New Apple Vision Pro developer strap moves data 40x faster than before

On the day of sale, Apple has shared some details about the much faster Apple Vision Pro developer strap, and developers that use it should probably upgrade to the new one.

The Developer Strap for the Apple Vision Pro was a $300 accessory to allow users to connect their headset to a Mac using a USB-C cable. A fortuitous discovery on the Apple developer pages over the weekend lacked data on what exactly was new.

Some of that information is now available. While Apple still maintains that the strap is helpful for accelerating the development of graphics intensive apps and games, the new strap moves data notably faster. And, importantly, the new strap is backwards compatible to the M2 version of the Apple Vision Pro.

On an overview page, Apple says that the new strap still uses USB-C. However, the new strap has a data connection that its up to 20 gigabits per second.

For comparison, the old strap maxed out at 480 megabits per second of data transfer

As late as Monday evening, Apple continued to sell the original Developer Strap to paid members of the Apple Developer Program. Pricing is not yet clear.

How the Apple Vision Pro Developer Strap connects and works

The original Developer Strap was designed to replace the right-hand-side audio assembly on the Apple Vision Pro. The intention was to be a way for developers to attach the headset to their Mac over USB-C.

Doing so allowed developers to transfer data from the Mac to the headset. Given that the pins in the strap and the Apple Vision Pro are effectively a USB-C Thunderbolt connection it also allowed for a HDMI video feed from the Apple Vision Pro viewable in Reality Composer Pro, though over a more secure wired connection instead of relying on Wi-Fi.

It's not clear if the HDMI spec in the strap has changed. The 20 gigabit speed is interesting, but probably has more to do with PCI-E allocation in the device, as Apple does not support USB 3.2 2x2 20 gigabit per second speeds on any of its devices over USB-C.

We'll be testing it out with both the old and new Apple Vision Pro headsets soon.