The Apple Vision Pro may come equipped with settings specifically for plane rides. When digging into the first beta of visionOS, MacRumors found that the device’s operating system may have a Travel Mode option that you can use during a flight.

Several text strings uncovered by MacRumors indicate that you’ll be able to turn on the feature, with one noting, “If you’re on an airplane, you’ll need to keep Travel Mode on to continue using your ‌Apple Vision Pro‌.” It also prompts the user to “remain stationary in Travel Mode,” likely to avoid wearers flailing around while wearing the headset and disturbing whoever’s sitting next to them.

Other lines of text in visionOS state that “some awareness features will be off,” MacRumors notes, suggesting that the device might not use some of its sensors for spatial awareness while in Travel Mode. It might not let you use your “digital persona” either, a feature Apple debuted at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, which allows you to create and use a hyperrealistic avatar of your face when using FaceTime with the Vision Pro.

It’s still unclear what all this means and how Travel Mode might work. But this gives us some insight into what to expect, as well as some of the limitations that Apple might have to work around. Even if the $3,499 headset does come with travel-specific features, I don’t think I could ever see myself wearing it on an airplane. I appreciate the effort, Apple, but I think I’ll just stick with watching movies on the back of the seat in front of me.

The other day, I was going through a bag full of old tech — I mean, really old tech — trying to convince myself to finally get rid of phones that I hadn’t used for 10 years or so when I came across a battery. One of the batteries that I used to carry around in case my phone ran out of juice.

You see, once upon a time, smartphones had replaceable batteries. Instead of having to carry around a portable charger or search desperately for a wall socket so you could charge up your failing phone (assuming you had a power cord with you), you could pull off the back of your phone, replace the out-of-power battery with a fully charged one, and proceed happily on your way.

However, at some point, manufacturers (and, perhaps, most consumers) decided that they wanted their smartphones as light and slim as possible — so slim that there was no room for a battery that wasn’t glued into place. They also wanted to add water and dust resistance, and that’s a lot harder to accomplish with a device that easily opens. So slowly but surely, the replaceable battery disappeared, and we all learned to carry around chargers or cords for just-in-case scenarios (especially if your phone’s battery was starting to age).

I have to admit that the first time I bought a phone without a replaceable battery, I felt a little peeved. It was probably akin to what a music enthusiast feels purchasing a phone with great audio but without an audio jack — you can adjust to the change, but you wish you didn’t have to.

Now, however, there’s a chance that one day, I may be able to adjust back. Back in 2020, there was a proposal by the European Parliament for new laws concerning the regulations of batteries, which included a clause that demanded “Portable batteries incorporated in appliances shall be readily removable and replaceable by the end-user or by independent operators during the lifetime of the appliance.” (Other regulations concerned batteries for various vehicles and industries.) In September 2022, the EU reached a provisional agreement to move forward with those laws. And on June 14th, 2023, the European Parliament approved it, sending out a press release explaining that portable batteries must be designed “in such a way that consumers can themselves easily remove and replace them” (emphasis theirs).

Huh.

A final vote is still upcoming, but considering that this month’s approval was passed with 587 votes in favor, nine against, and 20 abstentions, I would say that this is pretty much a done deal. The part about batteries being replaceable goes into force three and a half years after the final vote.

What this means is that, in a few short years, any phone sold in Europe will have to be designed so that its battery can be replaced by the person who owns it. And that any manufacturer who does business in Europe will have to decide whether they want to create completely different phone models to fit that market — or come up with phones that can be sold in other parts of the world as well. Like the US.

Since this news hit, there has been a lot of discussion about the exact interpretation of the phrase “readily removable and replaceable.” Kevin Purdy makes some good points in his Ars Technica article in which he notes that batteries are actually replaceable now if you have the know-how (and courage) to get through the adhesives holding your phone together and holding your battery into the phone. Of course, it’s a little hard to argue that this would qualify as “readily removable” by the typical user. But what does? Using specialized instruments to get at the battery — so that “replaceable” means putting in a new, semi-permanent battery? Simply unscrewing the back of the phone? Or going back to the way it was and just prying it out with your fingernail?

I have to admit that I’m very curious as to how this will pan out. Odds are, it will probably look different than the replaceable batteries we had 15 years ago. It’s more likely to be about extending the longevity of your device, not getting a few extra hours of use before needing to recharge. Still, I like to daydream about once again being able to shrug and swap a battery in under a minute when my phone is running low on power. I could get used to that again.

]]> https://www.latest-apple-news.com/2023/06/20/nomad-and-peak-designs-new-rugged-iphone-14-case-offers-both-style-and-substance/ Tue, 20 Jun 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/20/23766804/nomad-peak-design-rugged-iphone-14-case-mount-limited-edition-price-release

If you’re in the market for a rugged iPhone 14 Pro case with a little utility, then you’re in luck. Nomad, a reputable producer of phone cases, has collaborated with camera bag and accessory designer Peak Design to release a limited-edition phone case for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. The Nomad Rugged Case is available to purchase today from $60 with immediate shipping from either Nomad or Peak Design’s website.

The new Nomad Rugged Case supports MagSafe charging and features Peak Design’s SlimLink magnetic attachment technology, making it compatible with all Peak Design mobile mounts, chargers, and accessories. Supported Peak Design mounts — which allow a mobile device to be attached to walls, bikes, motorcycles, cars, and more — will also be available to purchase on the Nomad website starting today.

Image: Nomad / Peak Design

Design-wise, the limited-edition case is only available in black and features fortified TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane — a soft, rubber-like plastic) bumpers that surround the iPhone 14 Pro’s display, corners, and camera lenses. The PET plastic backplate is matte and designed to resist scratching, and the case sits flat when placed camera-side down to avoid any annoying wobble. Nomad claims its polycarbonate frame allows the case to remain lightweight while providing 15 feet of drop protection. There are two lanyard attachments located at the bottom of the Rugged Case, and inside the case itself, you’ll find a 100 percent recycled nylon canvas interior with a custom “Nomad x Peak Design” screenprint.

According to Lawrence Lander, creative director at Peak Design, both companies teamed up to create the new Nomad Rugged Case to provide customers with more mounting options, resulting in a hardy new phone case that works with the entire Peak Design ecosystem. “Like backpacks and wallets, it turns out people have a wide range of preferences when it comes to phone cases,” said Lander in a video announcing the collaboration. “Rather than design a rugged case from the ground up, we partnered with some world-class designers that we already knew and trusted.”

The limited-edition cases will only be available while supplies last. It’s a nice-looking case, especially for something that’s designed to protect your phone from being battered around. The ability to quickly interchange between different Peak Design SlimLink mounts is obviously the selling point here, though, and as an accident-prone person who frequently switches between cycling and driving myself, I’m certainly intrigued.

My smart home journey began, like so many others, with a poorly placed light switch. My partner and I had just bought our first house, and the switch that illuminated the kitchen was in the laundry room all the way on the other side, meaning we had to wander through darkness to get to it. I hated that light switch.

So what to do? Well, I could spend a bunch of money I didn’t have to hire someone to move it, try to do it myself and accidentally burn my house down with a bad wiring job, or take the plunge on a smart home. I took the path of least resistance (that’s an electricity joke) and got started on smartening up my house.

