When reading about headset experiences, I'd de-weigh any insights that are within 3 months of the first headset purchase. The first few dozen sessions are novel, you get a kick (and social media views) about sharing how completely your life has changed to fit the headset.
More often than not, it's collecting dust on the shelf within a few months. Sort of like an expensive blender you were so excited to get, you imagined making super fruit smoothies every morning. Let's see how AVP fares in this regard.
I love this comment, I think you're completely right.
What I love most about this comment is how it caused me to reflect on what I use daily and get some amount of joy from.
When it comes to Apple products in particular I use an Apple Studio display at home, I use it for 10hours per day, every day, and honestly I have no complaints, it's probably one of the best bits of technology I use daily.
However, it's completely unsexy and has (at least on paper) extremely stiff competition. Not only that it was maligned by the tech media upon release.
Yet, it just subtlely benefits my life because the speakers are excellent, the webcam is servicable (the novelty of the fact it tracks you never truly wears off) and the size/pixel density is great.
It's weird that I'm waxing poetic like this about such a boring device, but that's kinda my point, your comment made me reflect about all the little tech around me that I use every day that just sort of shifted into the background. Quietly doing its job excellently.
Interesting. I have a Studio Display and it just feels like a huge compromise.
There are only two 5K displays on the market that can render macOS at Retina resolution on a 27" panel: this one and the LG Ultrafine, which isn't that much cheaper. My last monitor was a 27" LG QD-OLED 144Hz 4K display. I LOVED that display, but text wasn't sharp because of the Retina resolution problem.
I also have a semi-professional webcam setup and external speakers, so those being built-in does nothing for me.
I just want macOS to support variable scaling like Windows has for, what, 15 years at least?
Every few years I buy Dell QHD displays 24’’ second hands on local ads websites, I have 4 of them (not all installed at the same place), for an average of ~150€ per display. They are definitely not sexy but work perfectly as monitors and hubs.
I feel the same way about the utility of my AirPods. It is simple, boring, works every time I need it to, without any fuss or connection issues or pesky cables.
Although, I have a strict policy of not sharing my AirPods, or let it connect to anything other than my iPhone to make sure I don’t get into the mess of “figure out which device it auto connects to” etc.
Yeah, I agree. I rolled my eyes when I bought the Studio Display because of the price (I got the VESA option so I also had to factor in $200 for an Ergotron LX just so I could use it the way I’d want) and I’m annoyed by its lack of power button, its garbage web camera, and the really that it has no better picture quality than the v2 LG UltraFine 5K it was replacing, despite costing $300 more, but if it broke tomorrow I’d buy another one without a second thought (also the VESA option — also just say no to the Nano Texture option). In fact, I might even get a second one this year because I have 3 Macs (2 M-series laptops and a 2020 5K iMac) and it would be nice to have one dedicated to the laptops instead of having to swap the cable for the TB4 dock.
Until/unless Apple does fractional scaling in a way that doesn’t really need pixel doubling to work, I will insist on a 5K display for a 27” monitor and the ASD really is the best game in town.
I bought an AVP on day one to be used -exclusively- as a monitor extender for coding.
It's untenable.
The only way I could avoid significant neck/back pain from the weight was to sit in a reclining chair. That wouldn't be a bad coding setup, but my eye strain was pretty significant, too.
I ended up returning mine.
This is a necessary 1.0 to build out the app ecosystem, etc. but it's absolutely not ready for full-time use.
I almost returned mine for that exact reason until I used it in bed before going to sleep. I have never fallen asleep faster. I know it sounds really strange that a computer strapped to my face helps me sleep but I guess something about the whole immersive environment really helps. I also don’t feel the pressure on my head when I’m lying down.
The irony here is that the unusual weight of the headset was completely avoidable. The headset has a heavy aluminium frame, which is a terrible idea that serves no practical purpose except of an aesthetic one. No other headset does this. For comparison, the Quest 3 is significantly lighter despite including a battery.
Sounds like a fit issue. I code all day. Recliner, couch, standing. Mac link at 5k emulation. Apple assigned me 21w, but I found it unusable. 36w put weight on outer cheekbones and was finally wearable. Removing the light seal and using some pads as spacers is how I use it now. Larger FOV. A bit weight and less cantilever
> More often than not, it's collecting dust on the shelf within a few months.
I can't speak for the Apple Vision Pro, I'd love to try one, to be honest. But I can agree with your comment.
Such has been my experience with the two headsets I own - the Meta Quest 2, which I think is really great and serves many purposes, and the PSVR 2 headset, which is phenomenal for gaming, but pretty much useless for anything else.
Both headsets have had a short-lived "wow" factor to them, without a doubt, but sadly, the novelty tends to wear off within weeks. I haven't used my Quest 2 since early 2023 (I think) and the PSVR 2's last use was for a game called Pavlov, which is simply mind-blowing, despite which, I think the hassle of headsets is problematic. For real gaming I go back to couch gaming with the Xbox or PS5, and for computer things I use computers.
