Also, Christian can’t help himself but attach his apps to large companies that can cut him off overnight. Haha.
It’s possible they might use this leverage to negotiate better terms on iOS. For example, Netflix would like to offer in app subscriptions and to keep more the revenue without sharing with Apple.
If Apple sells millions of visionOS devices then that gives Apple more leverage and these 3 might come crawling back.
Long answer - The Apple Vision Pro’s Missing Apps by Stratechery (https://stratechery.com/2024/the-apple-vision-pros-missing-a...)
> Building a new app from scratch makes zero sense for the size of the install base. Only reason to ever do that would be to get some love back from Apple in the form of features and attention (which, for YouTube / Netflix / Spotify are hardly necessary) > Allowing YOUR iPad app to function on visionOS means that your customers will hold YOU responsible for its functioning. At the size of customer base of these companies, that's a bunch of risk for no reward > When your users use a browser that promises 'regular access to all websites' (built by Apple) to access your service, the responsibility for that experience lies with the browser builder, not you
There's 100% no negotiation over fees happening with individual developers, regardless of how big they are, regardless of what type of support for a platform they promise Apple, as that's exactly what has gotten Apple and Google in hot water with regulators worldwide.
Ben worded it well in the article:
"It’s certainly possible that I’m reading too much into these absences" < Yes
Netflix already has that option[0] at a 15% commission rate, but they snubbed their nose. Allegedly because they didn’t want to play nice with the TV app, like other streamers do.
Personally I think it’s that (and the potential loss of data) + them just wanting to pay $0.
They do. But it's difficult to call anything they make "smooth." Google does some decent backend stuff but their frontend experience is not.
The YouTube Music app blocks you from navigating to a different song at the same time as playing a track if it decides that the track is primarily aimed at under 18s (such as the theme from a retro cartoon).
It's UI might charitably be described as a total catastrophe.
Operating system fatigue, supporting three native apps as well as apples own browser engine is a lot of engineering time.
End of the day Vision Pro needs YouTube more than YouTube needs it.
The app is almost entirely made up of tableviews/collection views/recycler views, save for the video player… really not rocket science. If YouTube’s public API were more capable I’m positive that third party devs would have no issue maintaining their YouTube apps across N platforms simply because they wouldn’t be overcomplicating them like Google is theirs.