I started out with an Amazon Echo Dot and quickly found that I hated the skills system Amazon uses; plus, the sound quality of its little black puck was terrible. So I got a Google Home Mini. It looked nicer but had invisible touch controls, and the app felt half-finished. I could’ve stopped there, but driven by the sunk cost fallacy, I gave Apple Home a shot.

Apple Home, formerly known as HomeKit (which still refers to its smart home APIs), is Apple’s nine-year-old smart home platform, started in 2014 as a Siri-driven experience. Amazingly, it had no app until two years later and no smart speaker until the company finally released the first HomePod in 2018. The Verge’s Nilay Patel loved the HomePod’s audio chops but said it suffered in many other ways, not least of which is its place in Apple’s infamous walled garden, making it a “lonely” device. It couldn’t distinguish between voices, couldn’t operate your TV, and could only handle one timer at a time. But I just wanted my lights to turn on and off, and for me, it seemed to do that better than the others, so I stuck with it. Apple has closed the gap since then in all of the big, meaningful ways, but it’s been a slow process.

Today, Apple Home’s advantages are mostly two-fold. First, there’s Apple’s easy-to-use, attractive Home app. I found Apple Home to be a breath of fresh air after using Amazon’s Alexa smart home app, which perplexingly hides most of its actual smart home controls in a tab.

Second is being so locked into the company’s ecosystem that you benefit from its strict requirements for Apple Home-compatible devices. Those requirements include the ability to control devices locally — which means you still get basic control from your phone if your internet service goes out — and features like HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV), which gives users encrypted cloud video storage and facial recognition based on users’ Apple Photos library, among other things (more on this later). Admittedly, though, this is a double-edged sword since compliance with Apple strictures has resulted in a more limited, spendy product choice.

Apple’s system has, among the big smart home platforms, also seen perhaps the most enthusiastic support for the new Matter protocol, which is partially based on Apple’s platform and still in its early days. If you’ve invested in almost any recent Apple Home Hub — that is, an Apple TV or a HomePod — you’ll find that device is also a Thread border router. That’s important because Thread is the wireless standard to be used in many inexpensive smart home devices going forward. For more, our own Jennifer Tuohy has a great introductory guide on the subject.

Starting your smart home

If you’re going to go with Apple Home, you may want to start with an Apple Home Hub — as mentioned above, either an Apple TV (ideally from 2021 or newer) or a HomePod. If you’re planning to purchase a HomePod, be aware that If you get the newest version, you’re essentially only paying for better sound (which, again, is stellar) because the $99 HomePod Mini, at only a third of the price, brings all of the same functionality. The 2022 Apple TV 4K, starting at $129, is a powerful TV streaming box and probably the best such product for most people to buy anyway, though you won’t get Thread support, as it’s reserved for the 128GB version.

Whichever you choose, buying an Apple Home Hub enables you to control your smart home when you’re away and lets you share access with others, provided they have an iPhone. Without a Home Hub, things get less convenient, but you can still add and control smart home products with your Apple devices.

As for smart devices, start small. Smart light bulbs are a great jumping-off point, and I’ve generally had the best experience with Philips Hue, though setup is a little more involved for Hue bulbs than for, say, Nanoleaf’s Essentials A19. Both brands offer bulbs compatible with Apple’s Adaptive Lighting feature, which gradually tunes the warmth of the bulb throughout your day to be cooler or warmer, depending on the time.

For smart plugs, I’ve tried a few, and all have been iffy at one time or another. The best, though, have been my Eve Energy smart plugs. Eve’s plugs are not cheap but feel worth it, as they offer a built-in power meter function that tracks how much power is flowing through them, even offering an estimate of what that’ll cost you based on the last week, day, or minute of usage. The Eve app also succeeds where Apple’s Home app fails by showing how your Thread network is structured, which helped immensely when I had to troubleshoot responsiveness issues with my Thread devices a few weeks ago.

Smart home security cameras can be a good go-to next, though picking the right one is tricky. Go for one that supports HKSV if you have an iCloud Plus subscription, as that gets you 10 days of video history, the ability to set detection zones, and object recognition for people, animals, vehicles, and even packages. In addition to being able to view camera notifications on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, an Apple TV can show picture-in-picture streams from your cameras, which comes in handy when I’m watching TV in my basement and can’t hear knocks on my front door (of course, notifications can be turned off as well).

I use a pair of EufyCam 2C cameras, though there are reasons to be cautious about Eufy’s security practices. Otherwise, Netatmo and Logitech both make well-liked alternatives, as do Eve and Aqara. Be careful not to confuse Apple Home compatibility with HKSV support, though. Arlo makes fantastic cameras, for instance, but their support is limited to live video streaming and basic motion detection in the Apple Home app.

If you want to add peace of mind beyond what cameras offer, you can look for door and window sensors like those for Ecobee thermostats. The Aqara water leak detector actually saved my bacon once when a leak I’d patched in my basement sprung open in the middle of the night — my iPhone alerted me to it, waking me up so I could stop the leak before it got to anything important. Door / window and motion sensors can also be great for setting up automation, so your lights are on right after you walk in the room.

Finally, with enough HomePods (Mini and above) in your home, you actually may not need separate humidity or temperature sensors, as those are built in, though in my experience, they’re not as accurate as dedicated sensors. In addition, their built-in alarm recognition means you can be notified if your smoke detector goes off when you’re out of the house. Those features aren’t unique to HomePods, but having all of them in one device is. Some Amazon Echo speakers have temperature sensors and can detect sounds like smoke alarms but lack humidity sensors, while Google’s Nest speakers can detect alarms, but only if you pay for its Nest Aware subscription, and lack built-in temperature and humidity sensors.

I set up my own Apple Home system by slowly identifying pain points in my house that I thought a smart device would make better. I now have a mix of smart lights and smart dimmers; various environmental, motion, and leak sensors; outdoor smart security cameras; a smart garage door opener module (that is, shockingly, compatible with my ancient Automatic Doorman opener); and more. I don’t even know how many devices I own at this point because many of them are Zigbee devices that rely on various hubs, like my Aqara and Hue hubs, to connect to Apple Home.

I collect information like I once did Pogs, and I love being able to find out the conditions in every part of my house — and being able to check on things there when I’m away. Various sensors have also allowed me to adjust my dampers for the best air distribution and helped me know where to place humidifiers and dehumidifiers for the best result.

Making it better

As I said earlier, Apple’s onerous certification program has resulted in a more limited selection and higher prices, which can be a big pain in the butt when you’re looking for smart home devices. But as Matter is rolled out more, we should see a lot of those limitations fall away as basic smart devices like light bulbs, switches, plugs, and sensors become more commoditized. It also means no more looking for HomeKit certification for device makers, as Matter is intrinsically cross-platform.

But there are other things Apple could do better. Improvements to Siri are always welcome, as right now, it often refers me to my phone for certain queries, such as web searches or business information (though other times it gives me the answers I’m seeking through the speaker), and my phone never seems to be aware it’s supposed to be showing me something. It would also be great to see more third-party support for Apple’s assistant — two years after opening Siri to other developers for use, Ecobee is still the only company actually taking Apple up on the offer.

There are ways to get around Apple’s lack of third-party support, such as Home Assistant, an open-source project that adds customizable HomeKit support to far more devices than do so natively. I’ve never tried this myself, partially because I haven’t had a need and partially because it’s time-consuming and I’ve just never gotten around to it.