Funny thing is, I keep meaning to do more with the PSVR 2 but now it's actually so dusty that it puts me off, it needs a full cleaning at this stage :).
For me, VR comes down to content. Because the market is too small, there is none. There's few high end titles. HL:Alyx, Horizon: Call of the Mountain? Sometimes you get a port but then it wasn't originally designed for VR and it usually shows.
There's zero on the Quest 2/3 because it's a mobile device and it's not up to it and at least in my experience the link is not up to it either.
I'm not saying there are not some good experiences there. Several rhythm games are fun, a couple of games designed for low-power mobile devices. But the fully immersive high quality graphics games are so few an far between. If there were more I'd keep playing.
It shouldn't be surprising that an AR workstation isn't as good as the real thing. If you're at home or at work, the AVP is going to sit on the shelf while you sit at your workstation. While an AR set can, in theory, surround you with code, you can only really focus on one window at a time. Old-fashioned monitors have had a long time to get good at providing that experience.
Still, it would be pretty darned cool to be able to take something even half as good on the road in a package that will easily fit in a backpack!
I am entirely done with Apple and will not be buying any more of their products, but I look forward to the competition that AVP will foster.
> I am entirely done with Apple and will not be buying any more of their products, but I look forward to the competition that AVP will foster.
What is your reason? I am genuinely curious. I used to think that using open devices (Linux, GrapheneOS) gives me the convenience of being able to do everything I want. But over time I came to realize that Apple optimizes their devices for one happy path they envision, and if you don’t stray off that happy path (e.g. on iPhone you cannot sideload, can’t have background jobs), the convenience can be even greater than the possibilities an open design offers (native terminal, root access in Android). It is a local maxima. Thus I own an iPhone. On the computer side I own a PC, but that’s because Linux isn’t yet fully supported on Macs. What is your reasoning?
> Old-fashioned monitors have had a long time to get good at providing that experience.
That's part of the problem framing the AVP as a system for 2D floating screens. 2D screens are good at what they do. 360 degree 3D with Six Degrees of Freedom is a completely different surface area and we are still at the Horseless Carriage stage of development of that affordance space. There are a few experiments in what's possible [1] but, for the most part, if all you throw at these devices is a floating screen then the novelty wears off and we have the conversations we are having in this thread instead of thinking about what more is possible.
i took a different opinion after the article — i was of the same opinion before it but the article gave me some ideas i’d actually like.
i’m very much so a bit easily distractable and i do tend to wander and move locations while i work at home. i actually has thought the vision pro was tethered completely and 100% dependent on another apple
device but i guess not entirely? that would be appealing for me to have very light work space that moves
with me for similarly light work (chats, emails, etc)
looks a bit too goofy for me for public use but i’m just shy) but the article did help me see a vision for using the vision pro. better than apples ads
The way I see it, by the time AVP is available in Europe, there will probably be sufficient data from US users to give me an idea as to if it’s worthwhile.
So far hearing vastly mixed reviews about its “balance” on the users head - when I wear night vision goggles or similar devices I have to use a counter mass at the back of the helmet to make it comfortable. It seems the AVP doesn’t have such a balancing weight?
I was thinking that it might be possible to mount the battery to the back of the headset, like you see on various other headsets, which might counterbalance it. But because so many keep talking about how heavy the headset already is, I think this might introduce new issues, especially if you turn your head quickly.
Yeah, I really like the Macbook and the iPhone, but basically everything else apple produces is pretty shit these days, even the airpods are just alright (I mean, the audio quality, design, and form factor are amazing, but they are super buggy and there are better wireless earbuds for the price).
It would be a great shame if a secure, well designed, easy to use computer loaded with a custom-built, well supported unix-like distro gets trashed because the company that makes it is always trying to "innovate." I don't know if there's much left to innovate in the computer world, there is only so much you can do with ones and zeros. It would be better if they just focused on what works, reliable and secure consumer electronics, instead of trying to be what they were under Steve Jobs.
Jobs is dead, he will never come back, and Apple will never be Apple under Jobs again. They should just try to be like the IBM of their space...just there, doing what they do best. An institution, a monolith, but not a "disruptor," as if there are any of those left.
>. It would be better if they just focused on what works, reliable and secure consumer electronics, instead of trying to be what they were under Steve Jobs.
Man, the amount of history rewriting that happens in tech world is actually insane.
Louis Rossman literally made his career out of showcasing how shit apple laptops have been through the years. The evidence is all there. I dunno if people are just willfully ignorant or are actually just lying.
Why does anyone like wireless headphones? 3 different pieces to track, have to constantly be on charge, and pricey at that. I ended up finally buying some iems
> collecting dust on the shelf within a few months
Not even that, apparently many customers are already returning them[1]. Most of the hype, as usual, is tech reviewers who want to stay relevant.
