Financial Times°:

The lack of a “killer app” to encourage customers to pay upwards of $3,500 for an unproven new product is seen as a problem for Apple.

Apple said recently that there were “more than 2,000” apps available for its “spatial computing” device, five months after it debuted in the US.

That compares with more than 20,000 iPad apps that had been created by mid-2010, a few months after the tablet first went on sale, and around 10,000 iPhone apps by the end of 2008, the year the App Store launched.

The iPhone had third-party apps that made me want really want one. Angry Birds, Flipboard, Evernote, Shazam, Reeder, RunKeeper were all apps I couldn’t wait to try. There isn’t any for Vision Pro.

And that’s a problem. Especially when the iPhone 3G costed £200 (£358 in todays money). Vision Pro costs close to 10x that at £3,500.

Early data suggests that new content is arriving slowly. According to Appfigures, which tracks App Store listings, the number of new apps launched for the Vision Pro has fallen dramatically since January and February.

It certainly feels like there was some momentum for app releases, but that momentum feels a lot less now. You worry it’s going to come to a standstill.

Nearly 300 of the top iPhone developers, whose apps are downloaded more than 10mn times a year — including Google, Meta, Tencent, Amazon and Netflix — are yet to bring any of their software or services to Apple’s latest device.

Forget about innovative and wonderful apps from indie developers, Vision Pro doesn’t have available the behemoth ‘default’ apps you’d expect, like Netflix.

I get the sense that developers are tired of Apple’s 30% cut and strict app store rules and they’re showing them the finger. And it’s a finger that’s easy to raise when there’s so few Vision Pro’s out there.

Will the Vision Pro be a success? I don’t own one. But I got to briefly use one at work. It was magical. But there wasn’t much to do. And it was big and heavy. But give it five years and it will be lighter and there should be more apps.

It still has the has the anti-social issue that all current VR headsets have. But I’m hopeful, and believe that with time it will be added to the pantheon of devices you really need to own, alongside the computer and phone.

Or maybe it will forever remain a nice-to-have, like the Apple Watch. Who knows.