I don't think so. For one thing, they actually want you to develop your Vision OS app while using the Vision Pro. They had a session at WWDC where they highlighted that you can open a floating 4K resolution Xcode window inside the spatial environment, and have your app floating next to it.

(This does require a Mac to be also present, though.)

Secondly, none of these devices have anywhere close to enough computing power to make doing builds on them directly feasible — at least not for most coding work, including the work I do.

So I want to develop using the model popularized by tools like VS Code's remote development extensions or GitHub Codespaces. I want the headset to render all the editors and other windows locally. I want the device to connect to my mechanical keyboard and mouse, so that I can do all my normal coding stuff. But the machine where the code actually is, where the build is actually done, and where the local dev server or similar runs -- all remote.

This is actually the workflow I now prefer even on desktops and laptops, now that the tooling is so good. But for a spatial computing headset device, this will have to be the main model.

And while I also am not at all a fan of Apple's limiting what we can do on our devices the way they do, putting that aside you can already do this workflow in iPad. You can use CodeSpaces in the browser, but there is a cool native app called Blink[1] that lets you use your own hardware as the build machine.

I use a large and high-spec Linux workstation with 4 large monitors in my day-to-day work. But with VS Code remote, when I have to travel with my laptop, I just connect to the Linux workstation (via Tailscale in my case, but there are various options) and use the code editor locally on the laptop, but the CLI, build, etc is happening on the remote machine.

On a laptop, this works great. It is better than the regular workflow of doing it all on the laptop, because the tooling (if you use VS Code, anyway, but others are also working on this) is so good and the remote build machine is so much more powerful than a laptop. It also lets you just switch to a new device whenever you want without worrying about having to commit your changes first. So I can go to the office or just a different room of my house and just sit down at whatever computer is available and pick up where I left off.

But I've also done this using both the Quest Pro and iPad, just to check in with the state of the art on those devices. Both of them can do it. The Quest sucks in lots of ways (clunky OS, low-quality passthrough of the real environment, glitches). The iPad actually works fine, except teven the largest iPad Pro is a laughably tiny monitor to work on. (YMMV tho... if you are one of those "I love small screen!" people then this workflow works fine, and an iPad works as well as a laptop.)

For me, Quest Pro and iPad aren't good enough. But I want to do this workflow on a headset device, and Vision Pro looks promising.

Anyway, my point here is that even if Apple does make weird restrictions about being able to use dev tools locally on the device, that won't prevent it from doing the workflow I am interested in.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-build-code/id15948...