Early adopters will naturally chase any and every opportunity to make use of them, but in the coming months as novelty wears off, more issues arise, you get the (The ecosystem is just not ready yet)™ and most will be listed on the secondhand market.
This has been my reply to most people asking me if I’m going to buy a Vision Pro. It seems like after a week or two I’m going to want to do something, and a TV, laptop, or phone is good enough… I won’t want to go through the ceremony of putting on the headset and entering that environment to do some basic stuff, especially not if there is a remote chance I’ll be multitasking with stuff in the real world.
That said, I tried one on at the Apple Store the other day and the immersive stuff was really cool and I’d like to see more of it. But I think it makes sense to wait for the amount of content to increase and the price to come down.
To be honest, I'm kind of at that point. At first I was using it every day because it was new and I was curious, then I was using it every day because I wanted to give it a good try, then I was still using it but increasingly thinking "can I find any way in which this is better than just using a computer/iPad?". As of this morning, I'm writing this comment on my laptop, because going into the other room and strapping on googles feels like a chore, not a desirable activity.
I don't regret the purchase; I did not expect it to change my life, and I've actually had my skepticism about spatial computing turned around. I hope there is a future where we can do the same things in a less physically cumbersome way.
With ADHD, it doesn't even take 3 months. Give me one day and I'll never touch something again. Hell, some of the things I buy, I don't even use a first time, because having stuff doesn't actually help with motivation
It’s also a first generation device, often a good idea to just wait a bit, if it is such a revolutionary tool you won’t miss much by skipping the first version (other than feeling cool that you were in the first users).
FWIW I still use my blender almost every day. It's a great start of the day, so I can eat like a sinner the rest for the day. Didn't lose a gram of weight but I don't feel guilty about it anymore!
There will be an inflection point with devices like Vision Pro, where you'd rather do things you do right now with a laptop, tablet or TV in the Vision Pro instead of with those other devices. Then the other devices will be the ones gathering dust.
The hard part is being able to know when that inflection point comes. But I think there's a very good chance that 10 years from now, it's already behind us.
There might be an inflection point like what you describe. It's also entirely possible that this is an evolutionary dead end like the voice interfaces that were the Next Big Thing a few years ago.
We've grown so accustomed to viewing technology as a steady progression of improvements that it seems natural that the thing that Apple is pushing today will be universal in 10 years, but there's no guarantee of that, and there are reasons to be skeptical that we'll look back at this as the next big leap.
For myself, I'm keeping my eye out for technology that is less intrusive into the rest of my life, not more immersive.
There will be an inflection point where you’ll want all of your media to be 3D. Things you watch today in 2D you’ll want in 3D and then your old 2D television will seem like a relic of the past. The entire industry is onboard, the shift is inevitable.
I think we're socially primed for it right now - at-least here in the US. Unlike other cultures where you're living with a large family or extended family or your parents, etc, life in the US is getting to be more and more solitary (IRL, people are still forming social connections online) for young people. That makes it very easy to adopt this type of tech. In other cultures wearing it around the house will just make you look like a weirdo.
Here's my prediction for this: you need to have input with the same fidelity and ease of use as a mouse and keyboard. The mouse input analogy is probably pretty close with eye tracking, but text input? I can't even imagine what it will look like to make that work as nicely as real touch typing.
I'd generally agree, but it definitely depends on how the device is being used.
My VR headsets don't see much usage outside of simracing which I'd consider a hobby more than just gaming. So my point is that, "working" might present that same routine which demos/gaming/facehugger yt with low return on novelty.
You're pointing to a task that is basically the platonic ideal of a work task that would benefit from VR and then saying that programmers are the ones who are unusual?
The vast majority of normal people's compute tasks for work could be done on an iPad with a keyboard. The vast majority of their compute tasks for play just require a smartphone. 3D modeling is already a huge exception to the norm in that it needs serious compute power and in that people already often use specialized equipment for it, and to top it off it's a task that is actually hampered by using a 2D projection on a flat screen.
Most tasks are more like coding than they are like 3D modeling.
Also, de-weigh anything Apple branded significantly.
You can easily code on Quest 3 if you really wanted to do AR/VR, and could do it on Quest Pro as well a year ago. While its true that Vision does offer better resolution, lets not pretend that people who are trying the Vision Pro have significant experience with AR/VR headsets, chasing the ability to work anywhere. Its brand fanboyishness at its core: "Apple made therefore its good and usefull".
I tried to use the Vision Pro for work, and I'm not sure if it was just my eyes or what, but looking at code inside of that thing was just...exhausting. When I took it off, I looked at my regular monitors with a newfound love.
I'd love for this thing to reach it's full potential as this 'work from a mountaintop, but really your garage' device, but I feel like until the resolution gets to the same as existing monitors (no small task, I know) it's just...not as good for the vast majority of use cases.
I returned mine today after attempting to use it for work for a few hours at a time over the last week. I felt the same eye strain with my Mac as a mirrored display.
Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously.
After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.
> Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously.
