[zyang]

I have a feeling is going to be a speedrun of the reddit saga. Google obviously doesn't want a smooth youtube experience on vision pro.

[spiderice]

Why is that? Obviously they don’t want a third party app to be that experience, but they make native apps for everything else.

Also, Christian can’t help himself but attach his apps to large companies that can cut him off overnight. Haha.

[nindalf]

Short answer - usually individual app developers, even of Google’s size, need the platform (iOS) more than the platform needs them. This means Apple has historically driven hard bargains with even the most popular apps. Now Apple is launching a new platform (visionOS) the 3 most popular in their categories - YouTube, Netflix and Spotify decided that visionOS needs them more than they need visionOS. For now.

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...)

[erk__]

A example would be Windows phone where they just not only did not make a YouTube app they denied access to the YouTube app made by Microsoft.

[justworkout]

> but they make native apps for everything else.

They do. But it's difficult to call anything they make "smooth." Google does some decent backend stuff but their frontend experience is not.

[whywhywhywhy]

>Why is that?

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.

[Gigachad]

The YouTube app would have just worked on the vison pro if they hadn’t explicitly opted out.

[madeofpalk]

Why do you say that?

I don't think the Youtube product managers really care enough about Vision Pro to prioritise making an app for it. That doesn't mean they strategically disgree with the product and actively wish to hamper it.

Indepedently of Vision Pro, I think they just might not be that enthusastic about third party youtube apps.

[shmoogy]

They explicitly opted the YouTube iPad app out of working on vision pro