Apple Claims Vision Pro SDK Downloads Exceeded Expectations Amid Developer Lab Attendance Concerns

[Abazigal]

Sure. But that isn’t enough to make this thing the next iPhone. I guarantee you 99% of Taylor Swift fans would not be satisfied watching her show in VR.

99% of her fans probably couldn’t even get a ticket to her concerts. Did you see the projected demand for her upcoming movie?

If you tell me there was a way to record her concert and make it seem like I was there in person, I guarantee you said product will be back ordered for the next decade.

 

[Hastings101]

I have the feeling this might go to the way of Apple TV: great, premium product that is the best in its product category and adored by its users, but not many bother with it because "the best" is not much better than the <$15 on sale streaming stick alternative. Hello $300 Quest 2 and $500 Quest 3 eating the marketshare from "the best" $3500 Apple Vision Pro.

Nothing comes close to an Apple Watch, the competition is mostly terrible unless you need hardcore fitness gear from a company like Garmin. Very little comes close an M1/2 Macbook (Pro) for price/performance + battery life. iPads still are so much better than the any other tablet on the market, and nothing needs to be said about the love for iPhones. AirPods have become for earbuds what Kleenex is for tissue. Apple is in a great place with most of its product lines compared to any time in the past.

But lots of things are almost as good as an Apple TV for much cheaper and I would honestly not know the product existed if I weren't an Apple fanatic using these forums. At this point, it looks like the same is going down with the headset.

 

[Abazigal]

Because there are none? Vision Pro's "killer apps" are the big virtual screens, which I don't think will move the needle for most people, and entertainment, which looks quite promising. Will enough people spend $3500+ on a fancy portable movie theater experience that can't be shared with friends and family?

Certain people on these forums keep singing the praises of AR, assuring us again and again that it is a life changing technology. Yet, when you ask any of them to imagine a popular use case for AR....silence. They default to the boring, unimaginative, niche use cases of interior design, architectural walkthroughs, and medical (which will likely never happen since Apple is highly unlikely to have Vision Pro certified by governmental health authorities).

I'm still waiting for someone to give me a use case that appeals to a broad swath of "average" users. I don't think there is a "killer app" for Vision Pro, just like there hasn't been one for the Quest.

There is an adage I sometimes use in response to arguments that Apple products are overpriced for the specs that you get.

Not everything which can be measured, matters. Just not everything which matters, can be measured.

I believe the "killer app" will be immersion. It's something that will need to be experienced in person (ie: when the product is released), rather than hyped online.

I have mentioned before how I feel the AVP (Apple Vision Pro) will revolutionise memories. Imagine being able to record a certain moment in time, and then rewatch it and feel like you were being transported to that very time and place itself. It's a degree of immersion you can't get using conventional recording technology.

This isn't something that can be quantified on a spec sheet the same way you with ram, storage and price, but it matters. And the wonderful thing about the mass consumer market is that the buyer is the end user, and because the consumer is not perfectly rational, outstanding design and integration (as opposed to modularity) can and will continue to drive demand, because different things matter differently to different people.

The reason why there isn't one for the Quest is because the technology behind it sucked. It's not a knock on the product; the creators did the best they could with the tech they had access to at the time, and it showed. Just as Apple waited until the tech required to enable to desired experience was available, and I believe it will set the bar for AR headsets moving forward.

People here are assuming that just because the Quest failed, means the AVP will fail as well. They are choosing to focus only on hard metrics like price, while disregarding everything about what makes Apple unique (such as their ecosystem, or their ability to integrate hardware with software). I feel this tends to lead to error and inaccurate analysis, because you are comparing Apple too much to other companies, and you are not allowing Apple’s unique attributes to speak for themselves or recognise how Apple is able to set themselves apart from the competition.

 

[darngooddesign]

That too. The thing about any event is that it’s social. You’re not standing alone at the venue. You’re there with friends and other fans of the performers. The notion that isolating VR = legitimate experience of a live event is absurd on the face of it.

While not right away, but your friends with headsets will also be at the virtual concerts so the social aspect will be there as well. VR is only isolating if you aren't interacting with anyone else. Back during the pandemic my friend moved his dj nights onto Twitch; a lot of the same people were in his stream and the chat had a similar social feel to being at the club.

 

[darngooddesign]

99% of her fans probably couldn’t even get a ticket to her concerts. Did you see the projected demand for her upcoming movie?