This is going to be another of their socially awkward gimmicks like Memojis they will double down until they inevitably fail.
I really feel like Apple actually just doesn’t feel it and every time they’re pushing their weird geeky ideas onto their users they loose a bit of coolness factor. And if kids decide Apple got too cringe, while someone else manages to use that to spin their momentum (think e.g. Nokia respawning riding the 90s sentiment wave), they may actually start to seriously struggle.
> After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.
Curious if you've ever gotten your vision tested?
I don't need glasses in everyday life, but I did go to an optometrist and got a pair anyways after I got annoyed one night that a friend could read a faraway sign and I couldn't quite. They make things a little bit sharper but not that it ever makes a difference for anything I actually need.
But then I discovered that if I wear them, zero eye strain in VR. Without them my eyes hurt after 20 minutes. With them, I can use VR for hours, zero problem.
No idea why. And I can't seem to find much information on it, but I asked my optometrist and they said it's a whole thing -- people who wear glasses sometimes not to see better, but to reduce eye strain and headaches.
Could be the motion blur. Vision Pro is in this really weird cross section of insanely good visuals but really bad motion blur. Generally a little motion blur is OK, but the better your visuals get, the worse and more apparent motion blur can be.
Personally I found AVP to be most draining if I'm moving my head around a lot and experiencing this motion blur. If I'm just looking at the screen in front of me, I get fatigued less
I’m not extremely productive, but I have 2 use-cases I’m excited about.
1. Having more screen real estate in my small home office. I often dive into spaghetti code, and seeing more of it helps me maintain context.
2. Working in my RV. I can’t take my extra screens with me (it’s a multi-use family RV, so I’m not mounting anything. Plus, there isn’t room.), and I’m so, so excited about having more screen real estate in there. We lived/worked in it for 3 months last summer, and it was really nice coming home to more screens at the end of the trip.
Same. I returned it the other night because I finally just gave up on trying to make it comfortable. My body was just rejecting it. I could make it 20-30 minutes.
It's a bunch of factors. Heavy, lots of pressure on a few specific points, the dangling cable to a slippery battery which I had to leave plugged in all day, the grainy passthrough... But most of all it's just too heavy. And connection would sometimes get janky between Mac and Vision Pro.
I've got high hopes for generation 2 and 3 but it needs time to cook.
When I don't wear contacts for a while(just normal glasses), wearing them throughout the day also makes me a bit "tired". Even though the "resolution" is basically the same. But after wearing them consecutively for a few days, it becomes like the same as glasses.
I wonder if there's something similar here going on. Since we rely so heavily on vision for everything(Especially balance). Any difference to our normal perception will cause "exhaustion" of sorts. But maybe wearing it continuously for days can cause our body to adapt to it?(Which, obviously is impossible for AVPs)
That might have to do with the eye "enlarging" a little to make space for the lenses, or maybe more likely with you learning to "lubricate" the lenses with tearing
(pure conjecture, I last used lenses fifteen twenty years ago)
I haven't tried them, but I imagine that despite the high resolution, text that is badly aligned (and probably constantly imperceptibly wobbling) strains the eyes.
The software should probably force text to be aligned on whole real pixels, even if that detracts a little from the realism.
And the best would probably be to keep virtual screens completely fixed until you move by a certain, largish degree (as an option).
Then again, maybe this has nothing to do with the straining.
I've watched a few reviews where the claim is "multiple 4k monitors", and even on Apple's site it says "More pixels than a 4K TV. For each eye.". But any virtual monitor is going to be scaled down, and with "spatial computing" being the desired interaction, it's not going to be projected at a fixed point on the embedded screens. Sure, when you have a 4k monitor across the room, it's smaller because it's further away, but the full resolution is there (reality is much higher fidelity than "retina display" ever was and even the Vision Pro is). When a virtual display is projected into a space further away, it's going to take up fewer pixels and be down-sampled. It's kind of annoying that the term "4k" is being used to refer to "physical space the display takes up" or "size reported to the operating system" rather than the physical pixel density.
While the resolution is high, the PPD is very low (pixels per degree of vision). It's lower density than a classic monitor, and nowhere close to a modern high density 4k or retina display.
Also your eyes can't really focus the same, anything within about 12 ft causes you to struggle to focus leading to eye strain. This is an unfortunate reality of the lenses
That's an interesting point. You potentially also have alignment issues with the window being placed spatially, i.e., rendering text that is not perpendicular to the plane of the screens. When moving my head in the AVP I'm moving the screens, unlike when I move my head to look at a different part of a monitor.
Text in natively rendered apps is perspective corrected before rendering and incredibly sharp as a result. It’s been mentioned in a few interviews in passing.
Text in streamed displays from a Mac may suffer from pixel misalignment.
I couldn’t stand the constant glare when looking at code. Everything just felt hazy combined with the awful pass through was a downgrade. Was more productive at first since I could block the world out. Didn’t last.
VR headsets’ resolution are still a couple orders of magnitude away from being indecipherable from normal vision, and that doesn’t even include motion.