I’d also love to see some fun or more granular automations injected into Apple Home. There are hacky ways to get this to happen, but they’re obscure and require more technical know-how than many people possess. For instance, I have a scene that flashes green and yellow lights on a pair of Nanoleafs and plays Todd Rundgren’s “Bang on the Drum All Day’’ whenever I yell “Go pack!” at Siri — but frankly, I won’t touch that scene ever again because I still have no idea how I got the lights to actually do what I wanted them to.

Should you use Apple Home?

If you want more choice and don’t want to wait for Matter to truly take over (assuming it really does), Google and Alexa are your options — that is, unless you’re willing to invest your time, energy, and brain power into Home Assistant integration, an open-source project that adds customizable HomeKit support to far more devices than do so natively.

But if you want to have a smart home and you’re concerned about privacy and security, then Apple has the best track record for those things. And as the Matter protocol matures, choice and affordability limits will fall away. If you’re already in the Apple ecosystem, it’s almost no contest, as the company’s famous interoperability extends to its smart home platform, making for a much more synchronous experience.

Photography by Wes Davis / The Verge

]]> https://www.latest-apple-news.com/2023/06/13/apollos-christian-selig-explains-his-fight-with-reddit-and-why-users-revolted/ Tue, 13 Jun 2023 14:44:53 +0000 https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-private-apollo-christian-selig-subreddit

‘Reddit has plugged its ears and refuses to listen to anybody but themselves. And I think there’s some very minor concessions that they can make to make people a lot happier.’

Christian Selig did not mean to be the face of a revolution. All the Canadian developer wanted, really, was to be able to keep working on his app. But that app, a Reddit client called Apollo, has become the central figure in an all-out platform war.

The short version of a long history goes like this: in April, Reddit announced new terms for its API, the tool through which developers of third-party apps access Reddit’s data. Every time you post a comment, refresh a page, search for something, or take just about any other action in an app like Apollo, the app pings an API to get the data you need. Reddit’s API has been free for many years, leading to a flourishing community of third-party tools. But Reddit finally decided it was time to charge for access, both to recoup the costs of running the API and to help the company become more profitable ahead of its planned IPO.

The logic made sense to Selig; the price didn’t. Ultimately, he calculated he would have to pay Reddit $20 million a year just to keep Apollo running, which he couldn’t afford. Other developers building Reddit apps came to the same conclusion and said they would be forced to shut down.

Many users decided this wasn’t a fair business deal — this was a plot to crush third-party Reddit apps. So in response, Reddit users decided to push back. The battle reached its current peak when thousands of subreddits went dark on Monday, protesting Reddit’s new API policies and how they affected everything from app developers to the on-platform tools many users rely on. Reddit’s response? It’s just business. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” CEO Steve Huffman wrote during an AMA session over the weekend. “Unlike some of the [third-party] apps, we are not profitable.”

Those third-party apps are clients like Apollo, which Selig has built and run for the last nine years. He’s planning to shut the app down on June 30th, the day before Reddit’s new rules go into effect. But he’s still holding out hope. Hope that Reddit might change its mind or soften its stance, hope that the subreddit blackout might change things, hope that Huffman might pick up the phone and try to smooth things over.

In the midst of the platform blackout, we sat down with Selig to talk about what he wants from Reddit, why he still believes in the platform, and whether he sees a chance to keep Apollo alive beyond the end of the month.

The following has been edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, tune into Wednesday’s episode of The Vergecast.

Nilay Patel: Do you get the sense that Reddit knows that Apollo users are power users of Reddit? This is something I think about with social networks all the time: their data blinds them to the reality of the platform. So you might say, okay, there’s only 2 million Apollo users; you just don’t know that they happen to be 2 million of the most important users on the platform or the most vocal or the most invested. And you piss them off with a decision like this. Did you ever get the sense they knew that Apollo was important to some users or that you were in the middle of the relationship that Reddit had with that group of users?

Honestly — and I say this with a lot of respect for Reddit — I feel like this was a decision that kind of got rushed out the door, and they didn’t do their due diligence on understanding that stuff. Because there’s a lot of stuff. Even just making a really big pricing announcement, but not having any pricing. There were a lot of discussions where they were like, “We’ll have it in two to four weeks.” And I was like, great. And then six weeks passed. And they were like, “Okay, now we have it.”

At the end of January — I want to say January 26th — I had another call with Reddit prior to all this where they were saying, “We have no plans to change the API, at least in 2023, maybe for years to come after that. And if we do, it’ll be improvements.” So then two months, three months later, for them to say, “Look, actually, scratch that, we’re planning to completely charge for the API, and it’s gonna be very expensive,” kind of made me think… what happened in those three months? This clearly wasn’t something that was cooking for a long time. And I don’t think they understood how much this would affect people and the response that they would get. Because they’re honest, they’re smart people. And I don’t think if they understood everything that they do now, they would have made the same steps. At least I would hope not.

David Pierce: So Reddit said, “We don’t want to kill third-party apps.” But we just went through this with the Twitter API, which pretty explicitly wanted to kill third-party apps, right? Do you buy that either at that moment or now, in hindsight, with two weeks of more conversations, do you think Reddit actually doesn’t want to kill third-party apps? Because it sure looks like it does.

I will be charitable and say at the outset, I honestly don’t think they did. Or maybe I’m very naive. Maybe they didn’t care about us at all, but they were like, “We know you’re important to a subset of users, and we know there’ll be a big blowback if we get rid of you, so we want to make some arrangement where we can keep you but you’re not a pain in the ass.” But I think as time went on, things like only giving us 30 days to make these monstrous changes, I think it started to muddy the waters. It’s like, well, if you don’t want us to die, why are you giving us such aggressive timelines? And why can’t you bump things out? Or listen to us? Why are you acting in this way?

I think to a certain extent, after some of the blowback from initial posts from developers being like, “This is gonna cost us a lot of money,” they almost went on the defensive internally and said, “These developers are entitled, and they just want a free lunch or something.” And I feel like it got very personal when it didn’t really need to. It was just like, this is gonna kill my business — can we have a path forward?

NP: If they’d offered to buy the app from you, would you have sold it to them?

I guess it depends on the stage. I mean, I’m just some guy, so if the number was high enough, sure. Absolutely. At the stage where it was clear that they weren’t interested in having third-party apps around anymore, just because of the pricing and some of the API changes around explicit content or whatnot, if that was the point where they said like, “That being said, we would like to maybe work with your user base or take your user base and figure out a way to make them happy in the context of the official app and work with you and your app through an acquisition,” I honestly would have listened to that.

Prior to that, it would have had to have been a pretty good number, just because I love building Apollo and being so in touch with so many people through the community. It would have to be a big number, losing such a big part of your life and what you do every day. There’s an emotional penalty to losing that is hard to quantify with money, as superficial as that sounds.

DP: This brings me to my favorite segment of every Vergecast, “Let’s Do Some Math Together!” Because there’s been a lot of questions and a lot of debate about what it would look like to continue to run Apollo. One of the things Reddit has said is that the way that the API works, it should cost less than $1 per user per month. Your math said it would cost about $2.50 per user per month.

On average, yeah.

