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Apple Tells Developers Not To Call Their AR or VR Apps AR or VR Apps (engadget.com) 122

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
With Apple's Vision Pro VR/AR headset set to go on sale on February 2, we're starting to see more details about the app requirements. From a report: The company has released guidelines for visionOS developers planning to release apps and there's one strange caveat. It would rather developers don't use the terms AR and VR when referring to Vision Pro apps, but rather call them "spatial computing apps," according to the developer page.

"Spatial computing: Refer to your app as a spatial computing app. Don't describe your app experience as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), or mixed reality (MR)," the company states. The headset itself should be called "Apple Vision Pro" with three uppercase words, while "visionOS begins with a lowercase v, even when it's the first word in a sentence." The terms should never be translated or transliterated, Apple added.
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Apple Tells Developers Not To Call Their AR or VR Apps AR or VR Apps More

Apple Tells Developers Not To Call Their AR or VR Apps AR or VR Apps

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  • Apple should just be happy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by king*jojo ( 9276931 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:07AM (#64143821)
    That any third-party is willing to make software for them at this point

  • Suits Rule. (Score:5, Funny)

    by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:16AM (#64143847)

    Gotta make that walled garden sound extra special. Err, sorry, spatial.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      Plus, AR and VR are last year's buzzwords, so they need new ones or nobody will bother.

      • Re:Suits Rule. (Score:5, Funny)

        by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:27AM (#64143887)

        For those customers with spatial needs.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by ichthus ( 72442 )
        A diverse focus group probably determined that "AR" and "VR" are white supremacist dog whistles.

        • Not to mention that AR conjures up memories of Colt AR-15, a semiautomatic hunting rifle that quite a few people with severe mental illness have misused in mass shootings.

          • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

            by nasch ( 598556 )

            The AR-15 is a civilian version of the M-16, a rifle explicitly designed for killing people. It's not a hunting rifle.

            • Re: AR-15 (Score:2, Insightful)

              by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

              The AR is a hunting rifle in intermediate caliber which is fine for hunting medium size game. If it were a military weapon it would be select fire. The same things that make the shape good for killing humans make it good for killing animals too.

              Meanwhile my 1935 Peruvian Mauser is a military weapon (albeit outdated) despite the fact that only hunting rifles look like it today, because it was sold as one and is designed to let you fix a bayonet.

              • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

                by nasch ( 598556 )

                If it were a hunting rifle, it would be based on another hunting rifle, or built from the ground up for that purpose. It is neither. It's based on a military rifle, and the fact that it's a civilian version and semi-automatic - and even if it's the best rifle for hunting that's ever been made - doesn't change the fact that its design is for killing people. Just own it. Admit that it's a weapon for shooting at people - it's not like such weapons are illegal in the US. Basically every handgun is the same

                • "If it were a hunting rifle, it would be based on another hunting rifle, or built from the ground up for that purpose."

                  Whoever told you that lied to you. There are absolute scads of guns which were simultaneously designed to be both, and ample examples of weapons which were meant to be one or the other and were then adapted to the other job by the manufacturer. As usual the anti gunners know dick about guns. That doesn't prohibit you from having a valid opinion on gun control, but it does apparently prevent

                  • Re: (Score:3)

                    by nasch ( 598556 )

                    There are absolute scads of guns which were simultaneously designed to be both

                    Was the AR-15 designed to be both?

                    As usual the anti gunners know dick about guns.

                    I'm pro-fact, not anti-gun.

                  • Product design isn't exactly your domain, am I right? But that's all right, we have people enough who design more or less useful stuff - we need people who shoot at things too.
              • The gun nuts called the AR-15 an assault rifle when it came out. Why do you hate gun nuts?
            • It's made for hunting "the most dangerous game". Duh.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Holi ( 250190 )

            .223 is a varmint round, hardly what I would use for hunting. (unless your hunting humans)

            • One of the most successful deer hunters I knew growing up used a small hunting rifle that took .223 rounds. He praised the accuracy/flatter trajectory.
              No one used them for bear or moose though.

        • Worse, they have been burned by sucky unsuccessful products.

      • Plus, AR and VR are last year's buzzwords, so they need new ones or nobody will bother.

        When the campaign actually works, I'm not sure why we're dragging Apple for it.

