\n<\/p>\n
The foundational vocabulary<\/span> of any new medium is inherited from that of its predecessor. Take, for instance, the early days of television, when so many shows were effectively radio programs caught on film. The new medium\u2019s success is dependent on the development of its own vocabulary, distinguishing itself from earlier paradigms.<\/p>\n In the case of Vision Pro<\/a>, the connection to a predecessor couldn\u2019t be more apparent. A major piece of Apple\u2019s content strategy is the ability to run iPadOS apps on the headset. When searching the visionOS App Store, users choose between content developed specifically for the platform and that created for the tablet. It\u2019s similar to the approach the company has taken to building out the Mac App Store, which draws from both iOS and iPadOS apps.<\/p>\n While 600 is a good number of \u201coptimized\u201d apps<\/a> for the launch of a first-gen product, the availability of iPadOS content really bolsters the essentials and gives developers some extra time to build something custom while bigger names like YouTube waffle on their objectives. As far as what constitutes \u201coptimized,\u201d we\u2019re talking about a wide spectrum. That could mean something as simple as a change to the UX to reflect the Vision Pro\u2019s hand tracking. It could also mean something far more immersive.<\/p>\n I understand if you didn\u2019t make it all the way through last week\u2019s 6,000-word review<\/a>, so here\u2019s a bit of the TL;DR: the Vision Pro will live or die on the backs of developers. As I noted previously, the first iPhone was undoubtedly a revolutionary piece of hardware, but it was the iPhone 3G\u2019s App Store that really blew the industry wide open. At this point we all fundamentally understand that a hardware platform is only as good as its content, and Apple only truly demonstrated how capable its smartphone was by opening it up to developers.<\/p>\n Truly immersive experiences are very much in the minority in the Vision Pro\u2019s current state. That\u2019s not a surprise, really. While development has \u2014 to a certain extent \u2014 been open for months now, I\u2019m sure many parties have been waiting for launch to gauge the true interest of both the public and their developers.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say that immersion isn\u2019t present in the current offering. For one thing, it\u2019s big into Environments \u2014 a core feature of visionOS that serves as a kind of immersive desktop wallpaper, putting you on the moon, in a desert or at the edge a volcano. Experience Dinosaurs, meanwhile, does a fine job leveraging the knowledge of the Prehistoric Planet team to create one of Vision Pro\u2019s most compelling demos. It\u2019s content like this that demonstrates potential that can be exploited by future developers.<\/p>\n One of the device\u2019s initial creativity bottlenecks, however, is where Apple chose to focus its initial push. In my review, I hammered the idea of \u201cinfinite desktop,\u201d a play on the phrase \u201cinfinite canvas\u201d that gets to the heart of the \u201cspatial computing\u201d experience Tim Cook has pushed since day one. At its core, Apple sees the device as the next step in a journey that began with the Mac decades ago. For now, it\u2019s designed to play nicely with desktops and laptops, but it\u2019s easy to imagine a future where (should things play out the way the company hopes) Apple\u2019s primary PC is one you strap to your face.<\/p>\n