DP: And so there are a bunch of folks out there who are like, “Okay, just charge us $5 a month, give some of that money to Apple, keep the rest, give some to Reddit, everybody wins.” Others are like, “Okay, just make it subscription-only, so only people paying for the app can use the app.” And it does seem like you went to “I can’t afford this; I have to shut down the app” fairly quickly. I’m assuming you went through some of these other scenarios before you got there. Walk me through how you get from “I owe $20 million a year, I have a very popular app” to “I definitely can’t afford this. My only option is to close.”

It’s a two-faceted answer. So say, yeah, just charge $5. Bob’s your uncle, right? The issue there is that your average user uses about 345 requests per day per user. And then, if you extrapolate that over the month, it would cost about $2.50 to support them. The issue is that’s the average user. A free user uses like 200-something requests; an existing paid user is closer to 500. So for that existing paid user who naturally uses more, that’s closer to $3.60 per month in its current state. And if I just charged $5 to them, you take off Apple’s 30 percent or whatever and you’re down to $3.50, you’re already 10 cents in the red per user per month. So the calculus there is already pretty tricky.

That being said, if I had more than 30 days, there’s a possibility that I could go in and change some stuff. Like where I check your inbox every so often, where I preload a page for you that I think you might scroll to — I can kind of cut down on all those and maybe cut that 400 down to, I don’t know, 300 or 200. If I had more than 30 days. But even beyond that, approximately 5 percent of my users used between 1,000 and 2,000 API requests a day. At the low end, those would cost $7.50 a month. And you can imagine the users who use the app the most are kind of the most likely to pay for things. So they’d be the most obvious ones that would want to pay for the app. And when you’re looking at them costing $7.50 a month each, do I have like a $5 tier that hopefully covers most people, and then once you expire that, is it like a phone plan where I call you up and say, like, “Do you want to top off for the month?” That’s not fun.

So that’s one facet of it. Say I solve all that. The other issue is that with the very short notice of 30 days from when the pricing was announced to when we start incurring charges, I’ve got about 50,000 yearly subscribers who have already paid for a year of service [at roughly $1 / month]. That price was based on operating costs that I had for design services, server fees, a part-time server engineer. For $1 a month, I can make a profit on that. But [with the API changes], I’ve got like $1 or $2 extra monthly costs per user for those 50,000 people who have already prepaid. I can’t monetize them anymore. They’ve already paid.

So starting July 1st, those people will start incurring a bill of $50,000 a month for me that I have no way to monetize further because they’ve already prepaid. And that’s where the calculus got really difficult: Okay, I have a bill for $50,000. And then maybe the next month, some of the people who are close to expiring would expire, and it would go down to 11 months, maybe you’d only be $45,000. And then the next month would be $40,000. But you’re potentially looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills I would get from Reddit for people that I couldn’t make a single more dollar off of because they already paid my old operating costs. And that’s where it got really tricky.

Everyone I talked to was kind of just like, “I don’t see how I would make this work.” And then when you add on the extra fact that Reddit’s saying these like bizarre things around threats and blackmail, and they won’t answer your emails anymore, it kind of becomes a thing: I can’t pay for this. How to make a profit out of it is very difficult, and Reddit seems like they have no intention of wanting to work with me or third-party apps anymore. It kind of becomes, like, what’s the future here?

And that was kind of where I landed on it. I was staying at an Airbnb with like seven other people for WWDC, and it was just talking with them over. That Wednesday night, I was just like, “I don’t see any other route out of this. It’s just gotten dire.” And that was when I started typing up my post and being like, “Yeah, this is kind of it.”

NP: Reddit can barely monetize its own users, right? They’re not making money. And the way they’ve chosen to monetize is mostly advertising, which is not exposed in your app. If Reddit had come to you and said, “Alright, you can use our API, we’ll lower the costs, but you’ve got to start serving our ads,” I don’t know how I would have felt about that, as somebody who has used Apollo. That’s pretty icky. Now I’m paying you for software, but I’m getting their ads.

Yeah, but that’s one of those things that I felt like if they did it, it would have shown a little bit more effort to include third-party apps insofar as they’d have to build kind of that integration. And yeah, it’s tricky because if that was a path to survive, I wouldn’t like it, either — I prefer not to have ads, and I don’t mind paying for an ad-free experience — but if that was the only way to survive going forward, like that’s something I also would have entertained. A revenue share, where you make X amount of money, they want half a bit off the top, that’s something that would have been fine. There were a lot of arrangements I think they could have gone with that just weren’t quite as… killer, for lack of a better term.

DP: What do you want from Reddit? What could have happened in that phone call on May 31st that you would have just hung up and been like, “Great, cool, perfect. Sounds good. Win-win, everybody. Let’s move forward”?

In an absolutely perfect world, Reddit would have said, “Okay, we’re also going to halve the price.” Because that would have taken like my $2.50 a user down to about $1.25 (a month). I charge new users $1.50. So it would have been something that, for my existing users, I can at least afford to keep like them around. They won’t put me in the red. That would have been great.

NP: So you’re now the symbol of a much larger thing that’s happening on Reddit, right? There was a post about Apollo shutting down. And that spiraled into an ongoing series of subreddit blackouts. There are other asks in the mix now, mostly around accessibility, which I think even Steve Huffman has said, “Yep, Reddit’s got to do a better job of this.” And then there’s a set of asks are Not Safe For Work content, which it feels like they don’t know that Apple has rules — Reddit can’t just put porn in the app in the way that maybe they’re being asked for. But you’re now one part of a series of asks from a pretty disparate group on Reddit. Do you think that if they fix the API pricing situation and Apollo got back on track, that that would soothe the community at large?

I think it would go a long way, honestly, to at least making them feel heard. Because in this whole saga, I don’t think I’ve seen Reddit offer to give an inch on any of the things.

NP: I would say Reddit’s political skills at operating its community are… negative.

Well, it’s weird because prior to this, I almost always understood that Reddit as a company understood that they’re very community-focused, and they kind of didn’t do the bullshit corporate speak. And it was weird to kind of see this week, where they engaged in a lot more of that than I have historically ever seen them do. And it just went over… about as well as I thought it would.

NP: I think that we are in an absolute moment of change for what you might call the Web 2.0 era. Have you thought about “I’m just going to take my users and go build a Reddit for ActivityPub”?

DP: Even more specifically, one thing a lot of users have been saying is, “We’re leaving Reddit; we’re gonna go to Lemmy and Kbin!” Those are the two that I keep hearing about. Is there a move that way that you think is real, that you might want to be part of?

It’s tricky because, to a certain extent, that does sound really interesting. But with Mastodon, for instance, I love it, but I’ve seen so many people — even in the tech community, who totally have the means to make that move if they want to — who have just been too intimidated or just can’t get off Twitter for some reason. In the back of my head, I’m like, if these people who are much smarter than me can’t make that change, is this just like a short-term thing?

It’s hard for me to build another thing. If it just evaporated again, it would be like a double breakup. This has been so exhausting for the last few months. The amount of work it would take to port all the API endpoints over to Lemmy or Kbin or something, that would be a gargantuan amount of work that I’m not sure I have the capacity for. And then just the complexity of making it work. Long term, it’s a big question mark for me that, at this stage, I’m not sure I’m totally interested in pursuing. But it’s also one of those things where I completely wish it the best. And if something that was decentralized kind of became the norm, I think that would definitely be a win for everybody.