Eye stain has been a huge issue for me with earlier VR goggles.
Some people seem to be suggesting the higher quality of the Vision Pro overcomes this, but I'm starting to really wonder. Would even more resolution actually solve it? Or maybe there's really no way around the discomfort for some of us.
When you move your head around in Vision Pro, do the windows stay where you put them, or do they follow your head? If they stay where put, is this perfect, or do they jig a little bit?
Not you you responded to but I tried both. I mean I never seriously thought the passthrough would be good enough, and it wasn't, but it was just barely legible and useful when I was trying to pair my AVP to my MBP. But I really tried to like MVD and I just couldn't do it. It wasn't clear enough and felt like an added "tax" on my mind, also I felt very limited compared to when using my external monitors.
Is the virtual display feature as it's presented now likely to be a stopgap or fallback? A bit like emulation or Rosetta apps when Apple silicon was new, or running iPhone apps on an iPad. Those were things that seemed core when each was first introduced and then quickly disappeared for most people in most cases.
I wonder if it could largely be replaced by native AVP apps or a better way for them to send out data from the Mac to the headset once there is broader software support?
Many people work on remote desktop all day long, and I spend my fair share of time in SSH sessions as well. It's not like it improves the experience compared to working locally, but for me it works fine so long as you're within a few hundred kilometers without much jitter. On the VR, the screen should move as you move your head because that position isn't what's being passed through, so that can't be the difference either. I don't understand (without having a device myself) how/whether this is worse than normal video streaming over LAN?
“Active noise cancellation for your eyes” is a great way to put. I also have found myself using the mount hood environment set to daytime as the setting for macOS + visionOS multi-window set up.
I took it off yesterday before some friends came over for dinner and I was kind of shocked that it had gotten dark outside because my mind felt like it was still day time since the sun was out in mount hood. I had actually been sitting on my office in darkness for a least an hour.
This is my goal and hope, but I'll temper OP's points with how things stand today.
Background: I got my AVP on Monday 5th (having gotten up before dawn to place my order when it first became available). I am a programmer with a multi-screen setup to maximize my usable workspace, which consists of editor, terminal, and browser windows. My hope is for the AVP to replace a set of fixed screens, and have in effect infinite screen space.
The AVP has worse Angular Resolution than a monitor, at average 34 Pixels-Per-Degree (PPD) vs a monitor's 64 PPD (more details in iFixit's writeup [1]).
This is an inevitable consequence of placing a screen so close to your eyes. The AVP's exceptional screen technology mitigates this (and for me completely eliminates the "screen door" effect that plagued earlier VR sets), but it can't beat Physics.
So for one thing, you cannot have the legible text density of, say, 2 27" monitors an arm's length away. In other words, the equivalent amount of text will take more space in your vision on the AVP.
This is understandable. But where the AVP really has a problem, but I really hope they improve, is window management.
Someone quipped that, from an app/window management perspective, the AVP is like sticking an iPad on your face, and I agree.
As someone who's used to moving and resizing windows around with Tiling window managers on Linux and SizeUp or Moom on macOS, the window management of the AVP is really awkward. Say you put your editor large front-and-center, but now want to switch to a terminal, or resize the editor to put a reference on the side? The hand control may feel magical, but you're going to be doing a lot of it to move and resize your windows.
But these are software UX problems, and I'm gambling on Apple fixing them over time.
its been 14 years on the iPad and even longer on MacOS and neither of them have good window management, I really don't think Apple will come up with a good solution on the vision pro
MacOS has had features like expose and Mission Control for many years. Even something like that would be a big step forward for window management in visionOS.
I wonder if using something like stage manager on Vision Pro would cause a lot of people to get motion sickness… I can imagine large windows flying around in virtual space three or 4 feet from you is going to cause a lot of disorientation for many people.
OPfftopic: the text preview bar following your wireless mac keyboard around is the standout AR feature for me. If that sounds unimpressive, I agree; I have yet to experience truly impressive AR on the AVP. But it's still early, so I'm hopeful.
I participated in a couple Vision Pro demos at Apple HQ prior to launch day. One with a security focus, one with a health applications focus. The security profile, btw, is super boring: on the network, it looks like an iPad.
Health applications: pretty cool for education, maybe other things, eventually.
What I think would be compelling, for me, is the ability to use it on travel. To be on a plane and not have to worry about breaking a laptop screen when the person in front of me tips their seat back, not have to worry about someone shoulder surfing me. In yet another boring hotel room? Let's escape!
Now, the problem is that, in many meetings, a laptop is barely acceptable as it is (in some cases, not at all acceptable). So, I still have to bring a laptop. So, my backback is now ... heavier? I'm already carrying multiple devices required by various security policies.
Is this juice worth the squeeze? I can't bring myself to spend my own money on this. And I helped develop an AR device. I'd be happy to use it if the company bought it. But you're in for almost $5k after applecare, accessories, etc.
