Today, Apple published the reactions from some of the people who have attended the Vision Pro labs being held in cities around the world. Those quoted include developer David Smith, the creator of Widgetsmith, the chief experience officer of Pixite, Ben Guerrette, the maker of the video creation and editing app Spool, Chris Delbuck, the principal design technologist at Slack, and Michael Simmons, the CEO of Flexibits, the company whose developers make Fantastical. All four came away from the experience impressed with visionOS and the Vision Pro hardware.
I’d been staring at this thing in the simulator for weeks and getting a general sense of how it works, but that was in a box. The first time you see your own app running for real, that’s when you get the audible gasp.
Guerrette struck a similar chord:
At first, we didn’t know if it would work in our app. But now we understand where to go. That kind of learning experience is incredibly valuable: It gives us the chance to say, ‘OK, now we understand what we’re working with, what the interaction is, and how we can make a stronger connection.’
Any time new hardware with its own operating system is announced, the challenge is to get it in front of as many developers as possible to ensure there are apps for the launch. Apple has tackled the problem with a combination of an app evaluation process, labs in big cities around the world, and developer kits shipped to developers who had to apply for access. From the reactions quoted in the story published on Apple’s Developer website, hands-on time with the Vision Pro sounds as though it was well worth the effort to travel to one of the labs.