Apple announced there are now over 1,000 apps, designed specifically for Vision Pro. The announcement came from Greg Joswiak, Senior VP of Marketing at Apple, who also added there are over 1.5 million compatible apps for the headset.
The apps are available in a dedicated visionOS App Store, and there have been over 600 available since day one, which was 12 days ago. Some key platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify said they will not develop a dedicated app, though, and users have to use the services through the Safari browser.
The Google-owned video service later changed its stance and revealed a Vision Pro app is “on the roadmap”. Some say YouTube did a full 180 after seeing the success of the headset, but there is also a chance of missed royalties after a third-party app is already gaining track, and users are paying $5 for it.
The Vision Pro is a major change to the tech. It’s not just the difference in resolution (which already fundamentally changes the experience by making text actually viable in more than title screen type giant letters). The quality and latency of the passthrough make it the first actual AR option.
This isn’t some impulse, either. They’ve spent years building to this and waiting for the underlying tech to cross the minimum viable threshold. All of Apple Silicon, Spatial Audio, universal apps, putting ARKit on phones, and many more paths have been building to this. It’s very clearly been their vision for a long time, and we’ve had leaks about them working on it behind the scenes for much of it.