Apple’s famous Vision Pro headset isn’t available for purchase, but the company makes a wealth of apps available for users to use when they finally get it. The company announced today that the iPhone and iPad apps will be coming to the visionOS App Store on launch day.
This means that developers don’t have to do any extra work to port their existing apps. Apple has announced that it will release a developer beta version of visionOS this fall, which will include an App Store.
“By default, iPad and iPhone apps are automatically published to the Apple Vision Pro App Store. Most of the frameworks available in iPadOS and iOS are also included in visionOS. And iPhone apps will run unchanged on visionOS.Customers will be able to use your apps on visionOS early next year when Apple Vision Pro becomes available,” the company said in a post. Stated.
Apple announced the Vision Pro headset at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. Later that month, the company released the Vision Pro SDK to allow developers to experiment with different aspects of visionOS. In July, Apple started accepting applications for loaning developer kits. The company also hosts Vision Pro in-person developer labs in Cupertino, London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.
The Cupertino-based tech giant says that while iPhone and iPad apps automatically appear in the VisionOS App Store, developers can use SDKs to add support for 3D elements and hand gestures, allowing them to be viewed on the device. He said it made the app “feel more natural.”
In a recent interview with Digital Trends, Steve Sinclair, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Apple Vision Pro, said the SDK downloads have “exceeded” the company’s expectations.
However, due to the limited availability of in-person developer lab locations and the constraints of the dev kit program, many developers are forced to work in simulators most of the time. Sinclair said that in order to have a huge number of apps that offer different experiences, Apple “must make it[Vision Pro]accessible to all of our developers.”