Usually Apple’s tie-ins feel additive — I’m not given a product that feels like it’s missing a feature if I don’t own another Apple device. When I buy additional product types, I feel like I gain the missing features. Seems like that changed with Spatial Video. You get to stare at a reminder that you don’t own the headset every time you take video.
I think something with this, too (and that you sorta hinted at), is that it doesn’t seem to provide any additional benefit to what we already get with the iPhone, iPad, Mac ecosystem. That’s an ecosystem with a huge and established user base. Obviously this could change as developers step in to do the heavy lifting, but… Will they want to? Is it a good investment to spend thousands of hours on an app that a fraction of users of an already niche product will use? I think it’s very telling that some of the biggest developers (like Spotify and Netflix) opted out of Vision Pro.
It’s going to take some very talented, very risk-tolerant developers to make a $3,500+ headset go anywhere. And as of now, Apple is providing very little incentive.
How it’s getting tied into the broader ecosystem feels very forced, too.
Advertising the ability to take spatial video from an iPhone months before the Vision Pro launched definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/record-spatial-videos-for-apple-vision-pro-iph6e3a6d4fe/ios
Usually Apple’s tie-ins feel additive — I’m not given a product that feels like it’s missing a feature if I don’t own another Apple device. When I buy additional product types, I feel like I gain the missing features. Seems like that changed with Spatial Video. You get to stare at a reminder that you don’t own the headset every time you take video.
I don’t like that.
I think something with this, too (and that you sorta hinted at), is that it doesn’t seem to provide any additional benefit to what we already get with the iPhone, iPad, Mac ecosystem. That’s an ecosystem with a huge and established user base. Obviously this could change as developers step in to do the heavy lifting, but… Will they want to? Is it a good investment to spend thousands of hours on an app that a fraction of users of an already niche product will use? I think it’s very telling that some of the biggest developers (like Spotify and Netflix) opted out of Vision Pro.
It’s going to take some very talented, very risk-tolerant developers to make a $3,500+ headset go anywhere. And as of now, Apple is providing very little incentive.