        Says a lot more about consumers than it does profit-seeking suits who know their audience.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by leonbev ( 111395 )

        Plus, they don't want the stink of Valve's and Meta's past launch failures for their AR and VR products to get attached to this one.

        Therefore, this is a Brand New product, even though it really isn't. Apple doesn't really seem to do "new" products, they take existing products and improve on them.

    • Re:Suits Rule. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Thoth Ptolemy ( 110353 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:50AM (#64143965)
      While intended as sarcastic humor this is entirely correct. It's all about branding. And Apple is trying to brand itself away from xR, which just screams gimmicky, to a 'higher' order of computing. Now it may result in 'spatial computing' being met with eye rolls in 5 years and AR/VR/MR/XR/Spatial all being viewed the same. But it's also Apple, who basically changed the mobile phone market and ushered in an entire new smart phone era with the iPhone. They didn't invent it but they did design and brand it in a new way. And it's the same with AR/VR/MR/XR/Spatial, they didn't invent it but they are trying to design and brand it in a new way.
      Will Apple succeed in making AR/VR/MR/XR/Spatial more than a product for the realm of dumb nerds? Something consumable by normal humans, walled-garden and all? Hell if I know. The market acts in mysterious ways. But I would bet in favor of Apple more than against.

      • Of course it's about branding, but this is gonna backfire badly. "Spatial" is a homonym to "special", and the obvious shortbus joke has already been made.

        "visionOS" and "Apple Vision Pro" are just waiting to be used in some "when you order X from wish" meme due to the similarities between "vision" and "wish" (or wishing).

        Whoever came up with this branding obviously didn't think any further than the guy at Mitsubishi who came up with the name Pajero for their SUV. And if you don't know why that's a problem,

        • Re:Suits Rule. (Score:4, Informative)

          by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @01:23PM (#64144711) Homepage Journal

          What kind of fucked up form of English pronounces "spatial" and "special" identically? It isn't Commonwealth English or or US English. In both cases, the first vowel differs, and in Commonwealth English, "spatial" has the "i" and "a" pronounced distinctly while "special" doesn't.

          "Wishing" and "vision" are pronounced differently, too. The initial consonant is different, and the second consonant is voiced in "vision" but unvoiced in "wishing".

          The Pajero branding has been very successful in most of the world. It's from leopardus parjeros, a subspecies of Pampas cat [wikipedia.org]. I find it more odd that pajero has become vulgar slang in Mexico.

          • Google translate comes close enough to work for most.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mjwx ( 966435 )

            What kind of fucked up form of English pronounces "spatial" and "special" identically? It isn't Commonwealth English or or US English. In both cases, the first vowel differs, and in Commonwealth English, "spatial" has the "i" and "a" pronounced distinctly while "special" doesn't.

            I think this has to do more with accents than language. I can think of a few regional accents from both the UK and US that would make the two words fairly similar and this is before we get to accents outside the angloshere, even some other Europeans will struggle with it, let alone Indian or Asian accents.

            "Wishing" and "vision" are pronounced differently, too. The initial consonant is different, and the second consonant is voiced in "vision" but unvoiced in "wishing".

            Welcome to English, weird pronunciations are just the beginning. My bass produced bass whilst shaped like a bass, there are seven pronunciations of the "ough" sound, thorough, rough, cough, hiccough, thoug

          • > What kind of fucked up form of English pronounces "spatial" and "special" identically? It isn't Commonwealth English or or US English. In both cases, the first vowel differs, and in Commonwealth English, "spatial" has the "i" and "a" pronounced distinctly while "special" doesn't. Poor or just heavily accented English. Used by about 90% of the world's english speaking population.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by _merlin ( 160982 )

              Poor or just heavily accented English. Used by about 90% of the world's english speaking population.

              You have a point, I guess. Thinking about it, "spatial" and "special" would sound identical (or close to it) with a Dutch accent.

        • Well, the crowd who thinks that "iPad" is funny, but "ThinkPad" is totally cromulent is spatial anyway.

      • That's exactly what happened with the iPhone. PDAs came and went in the 90's and built a pretty bad reputation. Apple released a PDA and said, "Don't call it a PDA. It's not a PDA, it's a phone. A really crappy phone that doesn't work like a phone."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      "I'm a spacial needs developer."