If you tell me there was a way to record her concert and make it seem like I was there in person, I guarantee you said product will be back ordered for the next decade.

She's playing massive arenas now and the vast majority of people there have a mediocre viewing experience because to them she's a dot on a stage far away.

 

[Abazigal]

She's playing massive arenas now and the vast majority of people there have a mediocre viewing experience because to them she's a dot on a stage far away.

That's the thing. Many people here like to talk about the good old ways of doing stuff, not realising that they too had their share of friction that was affecting the end user experience.

Since Endgame, I have only watched 2 other movies - No Way Home and Into the Spider-verse. Everything else, I either caught it on streaming, or just didn't bother. What changed was there was finally a way for me to enjoy the content I wanted to watch, without having to deal with the inconveniences, or the ethical considerations behind piracy.

For instance, I don't have to pay for expensive tickets or deal with overpriced snacks. I can watch my show at a time of my choosing, break it up into as many viewings as I wish (I watched Eternals over 4 intervals because I just found it unwatchable), and rewind key segments. I can pause when I need a toilet break, I can sit (or stand) where I please, and I don't have to spend time traveling to a cinema and back.

Same with travelling. The Northern Lights may well be a visual wonder, but I am not going to fly halfway around the world for it. And yup, I am not the travelling sort, and the only overseas trip I have been on is one instituted by the management course I was attending (which further reinforced my conviction that travelling is simply not for me). Give me a way to consume these experiences without me having to deal with the costs and the hassles of flying, and I will pay.

Then we have concert viewing, where you first have to deal with expensive tickets and / or scalpers. Sometimes, the performance just isn't available in your country, so you either do without or fly in from overseas. Then you have to squeeze into the venue filled with tens of thousands of other people, and depending on where you stand or whether the people around you are too busy trying to film the event with their smartphones, you probably don't have a good view of the stage anyways.

I feel that the Vision Pro holds the promise of rethinking the way the aforementioned experiences are consumed, by doing away with all the bugbears and inconveniences that were putting people away from them. To those who say this will not be as good as being there in person, have you perhaps considered the existence of people like myself who didn't think that the "in person" experience was all that good to begin with?

The danger to them, though, is that it threatens to commoditise what was once a scarce phenomenon (just like what the internet did to news, music streaming, and now video streaming). Maybe a concert-viewing experience will no longer be that special when experiencing one is as simple as putting on a headset and people can afford to do so every other evening because they don't have to leave their own living room.

That though, is their problem to figure out, not mine.

Bring on the AVP, I say.

 

[Col4bin]

So, at first there was low turnout rates for the developer labs this summer but supposedly the SDK download rate is much higher than expected. I realize that these are mutually exclusive but is interesting nonetheless. I remain skeptical.

 

[tomtad]

This is ridiculous. All it takes is pushing a button in Xcode and having the disk space available to download it. I can’t speak for everyone who’s done so, but as for me, I’ve downloaded the visionOS beta SDK for work despite us having no imminent interest in actually developing for the Vision Pro just because I was curious how our existing iOS app runs on it. (Not great!)


As others have said, this isn’t just ridiculous, it’s meaningless.

What exactly is 3 digit satisfaction anyway?

 

[Surf Monkey]

I don’t know if you caught that I said assuming the tech is solid. So at a certain point everything you listed will not be distinguishable to our brains. The VP won’t be 100% there when it is launched, but even if it was, I get the feeling those aren’t the real reasons you think it’s fundamentally different. Am I wrong in saying you probably care more about the conceptual difference, rather than the functional?

Those are HUGE assumptions. There are a ton of moving parts here. It’s still a screen, not a window.

 

[Surf Monkey]

Yep... Of course...that's how the most successful tech company in the world operates their business. As evidenced by the success of iPod, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, etc that the experts here pre-ordained as flops.

Your above characterization dovetails nicely!

Hey, we can go into Apple’s MANY failed products to as well if you like. The one the VP appears to cleave closest to is the Newton.

 

[Surf Monkey]

99% of her fans probably couldn’t even get a ticket to her concerts. Did you see the projected demand for her upcoming movie?

Know what you can do at a movie? Dress up and go out with your friends and have a communal experience with a whole bunch of fans. So the demand for the movie in no way equates to potential demand for a fully isolated version of the show that you have to wear a helmet to watch.

If you tell me there was a way to record her concert and make it seem like I was there in person, I guarantee you said product will be back ordered for the next decade.

