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Trilo Byte
Participating Frequently
February 7, 2024
Question

Illustrator: Support for Apple Vision Pro

  • February 7, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 3768 views

Apple's newly launched Vision Pro is a pretty exciting tool for content creation and design, and I was hoping that either Adobe would be there at launch with a number of native apps, or at least looking forward to installing and using iPadOS versions of apps on the new spatial computer.

 

Unfortunately, it appears that Adobe has blocked Illustrator and Photoshop from being installed on Vision Pro.  Can you shed light on why the apps have been blocked, and when we can expect either compatibility with the iPadOS release or a native VisionOS version?

3 replies

Participant
July 20, 2024

This is an M2 Pro device. My wife upgraded to an M3 MacBook Pro and, for the same price, I opted for the M2 Vision Pro. Similar specs, with the Vision Pro being sold as a "Spatial Computer" that could run iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS apps, all on one device (just a simple opt-in for developers!). Half a year later, Adobe hasn't flicked the bit to let their apps exist on this expensive computer, verses that expensive computer. This is Adobe's game to lose, and they're fumbling the ball in the first quarter.

Community Expert
July 20, 2024

And the sales numbers of the Vision Pro headset are what? What's the install base? The headset appears to be priced only for people who can afford giant homes and yachts (or middle class people who have strange priorities with their money). I don't see Apple moving these high priced goggles in the tens of millions of units.

Participant
July 20, 2024

Same price as MacBook Pro with better usability. The sales numbers are in line with expectations. Adobe just needs to check a box. Why are they letting this slip through their fingers?

Mylenium
Legend
February 8, 2024

Adobe uses a ton of custom libraries for UIs and the actual program functions and they may simply require to be adapted for genuine technical reasons or just to pass Apple certification. Just getting the activation system to work on a device that is already heavily locked down could be a pain. Outside that it's really one of those "0.0001 percent of users" questions. It's apparently not the answer you like to hear, but any company has to ask themselves whether it's worth to invest the resources just to cater for a tiny fraction of the potential crowd. And let's be real - until the Vision Pro has been launched in huge markets like Japan, Europe, China and so on a lot of people and companies aren't going to bother. Small developers will wait until they have the money, big companies will evaluate how it affects their development cycles and pretty much everyone will try to avoid getting entangled in Apple's atrocious and restrictive development and certification rules for as long as they can.

 

Mylenium

Community Expert
February 7, 2024

I'm not an Adobe employee, so I can't speak for their intentions. But a lot of mainstream content consumption apps aren't even available for the Apple Vision Pro headset at this time. There are good reasons for this. The new headset is a version 1.0 release. It is very expensive. A well-equipped Vision Pro headset plus the $200 case tips the scales at $4000 (before sales tax). That is a lot of money for what is essentially a high end niche product for an "enthusiast" crowd.

 

Then there is the issue of the headset appearing to be something that is used for fun, be it playing games, watching movies/videos or just casual leisure computing. It doesn't appear to be a product marketed for doing work. Adobe's creative applications are primarily for doing work. There is some obvious potential with a headset like the Vision Pro for creative tasks, such as 3D modeling. Then again, how powerful is the computing hardware in this headset? It doesn't look like something that can contain beast-level performance of a desktop tower computer. In resource intensive work situations, such as 3D modeling and rendering, the headset might need to work in a more passive manner, simply displaying what a more powerful desktop computer is rendering on the fly.

 

If the price of the headset drops and the customer install base grows that will help increase the demand for Adobe apps to be designed for the Vision Pro headset. For the time being there is a lot of details that need to be worked out.

Trilo Byte
Participating Frequently
February 7, 2024

It sounds like you may not have experience with either the headset or an understanding of what the device is designed for?

 

While a lot of reviewers are glomming onto the notion of consuming media, it is not some kind of face-TV.  It's a full featured computer with an Apple Silicon M2 chip and a fair amount of horsepower woth a 10-core GPU.  While it is still a 1.0 product, there are hundreds of thousands of iPad apps (a large percentage of them productivity and content creation tools).  Other developers have drawing and photo editing apps avaiable, as well as Adobe Lightroom runs without any issues.  In fact, Adobe already has a couple native Vision Pro apps (Fresco and another for generating AI art).

 

I can and already have used Vision Pro with all the desktop versions o Adobe apps via the connect to Mac functionality (as well as Cinema 4D and other content creation tools).  That route uses bluetooth keyboard and trackpad for primary source of input, as well as being within physical proximity of the Mac it's running on.  Since there is already an Illustrator and a Photoshop for iPad, those apps should work.  For some reason that Adobe has not revealed, they went to the effort to choose to block them on the Vision Pro app store.  If it's too insignificant a device or market to bother with, then why bother developing native apps, and why take the time to block some apps and not others.

 

Community Expert
February 7, 2024

I've never used an Apple Vision Pro headset. With the price tag starting at $3499 (for just the headset and 256GB of storage) I'm not inclined to go checking it out any time soon. The next time I buy an Apple product it's most likely going to be a replacement for my old iPad Pro.

 

The very notion this headset is primarily running "mobile" sized apps (such as those for the iPad) is a problem. I can blow $4000 on a monster desktop or notebook computer, but I'm not inclined to spend $4000 on an iPad.

 

You mention the device can be connected "passively" to a Mac. Well, that's another problem for some of us. I do own an iPad. But I use a 17" Alienware notebook at home and a Dell desktop at work. I can't connect a Vision Pro headset to either of those devices.

 

Adobe can put a lot of resources into developing iPad apps, partly because iPad devices are not priced into the stratosphere. There is a large customer base there. For traditional desktop computing Adobe has been more platform agnostic since the late 1990's, putting roughly equal amounts of development behind the Mac and Windows versions of its apps (as well as making sure creative files can hop between Mac and Windows platforms without much trouble).

 

Someone from Adobe would have to state officially why iPad apps like Illustrator and Photoshop can't run on the Vision Pro headset right now. My guess is the headset is opening a can of worms that causes issues with those iPad apps. For all I know Adobe's developers could be working on making their iPad apps compatible with the headset. If that's the case the apps obviously aren't ready for prime time on that high end headset. And we all know just how viciously critical customers can be if there are any technical problems. The scenario would be Illustrator crashing in a Vision Pro headset and the user immediately getting online to say how much Adobe sucks for letting that happen.

 

Let's also not forget that things are pretty weird in Silicon Valley at this time. Apple's Vision Pro headset may be really cool. But "AI" is a much bigger deal right now. And there are things going on with the economy that are killing tech jobs by the thousands or tens of thousands.

 

With all of that going on, I would just recommend being patient. Just about anyone who has $3500-$4000 to blow on Apple's new headset probably has a bunch of other perfectly functional, near-new Apple branded computers and other devices.