It's summer here in New Zealand, and I have been using my AVP to code outside in the sunshine. There's no monitor glare and I'm not stuck inside. It's great.
Running late, took a webex call from the back of my minivan on my MacBook Pro. Except I had enough screen real estate with the virtual monitor to do work during the boring parts. The best part was going full immersion and hearing the rain falling on a high mountain lake in between people speaking.
I also usually wake up overnight and want to work, but can’t because my office is located in the master bedroom. Now I can sit on my couch and not have to hunch over.
Finally, I took my dog to the dog park and worked with no screen glare and big virtual display
Of course the irony is that being "outside" is actually watching a live video recording of it from outer cameras on a screen in front of your face.
I'm not necessarily criticizing that - more thinking that we're likely approaching a fidelity threshold where you no longer care it's a screen (I still don't think we're quite there yet and suspect this is just one gen before the device that will survive the few months in VR great filter).
At first I thought it would be weird, but after a few minutes it all felt very natural and a deep work focus was achieved without me really realising it. I tried to grasp some of the awe I experienced in this blog post.
How is the resolution? I never tried a Vision Pro yet, but that was my main gripe with my Rift. Indeed, IME, the ‶real world″ size of the windows is nothing, it's their angular resolution that is a make or break.
It ranges from okay to not that bad. It’s not as good as the “retina” screens in Apple’s other products.
I can definitely see pixels on the device if I’m wearing contacts unlike what most of the early reviewers claimed.
But it’s not so bad as to be unusable and you don’t really notice them in most contexts - the main place I notice pixels is using it as a screen for macOS. VisionOS apps are rendered very large by default so the resolution deficiencies aren’t as apparent.
Overall it is very impressive but there’s also much room for improvement in resolution.
It's better than anything else I've tried by a long shot, which admittedly is only the Quest 2, but still not good enough to work in all day. It wasn't the weight/comfort for me, just it was too blurry. I fully expect to be using one eventually as an external monitor replacement but it's got a little ways to go. Probably needs another generation or 2 of screen/camera improvements. It's _good_ but not worth keeping unless you already use mostly iPad apps for work.
I love high dpi displays as I like text (and other details) to be crisp and clear.
Vision Pro is approaching a quality that I feel is acceptable, somewhere between "flawless reality" and a decent screen. The virtual environments are crisper than the camera passthrough mixed environments.
There is definitely room for improvement on screen quality, but in general I am impressed.
The original Oculus Rift had 1080x1200, VisionPro has 3660x3200, field of view is similar. In virtual monitor terms that means a Rift can display a 640x480 monitor and the VisionPro a 1920x1080 one. Still quite far away from Retina, but should be pretty usable, especially since it allows making the virtual screens bigger than a real monitor can be.
You have a great humorist writing style. I enjoyed the read and it just makes me want one even more.
I just went to an Apple Store to demo the Vision Pro and walked out feeling like I had a religious experience. I was overcame with emotion over that immersion demo, those baby rhinos completely blew my mind. I'm booking another appointment soon to get another taste. I really hope the price becomes manageable for consumers like me; I love the tech and want the future but can't afford it.
It's not a perfect product by any means. The question is, has Apple backed itself into any corners? Can the battery life or field of view be improved? The resolution? The weight? I think in all cases, Apple has a technical path forward.
Despite its imperfections, wow is it fantastic. I'm writing now from a Mac virtual display (which, yes, is a bit blurry). But how could I return this thing? It's the most impressive product Apple's ever made and it's genuinely useful. It's not an expensive novelty by any means. What an achievement.
Funnily enough, your Mac laptop in the real world has better pixels per degree of vision. If you just take the headset off it’s more clear.
The Vision Pro wants to be a VR headset that throws away the existing VR ecosystem. No VR controllers, no beat saber, no Oculus Link, no PC VR.
At the same time, it wants to be a productivity machine that can’t compile its own code and has the same software limitations as iPadOS.
Mobile airplane computer? It fits in a backpack worse than a regular laptop and gets 1/10 the battery life. You could buy an economy plus subscription from United Airlines for 7 years for the same price and just use your laptop on the plane.
I agree that Apple has paths forward to fix all of this, but I disagree that they will go down those paths. I see Apple products like the iPad stagnating because Apple refuses to take them beyond a constrained vision. Apple will never let you install applications outside of their walled garden and they’ll never let you compile code on the Vision Pro.
That’s fine for an entertainment device like a $500 Quest 3 but a $3,500 “spatial computer?”
But, I think you should consider a pair of AR glasses from xreal or rokid. They cost a fraction of the price, have less latency, and you don't need to worry about battery life.
They're also much much more portable. I think using AVP primarily as an external display is a huge huge waste.
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More often than not, it's collecting dust on the shelf within a few months. Sort of like an expensive blender you were so excited to get, you imagined making super fruit smoothies every morning. Let's see how AVP fares in this regard.
What I love most about this comment is how it caused me to reflect on what I use daily and get some amount of joy from.
