Bytes: What’s new in tech

The Vision Pro’s missing apps

Apple’s mixed-reality headset arrives Feb. 2 without some popular apps, said Mark Gurman and Ashley Carman in Bloomberg. Netflix, Spotify, and Google’s YouTube said last week they are not creating apps for the Apple Vision Pro, “steering clear” of the big Apple launch. Despite the snubs, Apple says its new device “will support more than 1 million titles in the headset’s App Store,” including streaming apps from Disney, Amazon, Max, and Peacock. The Vision Pro is Apple’s first bid to create a new product category since the 2015 Apple Watch launch, but the absence of the key media apps is notable, since “Apple has largely marketed the device as a platform for video, games, and other entertainment.”

A 400,000-resident techno-utopia?

The company behind plans for a new utopian city in California has begun pitching voters on them, said Janie Har in the Associated Press. “Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader spearheading the effort,” is seeking 13,000 signatures from Solano County voters to bypass protections that “keep agricultural land from being turned into urban space.” Sramek has received backing from tech billionaires like Reid Hoffman, Lauren Powell Jobs, and Marc Andreessen on the project, which envisions an entirely “walkable California city” with up to 400,000 residents in rowhouses and apartment buildings surrounded by “jobs, schools, bars, restaurants, and grocery stores.” Sramek’s secretive company, California Forever, has been buying up land in the region, which is home mostly to wind farms and cattle ranches, since 2017.

Amazon’s iRobot plans blocked by EU

Amazon’s home robot ambitions are not winning EU approval, said Kim Mackrael and Dana Mattioli in The Wall Street Journal.

The European Commission’s competition watchdog indicated last week that it intends to block Amazon’s proposed $1.7 billion purchase of iRobot over concerns that the deal “could restrict competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners.” Amazon has come under global antitrust scrutiny over its market power, although the iRobot acquisition was cleared by U.K. competition regulators in June. The European Commission has until Feb. 14 to make a final decision, which requires approval from the body’s 27 top political leaders. But “historically, that process is unlikely to overrule a recommendation from the bloc’s competition commissioner.”