Apple in July began holding Vision Pro-focused developer labs in numerous cities, including Cupertino, London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo, but so far, developers don’t appear to be very excited about actually attending.
According to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, the developer labs have been “under-filled with small amounts of developers.” Apparently, one of the factors behind the less-than-exciting attendance numbers is that Apple is not offering U.S. developer labs outside of Cupertino, meaning any developer that wants to give the Vision Pro a try must travel to Apple’s headquarters in California.
Apple says the developer labs offer self-directed coding and design labs, where developers can test and optimize your apps on visionOS. Developers can bring their Mac, code, and everything they need to modify, build, run, and test their apps on Apple Vision Pro. Apple experts are available to help developers with setup and troubleshooting.
Although all developers can apply to attend a developer lab, Apple does not pay for the developers’ travel costs, and developers located on the east coast of the United States have to pay for a cross-country trip to attend the lab. It is a bit odd that Apple is holding the labs in only one location in the U.S., considering that the Vision Pro will be launching in the United States, ahead of becoming available in other countries.
Another reason for the less-than-expected attendance numbers could be that since the visionOS simulator has only been available for a short time, so many developers may still have apps in development and might not be ready to attend a lab.
Developers will have a bit more than six months to test and develop apps for the Vision Pro, which is not expected to hit shelves until early 2024.