When it comes to Apple products in particular I use an Apple Studio display at home, I use it for 10hours per day, every day, and honestly I have no complaints, it's probably one of the best bits of technology I use daily.
However, it's completely unsexy and has (at least on paper) extremely stiff competition. Not only that it was maligned by the tech media upon release.
Yet, it just subtlely benefits my life because the speakers are excellent, the webcam is servicable (the novelty of the fact it tracks you never truly wears off) and the size/pixel density is great.
It's weird that I'm waxing poetic like this about such a boring device, but that's kinda my point, your comment made me reflect about all the little tech around me that I use every day that just sort of shifted into the background. Quietly doing its job excellently.
There are only two 5K displays on the market that can render macOS at Retina resolution on a 27" panel: this one and the LG Ultrafine, which isn't that much cheaper. My last monitor was a 27" LG QD-OLED 144Hz 4K display. I LOVED that display, but text wasn't sharp because of the Retina resolution problem.
I also have a semi-professional webcam setup and external speakers, so those being built-in does nothing for me.
I just want macOS to support variable scaling like Windows has for, what, 15 years at least?
Although, I have a strict policy of not sharing my AirPods, or let it connect to anything other than my iPhone to make sure I don’t get into the mess of “figure out which device it auto connects to” etc.
Until/unless Apple does fractional scaling in a way that doesn’t really need pixel doubling to work, I will insist on a 5K display for a 27” monitor and the ASD really is the best game in town.
I bought an AVP on day one to be used -exclusively- as a monitor extender for coding.
It's untenable.
The only way I could avoid significant neck/back pain from the weight was to sit in a reclining chair. That wouldn't be a bad coding setup, but my eye strain was pretty significant, too.
I ended up returning mine.
This is a necessary 1.0 to build out the app ecosystem, etc. but it's absolutely not ready for full-time use.
Lying on a bed would also do the trick.
I can't speak for the Apple Vision Pro, I'd love to try one, to be honest. But I can agree with your comment.
Such has been my experience with the two headsets I own - the Meta Quest 2, which I think is really great and serves many purposes, and the PSVR 2 headset, which is phenomenal for gaming, but pretty much useless for anything else.
Both headsets have had a short-lived "wow" factor to them, without a doubt, but sadly, the novelty tends to wear off within weeks. I haven't used my Quest 2 since early 2023 (I think) and the PSVR 2's last use was for a game called Pavlov, which is simply mind-blowing, despite which, I think the hassle of headsets is problematic. For real gaming I go back to couch gaming with the Xbox or PS5, and for computer things I use computers.
Funny thing is, I keep meaning to do more with the PSVR 2 but now it's actually so dusty that it puts me off, it needs a full cleaning at this stage :).
Edit: Meta Quest -> Meta Quest 2
There's zero on the Quest 2/3 because it's a mobile device and it's not up to it and at least in my experience the link is not up to it either.
I'm not saying there are not some good experiences there. Several rhythm games are fun, a couple of games designed for low-power mobile devices. But the fully immersive high quality graphics games are so few an far between. If there were more I'd keep playing.
Still, it would be pretty darned cool to be able to take something even half as good on the road in a package that will easily fit in a backpack!
I am entirely done with Apple and will not be buying any more of their products, but I look forward to the competition that AVP will foster.
What is your reason? I am genuinely curious. I used to think that using open devices (Linux, GrapheneOS) gives me the convenience of being able to do everything I want. But over time I came to realize that Apple optimizes their devices for one happy path they envision, and if you don’t stray off that happy path (e.g. on iPhone you cannot sideload, can’t have background jobs), the convenience can be even greater than the possibilities an open design offers (native terminal, root access in Android). It is a local maxima. Thus I own an iPhone. On the computer side I own a PC, but that’s because Linux isn’t yet fully supported on Macs. What is your reasoning?
That's part of the problem framing the AVP as a system for 2D floating screens. 2D screens are good at what they do. 360 degree 3D with Six Degrees of Freedom is a completely different surface area and we are still at the Horseless Carriage stage of development of that affordance space. There are a few experiments in what's possible [1] but, for the most part, if all you throw at these devices is a floating screen then the novelty wears off and we have the conversations we are having in this thread instead of thinking about what more is possible.
[1] VR Immersive IDE: https://primitive.io/
i’m very much so a bit easily distractable and i do tend to wander and move locations while i work at home. i actually has thought the vision pro was tethered completely and 100% dependent on another apple device but i guess not entirely? that would be appealing for me to have very light work space that moves with me for similarly light work (chats, emails, etc)
looks a bit too goofy for me for public use but i’m just shy) but the article did help me see a vision for using the vision pro. better than apples ads
So far hearing vastly mixed reviews about its “balance” on the users head - when I wear night vision goggles or similar devices I have to use a counter mass at the back of the helmet to make it comfortable. It seems the AVP doesn’t have such a balancing weight?
