developers can easily plug their existing apps into the Vision Pro’s operating system using familiar tools and frameworks, giving the system a stark contrast to headsets from Meta, Valve, PlayStation, and HTC, which mostly rely on apps and games made in Unity or OpenXR to power their virtual and augmented reality experiences.

Apple promises hundreds of thousands of apps available on day one, a feat made possible through the conversion of iPad and iPhone apps to “a single scalable 2D window” that works on the Vision Pro – with no additional work required from developers unless they want to make changes. Moreover, Apple is making it simple for developers experienced with its ecosystem to create apps for visionOS, its new mixed reality operating system.

Unlike other headset ecosystems, Apple is expanding on the frameworks developers use to build apps for iOS and iPadOS, such as SwiftUI, RealityKit, and ARKit, extending them for spatial computing. Developers can use these to craft immersive AR and VR experiences for the Vision Pro and even build their apps with existing tools like Xcode and Unity as well as Apple’s upcoming Reality Composer Pro. This approach means that, in addition to Apple’s native apps, hundreds of thousands of iOS and iPadOS apps will likely be available on the Vision Pro at launch.

However, Apple falls a bit short in the gaming department. While the device will offer over 100 games from its Arcade service, most of these games aren’t built specifically for VR. This lack of serious VR titles risks positioning the Vision Pro mainly as a device for productivity rather than a hub for gaming. Nonetheless, Apple’s slow, careful approach to VR, as reflected within the device itself, where the Vision Pro surfaces a set of familiar apps rather than an unfamiliar UI that engulfs your reality, still presents an attractive offering. And while the device may not initially offer some riveting experiences that come along with playing VR games like Arizona Sunshine and Blade and Sorcery, developers are still optimistic about the device’s success. As VR game developer Blair Renaud notes, “For the industry to move forward, we need all the things I mentioned, not just incremental hardware improvements.”

 

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