Seriously doubt it.

 

[Surf Monkey]

While not right away, but your friends with headsets will also be at the virtual concerts so the social aspect will be there as well. VR is only isolating if you aren't interacting with anyone else.

You mean wearing a (likely) hot and sweaty set of goggles and looking at some lame avatars of your friends? Yeah. That doesn’t seem very appealing and doesn’t solve the inherently isolating nature of the device.

Back during the pandemic my friend moved his dj nights onto Twitch; a lot of the same people were in his stream and the chat had a similar social feel to being at the club.

And how many are still doing that now that the pandemic is (mostly) over?

As I said before, the VP would make perfect sense if the pandemic were a permanent context. But it isn’t and that leaves VP hanging as a kind of tone deaf, over priced product that people struggle to justify.

 

[grovian]

This headline has no meaning as it is the the usual tiresome Apple marketing blabla and I am sure it is not aimed at developers because we can simply ignore nonsense like this but it is disturbing the Apple thinks their customers are this stupid.

 

[darngooddesign]

And how many are still doing that now that the pandemic is (mostly) over?

It's still going on, attendance levels haven't really dropped.

 

[citysnaps]

Hey, we can go into Apple’s MANY failed products to as well if you like. The one the VP appears to cleave closest to is the Newton.

No need to. It's enough that many of Apple's most successful products (iPod, iPhone, iPad, AirPods) were declared flops by the "experts" here when introduced.

 

[Tagbert]

The problem is with this is I can do the exact same thing just without a heavy, 2 hour limited battery device attached with multiple straps to my head.

It might be a novelty at first but after a few goes you just know you’ll end up getting your laptop out instead.

You do know that you can just plug it into a charger. That battery pack is not needed all the time.

 

[jimbobb24]

The problem is with this is I can do the exact same thing just without a heavy, 2 hour limited battery device attached with multiple straps to my head.

It might be a novelty at first but after a few goes you just know you’ll end up getting your laptop out instead.

That’s why people will find out. But for a few it might be a lot better and they will start to use it instead of the laptop. But if it can only do iPad apps then… even office will be a little hampered.

I don’t know why the 2 hour battery matters. Just plug it in?

 

[jimbobb24]

it will be like that skit from the Simpsons:

Me.
Apple Vision
Virtual Lawnmowing App
Anker - Vision Compatible Self Driving Lawnmower 3900

I can see the future now and I love it~


(since I won't have to cut the grass by walking around in the heat anymore.)

Thankfully the technology already exists to make robo lawnmowers … just no one has done it yet. In a few years robots will mow all the lawns.

 

[Tagbert]

There are many concerts that I cant get to, viewing them in VR will be a lot better than watching some clips on YouTube.

No, you will not be allowed to experience those concerts if you can’t be there in person and you should feel shame for thinking about doing something that is forbidden. (That seems to be a theme on this conversation.)

 

[jimbobb24]

It is VERY odd that a fairly large contingent of people here seem to think that gazing into a screen in a headset is essentially the same thing as participating in real world experiences like attending a sporting event or a play or a movie.

Looking at a screen a few millimeters away from your eyes is NOT the same as looking at a real thing in the real world. As much as Apple wants you to think of this as augmented reality, it’s nothing of the sort. It’s a VR system that presents you with a live feed of the world around you. Not the same as AR.

Right now I watch NBA finals on a flat TV because I cannot afford the tickets. What if instead of the TV I am using a vision pro which is 2-3x better than TV but still only 50% as good as being there. Well…that’s a huge leap isn’t it? Because I never was going to be able to afford 10k court side tickets. But I can afford the “ticket” to the virtual court side and my experience has increased by a lot. It’s not as good as being there…but I can never be there so the comparison is meaningless. Is it better than TV? That’s the question for most people who cannot afford to be at some events.

 

[subjonas]

Those are HUGE assumptions. There are a ton of moving parts here. It’s still a screen, not a window.

Of course it’s a screen not a window, that will always be true until it’s a window (or glasses rather). I’m only talking about functional difference.
I don’t agree they are huge assumptions, but we’ll see in due time.

 

[dante_mr]

The more I hear about it, the more funny people relentlessly defending this thing on MacRumours a few months ago become. Did anybody else see the Verge report that the entire front facing display feature doesn't work currently? Sure, it's a while until the thing ships, but if they can't start giving more substantive demos what little hype is left will fully die.

We’re still at least 5 months away from release and possibly 8 months away.