DP: So as it stands right now, you’re set to turn off the API token and basically shut down Apollo on June 30th. What percentage of you believes you will actually shut down on June 30th?

Oh, gosh, like 90 percent.

DP: So you’re fully prepared for this to happen.

I’ve talked to my reps at Apple to get the process started. As much as I would love to say this has been a big bluff… it was literally a matter of, like, Reddit hasn’t answered my emails in a while. Every public statement I’ve seen seems like the CEO is quite angry over this. They don’t seem to want to budge on the timeline at all. I don’t see how I can make this work.

I’ve loved building Apollo — even at the $3,500 that [Apple’s Vision Pro] costs, I was kind of excited for the opportunity to see what Reddit on that thing could look like. I was really excited for that. So it’s kind of hard for me to say, but at this stage, it’s just hard for me to see a path forward where they are reasonably willing to meet me even a quarter of the way here. It just seems like they’re, they’re so angry, for lack of a better term, that I kind of just feel like it’s better for me to be honest with myself rather than hold onto the hope until the last minute and then just completely fall apart.

But that 10 percent of me really hopes that I’ll be able to say, “I hopped on a call with Steve. We talked it out. There were some pleasantries exchanged about misunderstandings. We’re all good now, they’re giving us more time to adopt the API, and we’re sticking around.” I would love that. But it’s totally in Reddit’s court. I’m happy to talk whenever, but I just haven’t been able to reach them.

]]> https://www.latest-apple-news.com/2023/06/12/apple-macbook-air-15-inch-review-exactly-what-was-asked-for/ Mon, 12 Jun 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.theverge.com/23757441/apple-macbook-air-15-inch-2023-review Apple’s first big-screened MacBook Air addresses a long-standing need in the company’s laptop lineup. And it comes with zero surprises and no sticker shock.

0The MacBook Air 15 fills a gap in Apple’s laptop lineup that hasn’t been filled in basically ever: a large-screened laptop priced for the masses.

There is no reason that Apple needed to wait this long. But it is releasing this model now, following many months that were slow for the company and much slower for the industry at large. Apple, over the last two quarters, reported the sharpest year-over-year percentage decline in Mac revenue that we’ve seen in half a decade. If there were ever a time that laptop companies needed to inject the market with some pizzazz, it’s today, right now.

In the Windows space, PC makers are making a flashy pivot to services. Artificial intelligence is being shoved down consumers’ throats. New models are shipping with a laundry list of webcam beautification features and tools that keep your eyes in one place. Dell made an invisible touchpad. Lenovo’s doing funky things with E Ink and dual screens. HP hardwired a customer service button to its flagship product, rebranding itself from a PC company to a “solution” provider. Asus is… well, it’s doing various things over there. MSI’s trying to make ChatGPT.

But Apple is not chasing generative AI or E Ink or dual screens. It’s releasing a product that people have been asking for at a price that they are very likely to pay. A good, functional product that people have been shouting, for years, that they want. A 15-inch MacBook Air.

And yes, in case you were on the edge of your seat: it is good.

Feelings

The most recent MacBook I reviewed was the 16-inch MacBook Pro. That was a model where nothing was new with the chassis and everything was new with the chip.

On paper, this MacBook Air 15 is the opposite. The chip is a known quantity — it’s the M2, the same one that lives in the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro. In fact, the model I have (eight-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB memory, 512GB storage, $1,699) is basically the same configuration we received for our review of the 13-inch model (with twice the memory) thrown into a bigger chassis.

Prior to the Air 15, if you wanted a MacBook with an appreciably larger display, you’d have to pay a $1,000 premium and get a thicker, much heavier computer. But if you now spec the 13-inch and 15-inch devices identically, the larger one commands around a $100 premium. The chip is not different; the chassis is different.

Well, is it? Using this device on a day-to-day basis does not feel particularly different from using the 13-inch Air. The keyboard and touchpad and trusty webcam notch are all the same. The biggest difference to report — and this will come as no surprise — is the screen. The 15.3-inch panel is large, especially with its slightly taller than 16:10 aspect ratio. It affords, frankly, much more space than I would ever know how to take full advantage of. I can comfortably use two windows side by side; on the 13-inch Air, I might have to zoom out a notch or two. Big screen devotees, you’ll be thrilled.

The second big difference is the weight. The 13-inch Air is 2.7 pounds, and the 15-inch Air is 3.3 pounds. There is just over half a pound of difference, and it is noticeable. While the 15-inch Air is a world lighter than its larger 16-inch M2 Pro cousins, it is significantly chunkier than the 13-inch Air.

Look, you are all going to make fun of me for this, and I deserve it. But the Air is an ultraportable machine, and that has been its shtick since it launched. The 15-inch Air is not an ultraportable machine in the same way. Just for some context, it is only a tenth of a pound away from the weight of the Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop. It is thin, thinner than other Windows laptops in this size class, but there is quite a bit packed into that chassis, and it’s still a big computer overall. Carrying it around in a tote bag was not my favorite thing.

But the third big difference is the speakers. The Air 13’s speakers are good; the Air 15’s are stupendous. Bass came through in a way it doesn’t on pretty much any other computer; I was so stunned when I first turned on a bass-heavy song that I thought it must’ve been coming from a Bluetooth speaker somewhere else.

Largely, however, the size of the chassis does not transform the experience of using the Air. This is not an XPS 13 / XPS 15 situation where two models have experiences, use cases, and target demographics that are clearly different. This is a larger Air, with the same keyboard as before, the same (albeit, even larger) excellent trackpad, and a bigger screen.

In turn, my complaints about this Air are largely my complaints about the smaller Air: I wish it were upgradable, I wish there were more ports, and I wish I could take or leave the notch. And my praise is the same. It is, for its category, portable. It is well built and sturdy. The screen is wonderful. It seems like Apple has figured out exactly what the MacBook Air needs to be. This is what a MacBook Air is.

Numbers

The MacBook Air 15 sits solidly between the MacBook Air 13 and the MacBook Pro 13 in most of the synthetic benchmark tests I ran. The three devices are in the same ballpark on the single-core Cinebench test; the 15-inch Air is much closer to the 13-inch Pro on the Shadow of the Tomb Raider gaming benchmark than it is to the 13-inch Air.

Since all of these devices have the same processor, any difference in performance likely comes down to cooling. Like the smaller version, the MacBook Air 15 does not have a fan. What it does have is a wee bit more room for its heat pipes to do their thing. Overall, it seems that the 15-incher’s big berth does not have quite as large of an impact on the M2’s performance as the MacBook Pro 13’s fan — but it gets a decent part of the way there.

The caveat: the Air still gets hot. It was hotter in the area right above the function row than I wanted to touch during pretty much all of my benchmark testing. The keyboard, while usable, was toasty. I did not see any of this heat when I was just using the Air to mess around in Chrome, which was most of the time. But if you’re one of those people buying this thinking you will use it to export video every so often, take that to note.

In more human terms, I do not really notice a difference in my day-to-day work performance between the MacBook Air 15 and any other MacBook released in recent years. The M1 chip was already well above the demands of my workload, and the M2 chip is a step yet beyond. I’m using an M1 MacBook Pro 13 as my daily driver for my journalist workload these days, and let me tell you — it’s all the same. That said, this is not a review where I can get away with just recommending that you buy last year’s model at a discount because there is no last year’s model. Fair enough. Well played.