  • no one can serve two grammars (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:17AM (#64143855)

    "visionOS begins with a lowercase v, even when it's the first word in a sentence."

    Burn it all to the ground. No survivors.

  • Worrying about the important things, as always. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:18AM (#64143857) Journal

    Clearly if you have to differentiate your wildly expensive product by dictating nomenclature, you have a true winner of a product.

    • Clearly if you have to differentiate your wildly expensive product by dictating nomenclature, you have a true winner of a product.

      We have mega-corps who sit on war chests full of thousands of patents no one is able to actually build or use, including the patent owner purposely doing nothing with it. When you have legal rules like that permanently cripple creativity, you have a true "winner" version of Capitalism.

      A premature industry marketing expensive toys for adult kids, is par for the course.

      • So did Apple get three patents on cameras hidden behind/within screens to prevent others from doing it, or to spy on you more effectively?

    • Clearly if you have to differentiate your wildly expensive product by dictating nomenclature, you have a true winner of a product.

      You are free to call your app Mixed Reality then, what difference is it to you? What's the standard MR experience that sets the bar for all others? Is Apple's headset not differentiated enough, this can't be the first you've heard of it.

    • Apple has been doing this for decades. I have an Apple style guide from 1998 that has 100 pages of preferred nomenclature. The big advantage of this is uniformity: just like every Mac OS program uses the same menu labels, the manual for every Mac OS program uses the same terms.

    • GNU/Linux

  • This reminds me of Wendy's (Score:3)

    by joshuark ( 6549270 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:26AM (#64143881)

    This reminds me of Wendy's...a milkshake is a frosty, and a cheeseburger is a single with cheese. And if you do use the wrong term, the immediate clarification of the word by the teenager behind the counter with that cold, professional smile...or stare.

    Either that, or 1984 (how ironic given Apple's famous 1984 commercial...) with the "Newspeak" of terminology.

    JoshK.

    • This reminds me of Wendy's...a milkshake is a frosty,

      No. Not even close. If you think a Frosty is the same as a milkshake, you've never had a real milkshake. You can drink a milkshake through a straw. You cannot do the same with a fresh Frosty.

      And yes, while a Frosty meets the definition of a milkshake, so does a DQ Blizzard, but no one would consider a Blizzard a milkshake. You might as well say a bowling ball and tennis ball are the same. They're both round.

      And if you do use the wrong term, the imme

      • Quite, very true. I found I couldn't get just a cup of regular Joe at Starbucks, always that de-caff soy latte with extra vanilla. :) JoshK.

      • And if you do use the wrong term, the immediate clarification of the word by the teenager behind the counter with that cold, professional smile...or stare.

        So it's like Starbucks when you say you want a large coffee [youtube.com].

        Or the former Loews Theaters chain when asking for butter on your popcorn it's really butter flavored topping; I suspect management requires the clarification, at Loews I was told we had to do so to make sure customers understood it was not butter and we didn't get sued for false advertising or whatever...not sure how likely that really was and if it was chain-wide policy or not, but the theater manager where I worked was serious about it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        So it's like Starbucks when you say you want a large coffee [youtube.com].

        Lol. "Congratulations, now you're stupid in three languages." I hadn't seen that one before. Good stuff.

      • You can drink a milkshake through a straw.

        It depends where you are. In the US, when I order a "shake" (which is invariably short for "milkshake"), I get back something that I can barely drink with a straw. When I visited Australia and ordered a chocolate milkshake, I got basically chocolate milk. I later learned that if I wanted a US-style shake, I had to order a "thick shake" explicitly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nasch ( 598556 )

        I love that scene.

    • And no matter how many times they berate me, as long as I order how I want and I get what I want, they can go suck an egg. Or my dick.

      • Exactly. I've found the fixation on the right term is amusing. :)

        JoshK.

        • And your comparison is apt, this will be no different. People will call it VR, Apple will raise an indignant finger like a prissy Victorian teacher and go "spacial computing" and people will just reply "yeah, whatever, now jump for me, delivery drone!".

          • I thank-you, thanks! I'm having folks explain to me why I've never been to Wendy's, never had a "real" milkshake, etc.

            I concur, people will call it VR. I like your simile of the prissy Victorian teacher. :)

            Sorta like saying an "undertaker" instead of "funeral director" yet the client doesn't care as they're in the coffin. ;)

            JoshK.

