Cisco Webex comes to Apple’s Vision Pro

Cisco has joined Zoom and Microsoft Teams with the official introduction of its business-grade video conferencing solution for Apple’s recently introduced Vision Pro. The company officially announced the rollout at Cisco Live in Amsterdam, though the app is available now.

Jeetu Patel, Cisco executive vice president and general manager, security and  collaboration, drew an interesting comparison: “Two weeks ago marked the 40th anniversary of the Mac. Consider how the launch of the original Mac not only reinvented how we work with computers, but changed how software was written.

“Now, with the launch of Apple Vision Pro, Apple is on the brink of reinventing personal electronics yet again, marking the next frontier of collaboration with spatial computing.”

Will spatial computing disrupt work?

Patel believes Vision Pro has the potential to disrupt how we work. He sees specific industries in which spatial computing might make sense, pointing to manufacturing, retail, and healthcare in particular.

“From the moment I first met with Apple to talk about the Vision Pro and see it first hand, I was impressed by its potential to disrupt how we work,” Patel said.

What Webex for Apple Vision Pro provides

You get a full Webex experience. That means you can join a meeting, arrange individual participants into video frames across your viewable display, and create shared content windows that scale to life size using Apple’s pinch-and-drag gestures. Like any Vision Pro app, you can make windows bigger, smaller, bring them closer, and send them further away.

Webex also uses Apple’s visionOS Persona feature, so others can see a digital representation of you in Webex while you’re wearing Vision Pro. That means they see you, your face, and your hand movements — and you also get the full complement of Webex tools. Features such as background noise removal, real-time translations, closed captions, live polling and others all work in Webex on Apple Vision Pro.

Cisco today also introduced numerous genAI Assistant features, including automatic meeting and vidcast summaries and automatic translation.

These features were limited to Cisco employees and some selected partners during testing, but have now been made available to all Webex Suite and Contact Center customers.

“Our goal is to make it feel like there is no distance between you and your colleagues, even when you are a world away,” said Javed Khan, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Collaboration.

Webex, Teams, and Zoom

Apple’s teams have clearly been working closely with key collaboration business partners such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom. That they have done so should be seen as nodding confirmation that the company sees the enterprise as a key opportunity for the device.

It’s been just four days since the Vision Pro’s launch and all three key enterprise collaboration services — Cisco, Zoom and Microsoft — have already introduced their own collaboration tools for the device.

“The integration of Zoom on Apple Vision Pro and visionOS extends our platform promise of allowing participants the ultimate meeting experience from anywhere and delivers on our commitment of seamless collaboration and communication,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom.

Just like Cisco, Zoom also offers a version of its widely used collaboration app for the Apple TV, further proof of the versatility of these devices.

Since Apple and Cisco began working together in 2015, Cisco has introduced Webex for iPad alongside CarPlay and AirPlay support on its own collaboration hardware, along with industry-first features for Apple devices, including support for DeskView and Continuity Camera.

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