Features not being ready is not exactly abnormal. iOS 17’s beta is apparently still buggy and the iPhone event is in a week. And that’s for an established product category.

Let’s not forget that even the onstage iPhone demo performed by Jobs was a complete mess behind the scenes. They even used multiple iPhone models and switched between them to reduce the chances of a crash happening on stage.

Being this far away from launch it’s still way too soon for any “hype” to even be built up. Most non-enthusiasts haven’t even heard of the device yet.

I’m almost sure Apple will have another Vision Pro event down the line. Either early next year before launch or maybe alongside the iPhone next week.

But I don’t think 3 months is enough time for developers to finalize their apps. So I’m better on the former.

Edit: but I have to add this PS every time. I think the Vision Pro will be a success _relatively speaking_ . Expecting iPhone-level sales on a product that costs $3500 is unrealistic. It’d be more apt to compare to Mac sales imo.

 

[poseidondev]

SDK downloads is kind of a weird metric to gauge interest because the SDK is all but bundled with every Xcode beta update because the checkmark to download it is checked on by default.

I’ve downloaded the SDK with every Xcode update (weekly nowadays) on all of my Macs with the idea that I’ll play around with it once I get the chance, but that doesn’t mean much imho.

The fact that they’re grasping at straws to present a positive message doesn’t inspire much faith tbh.

 

[svish]

Looking forward to hearing more about Vision Pro in the coming months

 

[dante_mr]

In other threads, I think you've posted this challenge about 10+ times and I think I've shared my own answer to it at least a few of those times so here we go again...

The thing I like least about even MBpro 16" is the very constrained space in that 16" screen. When I have to go from 40" ultra-wide to 16" MBpro, my productivity plunges because I spend a bunch of new time flipping windows or virtual screens and working within limited space of any given app (even when in "full screen" mode).

MBpro 16" starts at $2499. So for $1K more than that, I perceive that I can have an any-sized screen MBpro, including my preferred desktop screen size of 40" ultra-wide.

If that works as good as implied in the WWDC video, my next "laptop" is likely to be a combination of a modest Mac in lap- perhaps even a de-screened MBpro (accessible for little from people selling it because they damaged their screen)...

View attachment 2254991

...plus Vpro for the screen. Then, when traveling and wanting to get some work done, I (believe I) will have my 40" ultra-wide screen with me... in a relatively small & lightweight package... that fits in a bag much like an existing laptop fits now.

Pull the 2 pieces out and use them in lieu of laptop. Put them away just like putting away a laptop when done.

Many tech players are trying to find ways to deliver bigger screens without the weight and size. Thus, companies are experimenting with folding devices, with rollable screens, with projector screens, etc. This is in play for laptops too...

View attachment 2254990

All I see there is much heavier weight to carry around.

By virtualizing the screens, I see this as a portable, high-quality crack at THAT very desirable benefit.

I'd like a MBpro 40" ultra-wide. But I wouldn't want to carry that aluminum monster around. I also wouldn't want that in the form of one of the foldable laptops that already exist. However, Vpro MAY deliver ANY-size laptop screen(s) minus the weight of an actual gigantic-screen version. If so, $1000 more for any-size screen (part of that) "laptop" seems towards bargain to me.

I wish to see this work in person once there are Vpro demos in store. But looking at the WWDC presentation, it looks like this works just fine... and cheaper competitors have this working well too in lower resolution variations of Vpro. I hope the opportunity for anyone wanting a bigger laptop screen than 16" has a good opportunity to get one by "thinking different" along these lines.

Very well said.

Everyone is obsessed with finding some kind of killer app that we haven’t seen before.

Maybe one will show up.

But the real killer app is having a resizable display in your bag. And the tech will only get better from here (multiple Mac display mirroring, more powerful hardware…).

Right now the Vision Pro is shaping up to be a spatial version of an iPad. It needs to get a bit closer to the Mac in terms of productivity potential. And I think it will in a few generations.

Another “killer app” that ties into that is entertainment. The Vision Pro and VR headsets more generally have the potential to be the ultimate personal entertainment device. You no longer have to compromise between size, portability, or display quality. You can have all of it.

You’re literally in pitch black every time you put the headset on. So as long as the display quality is solid, you essentially have a portable theater in your bag with close-to-perfect colors and zero glare.

Video ratio won’t matter, 3D or not 3D won’t matter, ambient glare sources won’t matter etc.