            • The whole thing stands and falls with customer acceptance. If they jump through the hoops Apple wants them to jump, great. And a lot of the fanboys probably will.

              What bothers me, or rather, what would bother me if I gave half a rat's ass about Apple, is the potential for fallout. Because you just know that the more they are being prissy about the "correct" terms, the more some people will go out of their way to screw with them by using some "incorrect" ones. And depending on who has the upper hand and the "

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RedK ( 112790 )

      > a milkshake is a frosty, and a cheeseburger is a single with cheese

      You've never been to Wendy's have you ?

      A Frosty is just soft ice cream. It's not a milkshake. You eat it with a spoon, you don't drink it.

      They call it the "Single with Cheese" because it has a single patty. They also have doubles and triples. Hence the term "single" because you want a single patty. And "with cheese" because they offer both with or without cheese. Cheeseburger doesn't mean much to them since they have a lot of chee

  • Yay for marketing! (Score:3)

    by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:28AM (#64143889)

    visionOS begins with a lowercase v, even when it's the first word in a sentence.

    How many overpaid marketing wanks did it take to come up with that idea?

  • They should be called APP apps! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Modern app appers know that only APPS can app apps, NOT LUDDITE AR or LUDDITE VR!

    Apps!

  • Need to keep that walled garden looking good! (Score:3)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @10:40AM (#64144139) Journal

    Needs lots of tending, making sure cases are correct and that only the "correct" terms are used in their new language.

    Can't have any badly spelled graffiti on the wall.

    Absolute control of narrative.

  • I'm pretty sure I won't have anything to do with this AR / VR tech since I can't afford the hardware with which to play around with this, anyway. It'll be easily ignored.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      IIUC, the still haven't solved the motion-sickness problem, so it probably won't go anywhere. That's around ..what 1/8th of the users that it actively makes sick.

  • This is n00b-style overzealous brand management. Probably a new guy in marketing or something. Stuff like this is tricky if it isn't a logo or trademark and if it's so close to natural language. It doesn't sound to me like Apple is going to make too much of a big deal if someone doesn't comply 100%. If I call my app a "VR App" and Apple is making millions of dollars of my sales they probably don't care too much about my wording.

    • This feels quite normal for Apple tbh. They have always been very particular about branding and styling etc.

      Here is their style guide - click here [apple.com].

      Some interesting examples just under iCloud...

      • Capitalize the C in iCloud in all references to iCloud or the iCloud website (iCloud.com). Don’t capitalize the C in email addresses or when giving the URL for a particular domain of the iCloud website (icloud.com/calendar).
      • To access iCloud features, users sign in with their Apple ID. Don’t use sign in t

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nebulo ( 29412 )

      I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Apple's brand management team knows more about that subject than you.

      • I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Apple's brand management team knows more about that subject than you.

        I'm not so sure about that. If they did, they wouldn't piss off opinion leaders with stupid fussy rules for eco-system development or shoddy lock-in keymapping. And they also wouldn't show Ads for Apple music as the first thing someone who buys a 3800 Euro premium grade laptop sees when they boot it up.

        Apple has better brand management than most other tech companies, but that doesn't stop t

  • I'm sure the language police in over in Quebec are gonna insist otherwise. They can't be satisfied unless everyone over there uses only their version of French with no foreign words in it. (The french word for vision, is "vison")

  • I'm sure some here will get that reference! :)

  • ... "space" and "computing" together, all I can think of is the KSP [wikipedia.org].

    Apple might wan to rethink this.

  • outside of branding AR in poarticurally implies that it is somthing that can be worn while going about theire daly life. and I have a sneaking suspission that this pair of Apple Spaceman Spiff Goggles will come with instructions spasifficly telling the owners that it is a verry bad idea to do so for liability reasons (last thing you are going to want is someone walking and have the battery die as they are crossing an intersection plungeing them into darkness making them have to stop and remove the device.)

  • We don't need news stories saying VR / AR is a failure, simply because people don't want to blow $3500 on a headset which has no content or use case. It will sound much better to hear Apple's Spatial Apps are a failure, and will help not drag VR in general down.

  • "visionOS begins with a lowercase v, even when it's the first word in a sentence." The terms should never be translated or transliterated

    How should it be inserted in RTL writing?

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