Vision and Platforms

Disclaimer: I don’t have an Apple Vision Pro (full name™) yet. Not because don’t want one, but simply because I can’t order one. I live outside the US and likely need some sort of prescription to be able to comfortably use it. So instead I’ve been reading and watching my share of Vision Pro videos.

One thing stood out to me and that is how people talk about how amazing it is to project your MacBook’s screen into the Vision Pro. But is the very fact that you can do that not a great condemnation of Apple’s platform strategy? Why is it so great that you can project the screen from device A into device B? That should really only be an attractive proposition if the former lets you do things - run software – that the latter doesn’t.

The Apple Vision Pro has amazing displays, but its software ecosystem is apparently (and that’s not a surprise) not good enough. There’s a million iOS/iPad apps available on the Vision Pro (near) natively, where you can have multiple windows, arrange everything specially, yet what I keep hearing again is how great it is to project your Mac into the Vision, even if that projection is limited to single 4K display projected in front of you. Why is that so great?

I’ll tell you why: because people get real work done on Macs. Not on iPads, and that’s not going to change any time soon. I don’t think we need to look far to find out why that is. Apple’s iron fisted control over the platform via its App Store rules and review process keeps a very tight lid on it third-party innovaction. I’m reminded of how Facebook once billed itself as a platform, and Bill Gates called it “a crock of shit”:

This isn't a platform. A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it.

Not that this is any kind of official definition, but I think it embodies the spirit; who is the iPad platform primarily serving? It’s Apple. Nothing and nobody else comes close, and Apple wants to keep it that way.

Will the Vision Pro become a platform? I hope it will, but I have my doubts. Developers and Apple have long ceased to be friends – see Netflix, Youtube and Spotify snubbing the Vision Pro on launch. And going back to my original thought: why would anyone want to project their Mac screen into their Vision Pro? Because the Mac is a platform, always has been.