The new Vision Pro YouTube app is a reminder that spatial computing still sucks

Well it only took two years, but there’s finally an official YouTube app for Vision Pro. You could always just visit YouTube using the Vision Pro web browser, but that’s not the same thing. And the popular third-party app, Juno, was quickly taken down.

The official YouTube app is not quite an MVP (minimum viable product), but it’s close. It’s just a floating window that can play YouTube videos, including the relatively paltry selection of 3D 360-degree and VR 180-degree videos. Like most apps, you can watch using any of the built-in Vision Pro environments, as you can with most video apps. You can even watch 8K videos if you have the newer M5-based Vision Pro.

There aren’t any custom environments, like you get with Disney+. Nor are there fun custom ways to watch, as some of the early third-party local video playback apps have added, such as watching on a virtual TV set (modern or vintage) or in a classic movie theater. You at least get the full signed-in experience, so your playlists and ad-free YouTube subscription all works.

The real problem here, aside from this being a version of the app that YouTube could and should have had available when Vision Pro was released two years ago, is that nobody cares anymore. Apple Vision Pro is all but dead.

Two years after its launch, nobody seems to be buying Vision Pro any longer. Its presence has been greatly reduced in Apple Stores, and Apple seems to have turned its attention to the latest buzzword: AI.

Remember when Mark Zuckerberg renamed his whole company Meta and spent unlimited billions chasing the “Metaverse?” Just a few years later, all that money is wasted: The company is now all-in on generative AI, the Quest line of VR headsets isn’t very popular, and we’re no closer to the dream of glasses-based augmented reality than we were in 2021.

Though Apple would never use the word “metaverse,” preferring its own “spatial computing” brand for mixed reality, it followed the same trajectory. Sure, spatial computing project research continues inside Apple, and we might one day get a true wearable consumer product. But the Vision Pro roadmap has been obliterated by the industry’s rapid and insatiable pursuit of AI.

After two years, Apple has been able to deliver a minor Vision Pro update with just an upgraded processor and strap, still at an exorbitant price. A more consumer-focused headset is still more than a year away. True augmented reality glasses are several years away, at least…and the latest rumors suggest Apple has decided to do a simple “heads-up display” version of smart glasses similar to the Meta Ray-Bans. Those might ship this year, but if the constant delays and disappointments of Apple’s AI and related home products are any indication, I think 2027 or even 2028 is a safer bet.

So thank you, YouTube, for finally shipping a Vision Pro app. I wish it happened two years ago, and I wish people cared today. But Apple’s got an AI dragon to chase.