Apple Vision Pro won’t have Netflix, Spotify, or YouTube at launch – is the headset already doomed as a media player?

Although excitement is building for the release of the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset (pre-orders are now live), potential users will have to do without not just YouTube or Spotify, but Netflix as well. While Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus (obviously) are guaranteed to be available right out of the box, we do have to question if you’ll be able to take advantage of the headset's cinematic qualities without these three media giants.

While some streaming competitors are rushing to embrace the Apple Vision Pro (including Peacock, ESPN, and Paramount Plus), Netflix and YouTube seem to be playing the waiting game, and when the headset launches Apple Vision Pro users will have to access their respective services through the Safari browser (which has it's own Vision Pro version) rather than via dedicated apps. According to a report from Bloomberg, Netflix is the latest to confirm that it won’t be offering a visionOS app.

YouTube in particular is quite the omission considering that it is probably the best place to find immersive content, especially videos tailored to the VR experience capabilities of the Vision Pro. The videos available on the platform may not be as refined and curated as the content you can find on Netflix or Disney Plus, but it’s a media platform used by many people almost daily and leaves the headset feeling somewhat empty without it – more so now that Netflix is joining in abstaining from visionOS.

All work and no play? 

It’s a troubling start for Apple’s big foray into mixed reality. After all, if you’re sitting down to use a headset that cost you $ 3,499 but you have to pull up Safari and start typing away on your connected MacBook just to watch a video or an episode of your favourite Netflix show, is it really worth the money? Using Safari is a clunky workaround at best.

There are almost certainly multiple factors at play behind the scenes here. Netflix and Apple do have a rather strained relationship at the best of times. Netflix has historically had issues with Apple’s App Store revenue sharing, with this contention definitely not helped by the arrival of Apple TV. Another likely reason we aren’t seeing Netflix jump at the opportunity to produce a visionOS app is simply that it has little faith in Apple’s headset. 

In fact, you could argue that the streaming service has so little faith in the Vision Pro that it’s not even willing to modify a version of the Netflix iPadOS app to work on the new platform (not unlike how Instagram on iPadOS is just a scaled-up version of the iOS app). Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify are likely waiting to see how the headset is received before they any dedicate time and money to developing apps for it.  As someone who’s been skeptical of the headset since it was announced, I can’t help but feel more than a little vindicated by this – it’s not just me observing from the sidelines with very little confidence in Apple’s big plans. 

I mean, the Nintendo Switch came out in 2017 and that has a dedicated YouTube app (the Nintendo 3DS had one as well!) so if a nearly seven-year-old console can have a dedicated app for the world’s biggest video-streaming platform but this futuristic headset can’t, that really doesn’t look good for Apple. 

Ultimately, we can only speculate as to why exactly these big media companies are so hesitant, but one reason may be the way the headset has been marketed. Apple has from the jump advertised the Vision Pro as this incredibly immersive media experience device that will put you right in the middle of the action, but the fact that it’s called a Vision Pro – and the sky-high price tag – does give off the impression it's more for enterprise users. Could this case of confused identity be the reason behind this very visible display of hesitancy? 

As of yet, there’s no sign of when, if ever, we could expect a dedicated visionOS app to come from Netflix, YouTube, or Spotify. It’s likely we’ll have to wait and see how well the Vision Pro sells when it launches to have an idea of whether or not we actually will get these apps – if it does prove successful, they won’t have a choice but to commit.

If this hasn’t completely dampened your excitement for the Apple Vision Pro, there’s still quite a lot to look forward to regardless. While it’s mostly still on the more business-focused side of things, we now have a clear list of apps confirmed for the Vision Pro – including Slack, Display Plus, Zoom, Microsoft 365, Safari, and many more to come. And after all, if it truly is meant to be an enterprise device, would it even need a Netflix app?

You might also like…

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Meta AI is coming to your social media apps – and I’ve already forgotten about ChatGPT

Meta is going all out on artificial intelligence, first developing its own version of ChatGPT as well as implementing Instagram’s AI ‘personas’ to appeal to a younger audience. Now, the company has announced a new AI image generation and editing feature during Meta’s Connect event, which will be coming to Instagram soon. 

If you’re familiar with OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard, Meta AI will feel very familiar to you. The all-general purpose assistant can help with all sorts of planning and organizational tasks, and will now offer the ability to generate images via the prompt ‘/imagine’. 

You’ll also be able to show Meta AI on Instagram a photo you wish to post and ask it to apply a watercolour effect, make the image black and white and so on. Think of the Meta assistant as a more ‘social’ version of ChatGPT, baked right into your social media apps.

Alongside the assistant, the initial roster of 28 AI characters is beginning to roll out across the company’s messaging app. Most of these characters are based on celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Mr. Beast, Paris Hilton and my personal favourite, Snoop Dogg! You can chat with these ‘personas’ directly and finally ask Paris what lipgloss she uses. As you chat with the characters their profile image will animate based on the topic of conversation, which is pretty cool considering chatting with most AI chatbots is kind of… boring, at least from a visual standpoint.

ChatGPT may have started it, but Meta could finish it

It’s clear that Meta is taking AI integration very seriously, and I love to see it! By integrating its virtual assistant and AI tools into the apps billions of people use every day it’s guaranteed an existing user base, and in my opinion, shows that the company has taken the time to really understand why users would approach their product. 

Instead of just unleashing an assistant that will give you recipes and do your homework, it looks like Meta AI is tailored to suit everyday purposes and feels like a really clever way to implement the tool in people’s lives. The assistant is right there in the app if and when you need it, so you don’t have to leave the app to engage with the assistant.

