The Apple Vision Pro headset recently went up for pre-order in the US, and at least a few UK buyers must be eyeing up an import. But one factor may put you off, aside from the $3500 price: a lot of the obvious uses for one of the headsets won’t have dedicated apps.
There will be no Netflix, no YouTube or Spotify at launch, according to Bloomberg. And analytics data obtained by Appfigures suggests the headset will only have around 200 or so of its own apps at launch.
Apps we do know about include Slack, Disney Plus, Microsoft’s Office suite and JigSpace, which lets you visualise lifelike (and non-lifelike) objects modelled in 3D space.
Why are some of the biggest names not getting onboard on day one? We’ve asked Google and Netflix for comment, but some of the likely reasons are not hard to guess.
Tech companies are currently going through round after round of redundancies and cutbacks. Investing in creating apps for a rival’s product — and Apple is a rival to both Google and Netflix — may not seem a high priority when Apple is giving the headset a staggered and conservative launch.
Apple Vision Pro UK release date remains unconfirmed
The Apple Vision Pro is out in the US on February 2, but there’s no word on when it will come to the UK, or elsewhere, yet.
Apple has made it easy for developers not keen to commit just yet too. The Vision Pro already supports iPhone and iPad apps. There may not be a Netflix or YouTube app for the headset, but it does not mean owners can’t use these services. They just won’t have apps made specifically for the headset.
However, some developers will stop their apps being used on Vision Pro, in some cases because they can’t guarantee a certain level of quality of experience with a non-optimised app. YouTube is among the apps ruled out for now, according to Appfigures, alongside WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Gmail.
We already have a preview of how these iPhone and iPad apps might run on the Vision Pro too, because mobile app support was added to Macs back in 2020. One key missing feature on Macs is you can’t make iPhone and iPad apps scale to any size you want, as you would with an app made for PC or Mac. It’s standard size or full-screen. If we can’t choose the screen size when running the iPhone/iPad version of Netflix or another streamer (if we can run it at all), that’s going to be a problem.
As you can see from Apple’s demo video, published on January 19, the Vision Pro experience is not going to be as free-wheeling as that of a laptop where you can have a load of windows open at once. Take a look:
Apple Vision Pro apps
Here’s a list of the apps “confirmed” to be made for Vision Pro according to the Appfigures data. We've picked the key titles out of the 200-odd identified.
- Apple Keynote
- Apple TestFlight
- Carrot weather
- Cut the Rope 3
- Crunchyroll
- Disney+
- Endel: Focus, Sleep, Relax
- Helium Mobile
- Jetpack Joyride 2
- JigSpace
- LEGO® Builder's Journey
- Liberate the Labels (National Portrait Gallery)
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Powerpoint
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Teams
- Night Sky
- Red Bull TV
- Webex
- Zoom
Perhaps it’s a good thing we in the UK aren’t going to be able to easily drop £3000 or more on a Vision Pro just yet. A delayed release means UK buyers get to see how this one pans out, for at least a few months.
