I’ve completed my Apple Vision Pro demo in what felt like record time—seventeen minutes, when everything I’ve heard referenced half an hour—and I can firmly place myself in the camp of people who simultaneously very interested in a Meta Quest 3 right now, and excited about the next several versions of Vision Pro.
Hubris Confirmed
All my time listening to accounts of these demos and watching YouTube reviews paid off. Navigating the demo felt straightforward: I understood eye-tracking immediately, had very little trouble using the pinch-select gesture with my hand comfortably resting on the table, and I didn’t overextend my arms while scrolling or swiping. This let me focus on how everything felt and looked.
Interacting within the Vision Pro was intuitive. While I take some issue with overly-subtle illumination of app icons on the home screen, all other eye targets had good contrast balance. While I’m wary of disappearing buttons, I think Apple made the right choice of mostly hiding the small elements used to move and resize windows. Scanning across an app, like the selection screen of Apple TV, felt pretty good. It’s a difficult issue to solve: An interface that jitters and bounces about as you look at it would be distracting. But when someone is ready to select an item, they should be confident the system will follow their intent. This is a change from computers and phones—looking at the screen does nothing, so you must physically manipulate something (a cursor, or the screen itself) to select anything. Vision Pro’s interface is thus more similar to a video game console or the Apple TV hardware, where you have to discretely move from item to item.
They’ve struck a good balance given all this, and the implementation is mostly elegant. I couldn’t play around on my own to determine what happens when you’re, say, writing a document and want to access the cursor. But from what I saw, this is another uncannily natural input method from Apple, and creates a strong foundation for future iterations of the device.1Apple’s trackpads are better than any others, and their scrolling acceleration on mobile devices continues to be smoother and somehow more “real” feeling than what I’ve felt on Android.
Keep the Content Coming
I told my demo guide how impressed I was by the spatial video shot on an iPhone. To my eyes, it looked no worse than the version shot on Vision Pro. This confirmed what I’ve heard from tech reviewers and have begun implementing myself: If you can, it’s worth taking short spatial videos on your iPhone right now in preparation for the day you get a Vision Pro device. Even if Vision Pro becomes something people wear out and about over the next year or two, I find it hard to see an immediate future where it is the main capture device of anything but a planned scene. For a random fun moment with friends or kids or pets, pull out your phone and get a video. Even more simply, start taking panoramas. While they’re barely of interest on any other screen, I found them quite stunning on a Vision Pro.
While it’s great to view your own life in new ways, there is already amazing content available for VR devices. 3D movies and immersive video exist on other platforms, and I’m ready to revisit them after my demo. The current lineup of Quest devices have sufficient video quality to enjoy these experiences at a fraction of the cost. I don’t currently know what all is available through them—presumably anything Apple creates is locked to their device—so the value proposition of a Quest is contingent on their content library. However, I didn’t even mind the quality on the Quest 2, and the Quest 3 is much-improved. I would spend $500 on that for entertainment purposes because it’s so engaging. I don’t think the Vision Pro sets itself apart enough here, but in the future Apple will use its connections in the sports world to create amazing experiences for fans, and all that spatial video you’ve been shooting can finally be watched.
This dynamic of what the Vision Pro represents, compared to the financial reality of what can be created today, is the through-line of this product launch.
The Future is Promising…
I dialed in the Mt. Hood environment at the behest of my demo guide, and it was gorgeous. While the effect was muted in a busy Apple store, I could still appreciate the quality of the scene and how much it felt like you were there. The world disappeared, and I was left with the three apps they’d had me open up to this point set against a backdrop of a lake, a peak off in the distance, and lush pine trees and grass behind me.
The benefits of this new device were clear: text was stupidly sharp in Safari, and I can imagine reading and writing as easily as I do on my computer or phone. Working in windows of arbitrary sizes, creating a canvas of information and action, is a cool idea. I’d still need a keyboard and mouse2Joke’s on me, right now only trackpads work. to do anything, but I would totally sit at a kitchen counter and get a couple hours of work done in a headset while sitting in a cozy atmosphere. Outside of work hours though, I could idly scroll in a web browser and poke around without needing accessories. This would make it an expensive leisure device. Were I a famous writer (or made more money), I would purchase it to sit in a virtual environment with a huge text editor open. That would be blissful. NaNoWriMo would be amazing.
But then you leave the environment and you’re back in the real world. Video passthrough is good enough that I can see myself sitting on the couch, messing around in my augmented world as if I were on my phone, while naturally holding a conversation with the person next to me and think nothing of it. Except they’d be watching me with these goggles on. You’d need to make sure that person also understood how passthrough looks so they can trust what you’re seeing when you “look” at them, and believe it’s as legitimate as someone looking up from their phone to pay attention to you. Eyesight, from what I’ve seen, is not a convincing effect and doesn’t fully resolve the experience for the person outside the Vision Pro. It’s implicative of attention, but doesn’t quite get the job done.
Given how good the Vision Pro is at keeping windows “in place” in the world around you, I’m even more bullish on creating a way to share space with others. Sharing windows and objects in a collaborative environment is the only way this device makes sense in a work context for corporations.3Let’s ignore the dystopian future where a device is made by another company that allows employers to track their employees’ eyes to assess productivity; they can also vastly reduce the required space for desks because all someone needs is a small table that contains a keyboard and trackpad. Opening up an augmented world to others around you can create novel experiences that streamline working on digital items when you’re in the same physical space. Otherwise we’ll be stuck where we are now: a dozen people in a big meeting room, each with their own laptops open, looking at a Google Doc, trying to find the pink cursor of a coworker, except with Vision Pro they could secretly be surrounded by a beach.
…But the Present is Now
On the heels of Mark Zuckerberg “reviewing” the Vision Pro (and naturally concluding that it’s not as good as the Meta Quest line), here’s how I view the situation: Apple Vision Pro is a limited, first-version product that is superb, exciting, and only for people who have money to throw around and are invigorated by technology. I’m excited to dip my toes back into the world of AR/VR because of this product launch, but it won’t be through this device. Zuck has the device for the world of today.
With that said, Apple has the best approach to making headsets (or whatever form-factor they take on) a mainstream product. I don’t think the world is trending toward a perpetually online “metaverse” full of avatars. Focusing on existing in the real world while digitally interacting within it is a big idea that could become something amazing. For now though, the state-of-the-art is strapping in, isolating yourself, and watching a cool video or playing a fun game. What Apple has done is incredible and I believe they’ll succeed, but for now I’m treading water until it’s clear the value proposition is there for my lifestyle.
- 1Apple’s trackpads are better than any others, and their scrolling acceleration on mobile devices continues to be smoother and somehow more “real” feeling than what I’ve felt on Android.
- 2Joke’s on me, right now only trackpads work.
- 3Let’s ignore the dystopian future where a device is made by another company that allows employers to track their employees’ eyes to assess productivity; they can also vastly reduce the required space for desks because all someone needs is a small table that contains a keyboard and trackpad.