Over the last few months, Apple has been hosting Apple Vision Pro developer labs to give creative developers the chance to visualise their apps in Apple’s future mixed reality headset.
Though they can’t talk about their experiences with the devices publicly just yet, Apple has shared some of their reactions in a brand new developer post. We can only expect more reactions to come out over the coming months.
A device with vision
As these reactions are shared by Apple itself, we have to take them with a grain of salt. It’s a carefully curated list of reactions and quotes from devs, going over how it will change their life as a dev and all the ideas they have for the platform. It’s a fascinating bit of insight into what the Vision Pro will be used for, but it is also very deliberate.
In the first published lab, Apple got Michael Simmons, the CEO of Flexibits, David Smith, a developer and podcaster, and Ben Guerrette, the Creative Director of Pixite, to try out the Vision Pro with their apps.
Michael Simmons tried out Fantastical, his all-encompassing calendar app, and said, “It was like seeing Fantastical for the first time… It felt like I was part of the app.” This is an exciting prospect for the Vision Pro as you could potentially put it into your office life and schedule meetings and check the weather all from within the headset.
David Smith worked on a version of Widgetsmith, with the intent of seeing exactly how customizable the Vision Pro can get. The answer is seemingly very, as one clever dev team has managed to get Windows XP running on it.
Ben Guerrette praised the developer lab as it gave him the chance to really understand how his app would work. “That kind of learning experience is incredibly valuable.”
With the Apple Vision Pro seemingly years off, these tests are mostly a proof of concept. Apple wants developer support as it’s part of a big launch, and letting some of the most creative developers out there get their hands on it is a great way of doing so. Though you could guess your app will work, you can’t quite account for how everything feels when you’re in there.
Apple letting developers really get hands-on with their headset is a great sign of what it will be like on launch.