[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...)

[HHaan]

Tons of respect for Ben Thompson, but reason for not shipping visionOS apps (or allowing your iPad app to work on them) for these big co's is literally a matter of "Bang for your buck":

> 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

[turquoisevar]

> For example, Netflix would like to offer in app subscriptions and to keep more the revenue without sharing with Apple.

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.

0: https://developer.apple.com/programs/video-partner/

[yard2010]

That's just apple being apple though, shipping half baked stuff 3 years before they're ready

[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.

[Mindwipe]

That app literally broke YouTube's agreements with the music labels though (by allowing free downloads etc), which this one doesn't.

[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.

[jack_pp]

the android youtube / music app is much better than any other audio / video app i have including spotify, netflix

[Mindwipe]

Come on.

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.

[heapoverflow]

That is a COPPA compliance thing and is true on the regular YouTube app as well:

https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/30/why-youtube-videos-...

[jack_pp]

Well compare that to Spotify which can only show videos full screen in one orientation and needs to be force stopped constantly because podcasts block a lot.

Also, I never encountered the problem you complain about.

[echelon]

Everything Google does in their own ecosystem is smooth.

[ciroduran]

until the product gets killed

[unobatbayar]

Not as smooth as Apple.

[ricardobeat]

I don’t know if that’s still true. The Music app is still sluggish, Notes has poor UX, almost every built-in app has a better third-party replacement. It has been downhill since iOS 7.

[Gorbzel]

And in all 3 cases, the Google equivalents are worse. History shows they’ll probably just be replaced with a different product to solve the same problem which will be worse in its own ways.

Subjective, but I use both Android and iOS daily. Interesting byproduct of Android being the favorite of those obsessed with customization is that the stock apps are almost universally bad because everyone just replaces them with different niche alternatives.

[tiltowait]

Has it ever been the case that the built-in apps are the best in their category? Should it be the case? Apple's strategy seems to be to make a simple offering that appeals to most people, and to leave the advanced/special/power features to third-party developers. I think that's a pretty healthy arrangement, though I bet many devs would prefer Apple not offer defaults in some categories at all.

[lawgimenez]

What's so poor about Apple Notes? It's my most used app. Just curious.

[SSLy]

What the replacements for contacts and clock would be?

[ricardobeat]

Contacts+ and Cardhop are two.

To be fair the clock app is a lot better since they introduced the sleep schedule, but I used to have a separate alarm app, and still use Sleepytime to calculate wake up times.

[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.

[jwells89]

On the other hand, I have to imagine that to some extent YouTube is making maintaining their apps across multiple platforms harder than it has to be.

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.

[Gigachad]

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