Do Apple’s biggest ‘partners’ actually want to see Vision Pro fail?

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

How to make enemies and alienate people

It’s annoying, isn’t it, when you spend years kicking someone repeatedly in the face, and then they decide they no longer want to be your friend! The audacity, honestly. Whatever happened to loyalty?

Apple is presumably wondering the same thing right now, as it reacts to news that three of the biggest apps for iOS—YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify—will not be making an appearance, at least initially, on the company’s new Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. After working together with Apple in beautiful and mutually profitable harmony for a decade and more, these three ungrateful so-called partners have abandoned it at a moment of great need, and history will expose them as the snakes they are.

Or perhaps not. Because Apple doesn’t really do harmony. And while the makers of those three apps have doubtless seen plenty of profits as a result of their relationship with Cupertino, there’s little doubt that Apple thinks about itself first and foremost, and its partners a distant last. If it thinks about them at all.

In fact, it’s difficult to escape the feeling, watching Apple over the years, that it regards the people who write third-party software for its platforms as just another kind of enemy. The App Store has historically been notable for its high fees, strict rules, and draconian rulings without a straightforward appeals process. It buys adverts on searches for partners’ brand names in order to scoop up a cut of signup revenue that would otherwise go directly to the company making the thing people want to buy. It’s even been accused of courting partnerships with small devs in order to steal their ideas, a claim made so often that it has its own name, Sherlocking.

At every point, Apple has treated developers exactly as badly as it feels it can get away with. Every concession, from lower fees and alternative payment systems to a simpler appeals process, has been won through long-running PR battles and regulatory pressure. The company may see itself as a pirate, but it behaves like a Victorian factory owner frustrated by legal limits on child maiming.

In the case of these specific apps, Apple can hardly be surprised by a lack of collegial spirit. Spotify claimed the Apple One bundled service was unfair and anti-competitive, and liable to cause “irreparable harm” and “threaten our collective freedoms.” YouTube is owned by Google, literally Apple’s direct competitor for smartphones, smart speakers, web browsers, and app stores. And Netflix is fighting for its life against Apple TV+ just as much as Spotify is fending off Apple Music. None of these are companies that are motivated to see Apple do well.

In that context, it’s only reasonable that the three app makers would evaluate the new visionOS platform with the cool and selfish detachment of an investor on Dragon’s Den. “What’s in it for me?” is the only logical question for them to ask themselves, and in this case it would appear the answer is “Not much.” Vision Pro may yet become the biggest computing platform on the planet, but not for a while, and maybe not at all. In the first generation, it will be a novelty. Google won’t be missing out on much by telling Vision Pro owners to view YouTube through the browser.

Perhaps these fellow tech giants were always going to feel ambivalent about backing an Apple venture that can only threaten them in the long run. But what of the smaller companies? The iPhone became an all-consuming success it is only because bedroom app developers got on board with such enthusiasm and innovation; will the Vision Pro repeat the trick? It’s too early to tell. But after all the pushy behavior over the years, you wouldn’t blame devs for wondering if Apple really has their backs, and whether building an app for visionOS is a fast route to getting kicked in the face.

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Podcast of the week

On this episode of the Macworld Podcast, it’s all about your hot takes! You have thoughts on the new Apple Vision Pro! Let’s hear what you have to say! It’s all on this show!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Reviews corner

• Dough Spectrum One review: An affordable Studio Display alternative.
• Mobile Pixels Geminos Dual Vertical FHD Monitor review: One-piece monitor stacks two screens vertically.

The rumor mill

Vision Pro is likely to launch outside the U.S. before summer… as long as the U.S. rollout goes smoothly.

Apple is preparing to kill the Apple Watch’s blood-oxygen tool, as it fights to escape a sales ban.

Good news, everyone! The iPhone 16 will reportedly get a serious spec bump.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

If you owned an iPhone 7, Apple may be sending you some money.

Jamf discovers new malware disguised as popular macOS apps.

If you use Google Chrome on your Mac, update the browser now.

There’s another AirPods firmware update. And no, we don’t know what it does.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, or Twitter for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.