The last thing to comment on is the battery life. I averaged 14 and a half hours. That is also squarely between what I generally see from the 13-inch MacBook Air (around 13 hours) and the 13-inch MacBook Pro (16 to 16 and a half). That’s a bit confusing since both of these devices have smaller batteries than the Air 15, and I wish I had a smart and scientific reason for it, but the explanation I’m going to go with is that, when you’re dealing with battery lifespans this long, these results are probably all within margin of error (and also put us at a point where we’re reaching somewhat diminishing returns). The Air 15 has a bigger battery, but it also powers a bigger display, and the differences all come out in the wash.

The takeaway here is that the Air 15 will get you through a day and then some. You shouldn’t have to worry about it. In fact, you won’t have to worry about much when you’re using this device. It works, it works for a long time away from the wall, and it has a big old screen. And that’s pretty much what we all wanted from a 15-inch MacBook Air to begin with.

This is how you do it

There are times when I wish I were on a beat like smart home was in the late 2010s or VR apparently is now, full of whizzbangs and colored lights and onstage demos that make everyone go “wow.” I’ll admit to finding myself envious, now and again, of tech journalists who regularly get to proclaim that they’ve found a gadget that could change the world forever.

But I am glad to be on the laptop beat today. Not because this MacBook is ushering in a new era for humanity but because real, regular people — sitting on their couches, checking their emails, bookmarking their recipes, whatever it is we all do — are going to be happy with this device. It’s everything you’d want from a MacBook Air. And it will help them do their work and check their emails and watch Netflix faster and better. Good laptops make us better versions of ourselves. That is all they should be doing.

I have no doubt that recent declines in PC sales are an unfortunate and upsetting thing for companies who make laptops. I wonder if I, a consumer, might take a more optimistic view. People bought a lot of things in 2020 and 2021, and they remain happy with those things. Those computers are serving their lifestyles and workloads just fine.

That’s a status quo, of course, that profit-maximizing PC manufacturers can’t condone. And from some players, the angle of attack has been to invent a new need. On the same day that it announced this MacBook Pro, Apple launched a $3,500 virtual reality headset. Like Lenovo’s dual-screen doodads and Dell’s touchpad-free rig, and the legions of AR- and VR- and RGB- and AI-loaded gadgets I’m pitched every week, Apple’s Vision Pro has a message. Your world, the consumer’s world, is lacking in ways that you did not realize — you may not think you need this expensive bundle of circuits, you may be sure you don’t need it, but just try it. You’ll see.

Thank God that headset shared the floor with this, a $1,300 laptop that does not claim to move the world but a laptop that does its job, with speakers, with screens, with processors that do things right. This device doesn’t manufacture a need; it found a need, and it’s filling it. We don’t need to be convinced that we want the Air 15. We’ve been waiting for it.

0The MacBook Air 15 fills a gap in Apple’s laptop lineup that hasn’t been filled in basically ever: a large-screened laptop priced for the masses.

There is no reason that Apple needed to wait this long. But it is releasing this model now, following many months that were slow for the company and much slower for the industry at large. Apple, over the last two quarters, reported the sharpest year-over-year percentage decline in Mac revenue that we’ve seen in half a decade. If there were ever a time that laptop companies needed to inject the market with some pizzazz, it’s today, right now.

In the Windows space, PC makers are making a flashy pivot to services. Artificial intelligence is being shoved down consumers’ throats. New models are shipping with a laundry list of webcam beautification features and tools that keep your eyes in one place. Dell made an invisible touchpad. Lenovo’s doing funky things with E Ink and dual screens. HP hardwired a customer service button to its flagship product, rebranding itself from a PC company to a “solution” provider. Asus is… well, it’s doing various things over there. MSI’s trying to make ChatGPT.

But Apple is not chasing generative AI or E Ink or dual screens. It’s releasing a product that people have been asking for at a price that they are very likely to pay. A good, functional product that people have been shouting, for years, that they want. A 15-inch MacBook Air.

And yes, in case you were on the edge of your seat: it is good.

Feelings

The most recent MacBook I reviewed was the 16-inch MacBook Pro. That was a model where nothing was new with the chassis and everything was new with the chip.

On paper, this MacBook Air 15 is the opposite. The chip is a known quantity — it’s the M2, the same one that lives in the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro. In fact, the model I have (eight-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB memory, 512GB storage, $1,699) is basically the same configuration we received for our review of the 13-inch model (with twice the memory) thrown into a bigger chassis.

Prior to the Air 15, if you wanted a MacBook with an appreciably larger display, you’d have to pay a $1,000 premium and get a thicker, much heavier computer. But if you now spec the 13-inch and 15-inch devices identically, the larger one commands around a $100 premium. The chip is not different; the chassis is different.

Well, is it? Using this device on a day-to-day basis does not feel particularly different from using the 13-inch Air. The keyboard and touchpad and trusty webcam notch are all the same. The biggest difference to report — and this will come as no surprise — is the screen. The 15.3-inch panel is large, especially with its slightly taller than 16:10 aspect ratio. It affords, frankly, much more space than I would ever know how to take full advantage of. I can comfortably use two windows side by side; on the 13-inch Air, I might have to zoom out a notch or two. Big screen devotees, you’ll be thrilled.

The second big difference is the weight. The 13-inch Air is 2.7 pounds, and the 15-inch Air is 3.3 pounds. There is just over half a pound of difference, and it is noticeable. While the 15-inch Air is a world lighter than its larger 16-inch M2 Pro cousins, it is significantly chunkier than the 13-inch Air.

Look, you are all going to make fun of me for this, and I deserve it. But the Air is an ultraportable machine, and that has been its shtick since it launched. The 15-inch Air is not an ultraportable machine in the same way. Just for some context, it is only a tenth of a pound away from the weight of the Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop. It is thin, thinner than other Windows laptops in this size class, but there is quite a bit packed into that chassis, and it’s still a big computer overall. Carrying it around in a tote bag was not my favorite thing.

But the third big difference is the speakers. The Air 13’s speakers are good; the Air 15’s are stupendous. Bass came through in a way it doesn’t on pretty much any other computer; I was so stunned when I first turned on a bass-heavy song that I thought it must’ve been coming from a Bluetooth speaker somewhere else.

Largely, however, the size of the chassis does not transform the experience of using the Air. This is not an XPS 13 / XPS 15 situation where two models have experiences, use cases, and target demographics that are clearly different. This is a larger Air, with the same keyboard as before, the same (albeit, even larger) excellent trackpad, and a bigger screen.

In turn, my complaints about this Air are largely my complaints about the smaller Air: I wish it were upgradable, I wish there were more ports, and I wish I could take or leave the notch. And my praise is the same. It is, for its category, portable. It is well built and sturdy. The screen is wonderful. It seems like Apple has figured out exactly what the MacBook Air needs to be. This is what a MacBook Air is.

Numbers

The MacBook Air 15 sits solidly between the MacBook Air 13 and the MacBook Pro 13 in most of the synthetic benchmark tests I ran. The three devices are in the same ballpark on the single-core Cinebench test; the 15-inch Air is much closer to the 13-inch Pro on the Shadow of the Tomb Raider gaming benchmark than it is to the 13-inch Air.

