Apple Eyes Business as a Prime Market for the Vision Pro

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Although Apple Vision Pro has generated a lot of marketing mileage out of its promise to supercharge entertainment experiences from sports to gaming, movies and shopping, the company is paying at least as much attention to its application in the virtual office.

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Indeed, Apple is launching the Vision Pro with 600 apps designed for its spatial computing environment, many of which are intended for the workplace.

It’s a strategy that signals the headset as a new type of general computer fit for consumer and corporate use at the same time as Apple seems not to know what VR/XR or mixed reality applications will actually prove most popular, or ideally game-changing enough, for the unit to go mass market.

CEO Tim Cook emphasized that he was seeing lots of interest in the enterprise market during Apple’s earnings call. “Leading organizations across many industries such as Walmart, Nike, Vanguard, Stryker, Bloomberg and SAP have started leveraging and investing in Apple Vision Pro as their new platform to bring innovative spatial computing experiences to their customers and employees,” he said.

Cook cited ideas for business like everyday productivity, collaborative product design and immersive training. As TechCrunch’s Ron Miller noted, the ability to have a so-called “infinite desktop” is key to the productivity argument: “Users can open multiple programs and move them around a huge palette that gives new meaning to extra screen real estate. There’s also the ability for people to build their own apps. As a developer ecosystem begins to emerge, we will start to see apps created from scratch, some for consumers and some for businesses, that have been specifically designed for this paradigm.”

Among the 600 new spatial experiences in the App Store built with the visionOS, there are apps like Box, for managing files and 3D objects, a MindNode app that helps users brainstorm with thought bubbles that float around a user’s space, and OmniFocus and OmniPlan for data and project management visualization.

XR Today highlights six enterprise apps, including training platform SynergyXR, digital twin software JigSpace, and graphic design tool Da Vinci Eye.

Adobe has also ported versions of its creative software including Lightroom to VisionOS, although early research users who have trialed the headgear, like Stephen Shankland at CNET, suggest that field service, training and customer experience are the top use cases for corporates.

IDC analyst Ramon Llamas told TechCrunch, “About 56% use it for training, about 44% for customer facing retail experiences, and 43%-44% for collaboration.”

He added, “When you have enterprise users coming back and saying that they want to get their hands on it, I think that speaks to Apple’s abilities to court the enterprise user with this device.”

Alex Howland, co-founder of virtual environment platform Virbela, thinks that virtual networking events and conferences will become commonplace, enabling professionals to connect, learn, and build relationships in a virtual environment. Writing for Fast Company, he also thinks that advanced haptic feedback of the type enabled by Vision Pro, will allow users to feel and interact with virtual objects for a more immersive and realistic experience.”

However, Apple, — like Meta and Google before it — may have a task on its hands convincing companies to adopt the product at scale.

Howland believes Web-based VR is likely to play an increasingly important role as companies look to these new technologies but there are issues.

“Despite headset advancements — the issues of scale (cost and accessibility), plus the physical implications of being in a headset all day — the web will continue to dominate immersive experiences in the enterprise,” he says.

TechCrunch’s Miller agrees: “For now, Apple’s entry is cool to experiment with, but it’s not clear whether people want to wear a device on their face for hours at a time, no matter how good the interface design may be,” he says.

Some commentators, like venture capitalist Sanjit Singh Dang, writing for Forbes, herald the device as “a gateway to a future where digital and physical realities are seamlessly integrated” whereas others are less sure about how well those boundaries are united.”

Ian Bogost, writing about his experience in The Atlantic, says, “I did feel like I’d been turned into a robot person of some kind. Is that what the creators of these goggles hoped for, or was it just what I expected? If the Apple Vision Pro wants to reconcile life outside the computer and life within it, the challenge might be insurmountable.”

Apple is aware that users might need a little education into the brave new world of Xtended Reality. The company is flying XR experts to US retail stores to prepare employees with a 25-minute demo and onboarding sessions to help guide potential customers towards the product.

Tom Carter, CEO and co-founder of Ultraleap, told Rory Greener at XR Today, “Users want to feel less strain when using XR devices and what sets the Apple Vision Pro apart from other products on the market is an emphasis on a hands-first user interface with your arms in a relaxed position: a pinch of the fingers controls how you view and interact with the content.”

Bogost was more comfortable using the device as a straightforward entertainment device — watching movies, for example, which blocked out real world intrusion and therefore prevented nausea.

Appropriately, he chose to watch Avatar: The Way of Water. “It’s like watching the biggest, brightest television you’ve ever seen, at the proper distance, in a dark room,” was his verdict, “spectacular, so long as you can tolerate the headset’s weight on your face for hours.”

He concedes that Apple may well have delivered a new paradigm for general computing and entertainment but notes, as others have, that future versions will only improve.

“The original Macintosh was only marginally useful, and the first iPhone didn’t do that much,” Bogost says. “With Vision Pro, the company is trying to reconcile, once and for all, the digital and physical worlds. Apple has probably done enough, even in this early iteration, to convince many users that such a bridge can and will be built.”