Meta’s huge scale of potential users gives it a good chance of being the AI assistant people will use for the first time and could be the AI assistant people will end up using on a day-to-day basis. No extra app to download or account to make, and no swiping away from your conversation to get to what you need. I think Meta made a smart choice taking its time and has now come out the gate swinging – and I really do think ChatGPT creators OpenAI should be a little bit worried. 

You might also like

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Twitter down: social media website and app aren’t working – again

It feels like every other week that the internet breaks – you've guessed it (from the headline), Twitter is down.

The social media giant is unavailable to loads of users – trying to access the web page brings up the message “Something went wrong. Try reloading.”, and the app won't refresh with newer tweets.

Reports on downdetector.co.uk jumped up into the thousands within minutes of the outage – it's worth pointing out that, while the reports also rose on downdetector.com (in the US), they didn't rise by nearly as much.

It sounds like a limited issue, as lots of TechRadar team members haven't had an issue. Saying that the sheer number of Downdetector reports shows that something is up.

Not only is the main Twitter feed down, but other Twitter sites are down too, like its Help site.

We just wanted to post a funny joke, and now we've discovered that Twitter isn't working. We're investigating.

Judging by reports from Downdetector and TechRadar's US team, the outage is affecting far fewer people in the US than in the UK – it seems mainly a British problem. Well, we can add that to the list after Freddos costing more, Magnums getting smaller and the whole cost of living thing.

In the UK, DownDetector reports more than 4,000 reports in the last few minutes. That's a huge number given how many we normally see – even for the major outages that affect multiple websites, we usually see one or two thousand reports.

This outage has come less than six weeks after the last Twitter outage.

That was a smaller one, as the main Twitter feed would load, but Tweets wouldn't – so you could see them, but not click on them or interact with them. 

Now, you can't see anything – it's radio silence.

Usually when there's an internet outage, people turn to Twitter to look for answers. That's… a little harder now.

We looked at Facebook, but Twitter itself hasn't posted there for several months. Last time it did, it was a screenshot of a Tweet about cats. What is this, 2007?

Facebook is a bit more community-focused though, so it's harder to see what people in the wider world are saying.

Reddit to the rescue though:

is_twitter_down_for_anyone_else_in_uk from r/Twitter

There's no official comment, but there are people from around the world commenting to say that Reddit isn't working for them.

Unfortunately, because Reddit's support and news room sites are all hosted by the media giant itself, they're not working either.

We're seeing a growing number of reports of outages from the US, but TechRadar's team based there hasn't seen anything.

It's likely that a server in Europe is at fault, which is why it's so much more of an issue for our UK readers than our US ones.

But we're waiting to find out from Twitter to see what's going on.

Oppo Find X5 Pro

(Image credit: Future)

Reports are well over 4,000 at the moment.

For context, the baseline is 3. That's a big difference.

Oh wait – Twitter is back! (for me at least)

This suggests the end of the outage could be here – just in time for you to return to work after your lunch break. What bad luck.

DownDetector reports for Twitter problems are finally going down – it looks like the outage could really be over.

It's not a steep plummet of reports, which suggests some people are still finding problems with their desktop site or phone app, but this at least tells us that the initial problem is being solved.

We've been looking to see if Twitter itself has commented on the outage – so far we can't see anything from any of its official accounts.

Saying that, it's got about a billion of its own accounts for different regions, aspects of the site and more, so it's very possible that one of them has posted, and we just haven't found it yet.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

New and improved Windows Media Player is rolling out to Windows 11 users

After being shown off in the Insider channels since November, Microsoft’s rebooted Windows Media Player is slowly being made available on the new Microsoft Store in Windows 11.

While it was first shown off by accident during a live podcast stream, an update in the Dev Channel in November revealed the existence of this new and improved media player.

It’s replacing Groove Music, the app that’s been Microsoft’s default media player for a while now, but the company seemingly wants to make a sequel to the iconic Windows Media Player from the early-noughties, when it was one of the most popular apps of its time.

But is there a place in 2022 for a new media app in Windows 11?

How to download Media Player in Windows 11

The new app requires you to update your device to Windows 11 build 22000.346 or later, where you can then head over to the Microsoft Store, and download the new media player for your device.

If you have Groove Music, Microsoft’s previous media app that’s been available since 2012, the new Windows Media Player will replace it. In our testing, we spotted that the new media player was available on some, but not all, of our Windows 11 devices.

But you can still download the original version of Windows Media Player, which has been available since 2012 if you want a nostalgic kick for your PC. But you won’t be able to take advantage of what the new media player brings.

Alongside HDR support when playing videos, the app has seen a redesign to match the Fluent design language of Windows 11 and Office 2021. The color scheme will also match whichever theme you have set for your PC, so Media Player won’t look out of place.


Analysis: Is there room for Windows Media Player in 2022?

The world is a different place since we were using MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player 9 back in 2002. It was before a time where Netflix existed, and ‘streaming’ was what rivers did, rather than being a way of watching media.

Windows Media Player 8 in Windows XP

(Image credit: Microsoft)

But now we’re spoilt for choice with the apps we can use to play our videos. While you can play videos on your Mac through QuickTime Player, or through third-party means such as IINA, Windows 11 has a wide variety to choose from.

From VLC Player to iTunes, it may require an extra push from Microsoft to make users aware of what was around during Windows 98, and why Windows Media Player is still worth using in 2022.

With Xbox, Surface, and other devices from the company, we may see variants of this new Windows Media Player start to appear on these products. But time will tell if users want to use a brand-new media player when there’s already a great catalog of media apps to choose from.

Via Windows Latest

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More