Newsletter
Apple Vision Pro has never left the headlines since its release. The $3,500 mixed reality headsets keep topping the news pages for several reasons. It’s been close to two weeks since the Vision Pro hit shelves in the US. Apple has made quite a progress with visionOS so far. The company shipped the Vision Pro with over 600 visionOS apps available for the headset, other than 1.5 million iPad apps that remain compatible with the mixed-reality headset. Now, the visionOS supports over 1,000 apps, thus the Apple Vision Pro users have access to them.
Apple Vision Pro now has access to 1,000 visionOS apps
Apple’s SVP of Marketing, Greg Joswiak, announced this update on X. He gives a “big thank you” to the developers and mentions that visionOS now has 1000 “incredible spatial apps,” which are apps made especially for the Apple Vision Pro. Altogether, the visionOS App Store has over 1.5 million apps. But most of these are iPad apps that can run on visionOS in a compatibility mode.
There’s another story to the lack of visionOS apps. The visionOS App Store has sparked some controversies. Even though Apple points out that key apps like Disney+, NBA, and HBO Max offer immersive experiences on Vision Pro, there are still many important apps missing. These include Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
More importantly, YouTube has confirmed that a native visionOS app is in the pipeline. We don’t have a specific date, or timeline for when YouTube will come with an app. But it’s safe to assume that at least, in the coming weeks or months.
How different is a native visionOS app from an iPad app running on Vision Pro
A native visionOS app is designed specifically for the operating system. So, it comes with features like big targets for eye tracking, glass-like frames, and interactive menus around a central window called ornaments. On the other hand, compatible apps run in a flat 2D window that looks the same as on an iPad or iPhone.