Since all of these devices have the same processor, any difference in performance likely comes down to cooling. Like the smaller version, the MacBook Air 15 does not have a fan. What it does have is a wee bit more room for its heat pipes to do their thing. Overall, it seems that the 15-incher’s big berth does not have quite as large of an impact on the M2’s performance as the MacBook Pro 13’s fan — but it gets a decent part of the way there.

The caveat: the Air still gets hot. It was hotter in the area right above the function row than I wanted to touch during pretty much all of my benchmark testing. The keyboard, while usable, was toasty. I did not see any of this heat when I was just using the Air to mess around in Chrome, which was most of the time. But if you’re one of those people buying this thinking you will use it to export video every so often, take that to note.

In more human terms, I do not really notice a difference in my day-to-day work performance between the MacBook Air 15 and any other MacBook released in recent years. The M1 chip was already well above the demands of my workload, and the M2 chip is a step yet beyond. I’m using an M1 MacBook Pro 13 as my daily driver for my journalist workload these days, and let me tell you — it’s all the same. That said, this is not a review where I can get away with just recommending that you buy last year’s model at a discount because there is no last year’s model. Fair enough. Well played.

The last thing to comment on is the battery life. I averaged 14 and a half hours. That is also squarely between what I generally see from the 13-inch MacBook Air (around 13 hours) and the 13-inch MacBook Pro (16 to 16 and a half). That’s a bit confusing since both of these devices have smaller batteries than the Air 15, and I wish I had a smart and scientific reason for it, but the explanation I’m going to go with is that, when you’re dealing with battery lifespans this long, these results are probably all within margin of error (and also put us at a point where we’re reaching somewhat diminishing returns). The Air 15 has a bigger battery, but it also powers a bigger display, and the differences all come out in the wash.

The takeaway here is that the Air 15 will get you through a day and then some. You shouldn’t have to worry about it. In fact, you won’t have to worry about much when you’re using this device. It works, it works for a long time away from the wall, and it has a big old screen. And that’s pretty much what we all wanted from a 15-inch MacBook Air to begin with.

This is how you do it

There are times when I wish I were on a beat like smart home was in the late 2010s or VR apparently is now, full of whizzbangs and colored lights and onstage demos that make everyone go “wow.” I’ll admit to finding myself envious, now and again, of tech journalists who regularly get to proclaim that they’ve found a gadget that could change the world forever.

But I am glad to be on the laptop beat today. Not because this MacBook is ushering in a new era for humanity but because real, regular people — sitting on their couches, checking their emails, bookmarking their recipes, whatever it is we all do — are going to be happy with this device. It’s everything you’d want from a MacBook Air. And it will help them do their work and check their emails and watch Netflix faster and better. Good laptops make us better versions of ourselves. That is all they should be doing.

I have no doubt that recent declines in PC sales are an unfortunate and upsetting thing for companies who make laptops. I wonder if I, a consumer, might take a more optimistic view. People bought a lot of things in 2020 and 2021, and they remain happy with those things. Those computers are serving their lifestyles and workloads just fine.

That’s a status quo, of course, that profit-maximizing PC manufacturers can’t condone. And from some players, the angle of attack has been to invent a new need. On the same day that it announced this MacBook Pro, Apple launched a $3,500 virtual reality headset. Like Lenovo’s dual-screen doodads and Dell’s touchpad-free rig, and the legions of AR- and VR- and RGB- and AI-loaded gadgets I’m pitched every week, Apple’s Vision Pro has a message. Your world, the consumer’s world, is lacking in ways that you did not realize — you may not think you need this expensive bundle of circuits, you may be sure you don’t need it, but just try it. You’ll see.

Thank God that headset shared the floor with this, a $1,300 laptop that does not claim to move the world but a laptop that does its job, with speakers, with screens, with processors that do things right. This device doesn’t manufacture a need; it found a need, and it’s filling it. We don’t need to be convinced that we want the Air 15. We’ve been waiting for it.

Apple’s developers already have the tools they need to create apps for the system.

Apple used the Vision Pro’s $3,499 price tag to give the headset every advantage over the competition. It has dual 4K displays, runs one of the best laptop chips in the business, and comes with sophisticated eye- and hand-tracking technologies. But it also has one advantage money can’t buy: Apple’s developer ecosystem. Perhaps the headset’s single biggest advantage will be the ability for iPhone and iPad developers to easily plug their existing apps into the device’s operating system using familiar tools and frameworks.

Already, the system stands in stark contrast to headsets from Meta, Valve, PlayStation, and HTC, which mostly rely on apps and games made in Unity or OpenXR to power their virtual and augmented reality experiences. While some competitors, like the Meta Quest, have key apps like Microsoft Office, Xbox, and Netflix, offerings beyond this are limited. In the several years that Meta’s headset has been out, the Meta Quest Store has only released about 400 games and apps. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a sign that there’s a serious lack of content optimized for VR.

Unlike other headset ecosystems, though, Apple is promising hundreds of thousands of apps on day one, a feat it’s able to pull off thanks to work on other platforms. Apple will automatically convert iPad and iPhone apps to “a single scalable 2D window” that works on the Apple Vision Pro — with no work required from developers unless they want to make any changes. And for the developers who want to create something new for the headset, Apple is making it easy for those already acquainted with its ecosystem to create apps for visionOS, its new mixed reality operating system.

“visionOS is not so different than iPadOS with ARKit, the augmented reality kit that developers have had access to for a couple of years now,” Maximiliano Firtman, a longtime mobile and web developer, tells The Verge. “iOS and iPadOS developers will be able to use their classic UIKit apps, Unity apps, or their more recent SwiftUI apps for visionOS.”

The frameworks developers can use to build apps for iOS and iPadOS — SwiftUI, RealityKit, ARKit — have all been “extended for spatial computing,” Apple says, allowing developers to craft immersive AR and VR experiences for the Vision Pro. They can also build their apps with the tools already available to devs, including Xcode and Unity as well as Apple’s upcoming Reality Composer Pro that should let devs “preview and prepare 3D content” for visionOS apps.

Firtman adds that even though the visionOS software development kit isn’t out yet, web developers can still use “WebXR for immersive web apps and web experiences using Safari on visionOS… as most of the knowledge needed to create apps is already out there.”

This means that, in addition to Apple’s native apps, we’ll likely see a lot of iOS and iPadOS apps make their way to the Vision Pro at launch.

For developers making the jump, Apple is encouraging them to expand what their apps can do. A simple port might display an app on the Vision Pro as a “Window,” creating a floating version in mixed reality. Apps with 3D elements might present content as a “Volume” that adds depth that’s viewable from all angles. More immersive apps might build a “Space” that can take up a user’s entire view.

“Apple will want to feature apps that take advantage of the new Volume and Space app paradigms,” Steve Moser, an iOS developer and the editor-in-chief of The Tape Drive, tells The Verge. “I imagine developers will want to quickly recompile their existing iOS and iPadOS apps for visionOS so that they will be on the visionOS AppStore on day one and potentially get an opportunity to be featured by Apple.”

This is good news for Apple, which is looking to prime its App Store with services making its headset useful. But the approach falls short in one area where Apple’s competitors are strong: gaming. When the device comes out early next year, Apple says it will house over 100 games from its Arcade service, which is a nice perk, but most of these games aren’t built specifically for VR. That makes a pretty big difference, as users could just as easily whip out their iPhone or iPad to play an Arcade game, rather than put on an entire headset just to play Angry Birds Reloaded or Temple Run.

