Devs aren’t allowed to let Apple’s Vision Pro dev kits out of their sight

Enlarge (credit: Apple/Andrew Cunningham)

Apple is taking several steps to help developers prepare their apps for Apple’s new Vision Pro platform next year, above and beyond the Vision Pro simulator that comes with the Xcode development environment. One of those steps is actual pre-release hardware in the form of the Apple Vision Pro developer kit (DK).

This is pre-release Vision Pro hardware that Apple will loan to selected developers for the express purpose of developing and testing apps. Apple has offered these kinds of kits to some developers before, most notably during the Apple Silicon transition when it loaned out Developer Transition Kits that put the guts of an iPad Pro into a Mac mini-sized enclosure.

But some developers have drawn attention to the terms and conditions (PDF) for the Vision Pro DK, which are notably restrictive and specific. The most specific terms are in section four, under “care and storage of the DK,” which say that the DK is only to be used in a lockable windowless room, that your friends and family aren’t allowed to see it, that it must remain within your direct line of sight at all times, that it must be in its case and locked up when not in use, and that you need to consult with Apple if you’ll be on a long trip or vacation and are leaving the DK behind. The full paragraph: