You can build your content on a Windows PC - sure. But you can't deploy it to an iOS device without a Mac. Which means pretty much everyone thats working directly with the AR content on a device needs a Mac.
The Mac is in a server rack, and functions as a headless peripheral. No human "uses" it - it's a peripheral, like a NAS.
That's like saying you can do iOS development on a PC because Adobe XD runs on a PC. Sure, you can do part of the pipeline on a Windows box - but at the end of the day you're still going to need a Mac.
iOS apps can be written entirely in Unreal and Unity, or indeed in Xojo (RealBasic) from what I've been researching. It's not "part of the pipeline" that can be made on Windows, it's
the entire development process from start to deploying on a device.
The involvement of a Mac in the process is faceless, and unknown by the actual developers, any more than they're aware of the brand of storage in their workstations.
(That's also a pretty gross simplification. ARKit doesn't have a "dumb pipe" mode. Which means the common code between something like ARKit an ARCore is not actually very common. Usually the common code is the rendering code, while the anchoring code is fairly custom because ARKit insists on it's anchoring system.)
The "use" of ARKit to make AR apps
as they are actually made by people making them is literally selecting it from a droplist in the Unity / Unreal IDE. No one makes special Metal code, no one makes special ARKit stuff. Unity and Unreal handle that plumbing.
Unity and Unreal are the platform. iOS and iOS devices are just dumb hardware to run Unity and Unreal apps. That is the truth of AR as it exists on Apple devices.
I don't think it's realistic that any studio doing VR work is going to have a single headset.
The developers are going to be using a multitude of headsets from HTC / Varjo etc. They'll be using the ones that play best with their Windows workstations.
Might there be a lot of ports? Sure. But there's still going to need to be considerable testing and optimization for Apple Silicon.
In a games studio for Apple devices, all the development is done on Windows, and testing only happens on the actual Apple devices once everything runs in the Unreal simulator.
It is far more likely that pattern will carry over, than Game / AR developers will kit up on Apple branded gear for the developers / content producers to use.
And Apple is also probably going to be pushing a considerable amount of content that is specific to their hardware, and there's going to be non-game content that will probably be built specifically using their pipeline tools.
Yup, and it will be built using Windows machines, just like the games that are built specifically for Apple hardware are built on Windows machines.
Because Game engine IDE developers are better at building developer tools for dealing with 3D than Apple is. So no one is going to waste their time using Apple's janky garbage (go listen to developers - Apple's toolchain is a dumpster fire), when the big U's atually know how to do this stuff.
I don't think it's realistic that VR studios are going to have one Apple headset tethered to a Mac mini in a closet somewhere.
They might have an Apple headset connected to whatever mac is necessary to run it as a final testing machine, but no one is kitting out a studio full of Macs and Apple headsets, unless Apple is supplying them the hardware for free.
Again, Game developers making games exclusively for Apple Arcade, games that Apple has approached them to make, games that Apple markets on broadcast TV to promote their Apple-device-only service, are not made with Macs.
Apple's going to be looking at this as an iPhone moment. Meta is kind of floundering. VR isn't really taking off. There is a chance Apple comes in and becomes a big player or the biggest player in the VR market very quickly. And if Apple can pull that off, they'll use that to force Apple hardware and software on everyone because that's what Apple does.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation.
VR is doing very well (outside of Meta, whose problems are specific to Meta, not VR itself) for what it is, and what it will always be. It has deep traction in training, simulation, industrial design, all areas where, guess what, immersive stereoscopically separated 3D is the literal point of the exercise.
Where VR has not done so well, is people trying to find a way to do things that aren't specific to three-dimensional activities, using a VR headset - watching a movie, desktop flatscreen computing etc.
Surprise surprise, VR is like Welding and VR headsets are like welding helmets - exceptionally good for deep skill tasks.
There's no iPhone moment for an Apple headset - it's an AppleTV moment at best.