After all, people are buying the Valve Index or the Meta Quest 2 just so they can access libraries of VR-only games like Beat Saber and Half-Life: Alyx. A lack of serious VR titles risks putting the Vision Pro in the same position as the Mac — a device mainly for productivity, not a hub for gaming. While Apple is trying to coax game developers into putting their titles on macOS with a new porting tool, the fact is that most developers aren’t prioritizing Mac as a platform because the majority of gamers use Windows, and up until now, Apple didn’t exactly make it easy to bring over games from other OSes. (We’ll still have to see how well these newly ported games actually perform.)

Even though Apple’s headset might not immediately have some of the riveting experiences that come along with playing VR games like Arizona Sunshine and Blade and Sorcery, it’s not likely to make or break the headset’s success. “They seem to be nailing all of the points that Meta has been fumbling for [the] last few years, namely overall UX,” Blair Renaud, VR game developer and the director of IrisVR, tells The Verge. “They clearly aren’t focused on the current VR ecosystem and game developers like myself, but that may be the right move in the end. For the industry to move forward, we need all the things I mentioned, not just incremental hardware improvements.”

Apple’s slow, careful approach to VR is reflected within the device itself. Instead of presenting you with a somewhat jarring and unfamiliar UI that engulfs your reality, the Vision Pro surfaces a set of recognizable apps that exist atop your real-world environment thanks to video passthrough. Of course, there is the option to turn on full VR using the digital crown, but Apple mainly left this application for watching movies or replaying videos. You won’t have to worry about getting used to controllers, either, as you can navigate through the device using just your eyes and hands.

Based on first impressions of the Vision Pro, the technology is clearly there for it to succeed. But like most devices out there, the apps are what make it. Fortunately for Apple, it’s easier to build upon a foundation that’s already been established, rather than build one from scratch.

Apple’s developers already have the tools they need to create apps for the system.

Apple used the Vision Pro’s $3,499 price tag to give the headset every advantage over the competition. It has dual 4K displays, runs one of the best laptop chips in the business, and comes with sophisticated eye- and hand-tracking technologies. But it also has one advantage money can’t buy: Apple’s developer ecosystem. Perhaps the headset’s single biggest advantage will be the ability for iPhone and iPad developers to easily plug their existing apps into the device’s operating system using familiar tools and frameworks.

Already, the system stands in stark contrast to headsets from Meta, Valve, PlayStation, and HTC, which mostly rely on apps and games made in Unity or OpenXR to power their virtual and augmented reality experiences. While some competitors, like the Meta Quest, have key apps like Microsoft Office, Xbox, and Netflix, offerings beyond this are limited. In the several years that Meta’s headset has been out, the Meta Quest Store has only released about 400 games and apps. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a sign that there’s a serious lack of content optimized for VR.

Unlike other headset ecosystems, though, Apple is promising hundreds of thousands of apps on day one, a feat it’s able to pull off thanks to work on other platforms. Apple will automatically convert iPad and iPhone apps to “a single scalable 2D window” that works on the Apple Vision Pro — with no work required from developers unless they want to make any changes. And for the developers who want to create something new for the headset, Apple is making it easy for those already acquainted with its ecosystem to create apps for visionOS, its new mixed reality operating system.

“visionOS is not so different than iPadOS with ARKit, the augmented reality kit that developers have had access to for a couple of years now,” Maximiliano Firtman, a longtime mobile and web developer, tells The Verge. “iOS and iPadOS developers will be able to use their classic UIKit apps, Unity apps, or their more recent SwiftUI apps for visionOS.”

The frameworks developers can use to build apps for iOS and iPadOS — SwiftUI, RealityKit, ARKit — have all been “extended for spatial computing,” Apple says, allowing developers to craft immersive AR and VR experiences for the Vision Pro. They can also build their apps with the tools already available to devs, including Xcode and Unity as well as Apple’s upcoming Reality Composer Pro that should let devs “preview and prepare 3D content” for visionOS apps.

Firtman adds that even though the visionOS software development kit isn’t out yet, web developers can still use “WebXR for immersive web apps and web experiences using Safari on visionOS… as most of the knowledge needed to create apps is already out there.”

This means that, in addition to Apple’s native apps, we’ll likely see a lot of iOS and iPadOS apps make their way to the Vision Pro at launch.

For developers making the jump, Apple is encouraging them to expand what their apps can do. A simple port might display an app on the Vision Pro as a “Window,” creating a floating version in mixed reality. Apps with 3D elements might present content as a “Volume” that adds depth that’s viewable from all angles. More immersive apps might build a “Space” that can take up a user’s entire view.

“Apple will want to feature apps that take advantage of the new Volume and Space app paradigms,” Steve Moser, an iOS developer and the editor-in-chief of The Tape Drive, tells The Verge. “I imagine developers will want to quickly recompile their existing iOS and iPadOS apps for visionOS so that they will be on the visionOS AppStore on day one and potentially get an opportunity to be featured by Apple.”

This is good news for Apple, which is looking to prime its App Store with services making its headset useful. But the approach falls short in one area where Apple’s competitors are strong: gaming. When the device comes out early next year, Apple says it will house over 100 games from its Arcade service, which is a nice perk, but most of these games aren’t built specifically for VR. That makes a pretty big difference, as users could just as easily whip out their iPhone or iPad to play an Arcade game, rather than put on an entire headset just to play Angry Birds Reloaded or Temple Run.

After all, people are buying the Valve Index or the Meta Quest 2 just so they can access libraries of VR-only games like Beat Saber and Half-Life: Alyx. A lack of serious VR titles risks putting the Vision Pro in the same position as the Mac — a device mainly for productivity, not a hub for gaming. While Apple is trying to coax game developers into putting their titles on macOS with a new porting tool, the fact is that most developers aren’t prioritizing Mac as a platform because the majority of gamers use Windows, and up until now, Apple didn’t exactly make it easy to bring over games from other OSes. (We’ll still have to see how well these newly ported games actually perform.)

Even though Apple’s headset might not immediately have some of the riveting experiences that come along with playing VR games like Arizona Sunshine and Blade and Sorcery, it’s not likely to make or break the headset’s success. “They seem to be nailing all of the points that Meta has been fumbling for [the] last few years, namely overall UX,” Blair Renaud, VR game developer and the director of IrisVR, tells The Verge. “They clearly aren’t focused on the current VR ecosystem and game developers like myself, but that may be the right move in the end. For the industry to move forward, we need all the things I mentioned, not just incremental hardware improvements.”

Apple’s slow, careful approach to VR is reflected within the device itself. Instead of presenting you with a somewhat jarring and unfamiliar UI that engulfs your reality, the Vision Pro surfaces a set of recognizable apps that exist atop your real-world environment thanks to video passthrough. Of course, there is the option to turn on full VR using the digital crown, but Apple mainly left this application for watching movies or replaying videos. You won’t have to worry about getting used to controllers, either, as you can navigate through the device using just your eyes and hands.

Based on first impressions of the Vision Pro, the technology is clearly there for it to succeed. But like most devices out there, the apps are what make it. Fortunately for Apple, it’s easier to build upon a foundation that’s already been established, rather than build one from scratch.