In addition to Apple’s official accessories for the Vision Pro – including replacement light seals, battery packs, straps and a $200 travel bag – the company also sells a “secret accessory”: the so-called developer strap, or dev strap for short. This retrofits a central function: the ability to connect the Vision Pro directly to a computer via USB-C. Computer glasses lack this option by default. Although the included battery pack can be charged with power via USB-C, data does not flow through it.
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“Over-designed eject tool”
The Dev Strap is an exclusive affair. It is currently only sold to developers based in the United States of America – and apparently only to those who have a paid membership (starting at $100 per year) in the Apple Developer Program. The price of the hardware is $300. The package includes how 9to5Mac in a hands-on reports, the actual Dev Strap, a special removal tool for the existing strap (“over-designed eject tool”, according to 9to5Mac) and documentation.
To use the Dev Strap, the left audio strap of the Vision Pro is first dismantled using the tool mentioned. Then this is inserted. The connection to the integrated USB-C dongle looks like the one to the battery, but is firmly connected. This creates a kind of symmetry, with the user then having two cables hanging down from their head. There is a speaker in the Dev Strap, so you can use the headset as normal.
Features that only the Dev Strap has
The Dev Strap – which Apple will hopefully one day sell to end customers at a lower price – offers several new functions that the regular Vision Pro lacks. The connection to the Mac is established via a USB-C cable (data capable). According to Apple, this should enable you to develop “graphics-intensive apps and games” more quickly. It turns out that a 100 Mbps Ethernet connection (full duplex, via USB 2.0) is established via USB. There is no power supply.
The strip makes it possible to make the Mac Virtual Display function, with which you can use the Vision Pro as a computer screen, more stable. There are no lags or image disturbances that are common in some heavily used WLANs. Finally, the Vision Pro with the Dev Strap also appears in the Apple configurator app as a fully-fledged device – and not just limited as via WLAN. If you boot the headset with the left button pressed and the USB-C cable connected to the Mac, it goes into recovery mode. From this you can then perform a reset. This is important if a visionOS beta goes crazy. Without a developer strap you are completely lost here, not even a reset is possible if the PIN is entered incorrectly (although this is set to change with visionOS 1.1).
(bsc)