It would be a great shame if a secure, well designed, easy to use computer loaded with a custom-built, well supported unix-like distro gets trashed because the company that makes it is always trying to "innovate." I don't know if there's much left to innovate in the computer world, there is only so much you can do with ones and zeros. It would be better if they just focused on what works, reliable and secure consumer electronics, instead of trying to be what they were under Steve Jobs.
Jobs is dead, he will never come back, and Apple will never be Apple under Jobs again. They should just try to be like the IBM of their space...just there, doing what they do best. An institution, a monolith, but not a "disruptor," as if there are any of those left.
Not that I’ve found. Maybe on individual features, but not as a whole product.
Man, the amount of history rewriting that happens in tech world is actually insane.
Louis Rossman literally made his career out of showcasing how shit apple laptops have been through the years. The evidence is all there. I dunno if people are just willfully ignorant or are actually just lying.
Not even that, apparently many customers are already returning them[1]. Most of the hype, as usual, is tech reviewers who want to stay relevant.
Early adopters will naturally chase any and every opportunity to make use of them, but in the coming months as novelty wears off, more issues arise, you get the (The ecosystem is just not ready yet)™ and most will be listed on the secondhand market.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/14/24072792/apple-vision-pro...
That said, I tried one on at the Apple Store the other day and the immersive stuff was really cool and I’d like to see more of it. But I think it makes sense to wait for the amount of content to increase and the price to come down.
I don't regret the purchase; I did not expect it to change my life, and I've actually had my skepticism about spatial computing turned around. I hope there is a future where we can do the same things in a less physically cumbersome way.
The hard part is being able to know when that inflection point comes. But I think there's a very good chance that 10 years from now, it's already behind us.
We've grown so accustomed to viewing technology as a steady progression of improvements that it seems natural that the thing that Apple is pushing today will be universal in 10 years, but there's no guarantee of that, and there are reasons to be skeptical that we'll look back at this as the next big leap.
For myself, I'm keeping my eye out for technology that is less intrusive into the rest of my life, not more immersive.
My VR headsets don't see much usage outside of simracing which I'd consider a hobby more than just gaming. So my point is that, "working" might present that same routine which demos/gaming/facehugger yt with low return on novelty.
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We programmers are quite the outsiders, and sometimes its hard for us to understand how others see computers.
It's better to be patient before jumping to conclusions, this goes for first impressions or what we think it's gonna happen.
The vast majority of normal people's compute tasks for work could be done on an iPad with a keyboard. The vast majority of their compute tasks for play just require a smartphone. 3D modeling is already a huge exception to the norm in that it needs serious compute power and in that people already often use specialized equipment for it, and to top it off it's a task that is actually hampered by using a 2D projection on a flat screen.
Most tasks are more like coding than they are like 3D modeling.
Everything is more exciting when it’s novel. That’s part of the fun of consumer electronics, games, movies, etc.
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You can easily code on Quest 3 if you really wanted to do AR/VR, and could do it on Quest Pro as well a year ago. While its true that Vision does offer better resolution, lets not pretend that people who are trying the Vision Pro have significant experience with AR/VR headsets, chasing the ability to work anywhere. Its brand fanboyishness at its core: "Apple made therefore its good and usefull".
I'd love for this thing to reach it's full potential as this 'work from a mountaintop, but really your garage' device, but I feel like until the resolution gets to the same as existing monitors (no small task, I know) it's just...not as good for the vast majority of use cases.
Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously.
After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.
This is going to be another of their socially awkward gimmicks like Memojis they will double down until they inevitably fail.
I really feel like Apple actually just doesn’t feel it and every time they’re pushing their weird geeky ideas onto their users they loose a bit of coolness factor. And if kids decide Apple got too cringe, while someone else manages to use that to spin their momentum (think e.g. Nokia respawning riding the 90s sentiment wave), they may actually start to seriously struggle.
Curious if you've ever gotten your vision tested?
I don't need glasses in everyday life, but I did go to an optometrist and got a pair anyways after I got annoyed one night that a friend could read a faraway sign and I couldn't quite. They make things a little bit sharper but not that it ever makes a difference for anything I actually need.
But then I discovered that if I wear them, zero eye strain in VR. Without them my eyes hurt after 20 minutes. With them, I can use VR for hours, zero problem.
No idea why. And I can't seem to find much information on it, but I asked my optometrist and they said it's a whole thing -- people who wear glasses sometimes not to see better, but to reduce eye strain and headaches.
Personally I found AVP to be most draining if I'm moving my head around a lot and experiencing this motion blur. If I'm just looking at the screen in front of me, I get fatigued less
It’s felt more like I was playing a simulator game of myself coding, and it was not enjoyable at all.
I often wonder how people who actually work at fast paced places as engineers are claiming to be more productive with this strapped on.
If I just ingested and read email and slack messages all day, or talked in zoom all day, sure (maybe), but I don’t.
1. Having more screen real estate in my small home office. I often dive into spaghetti code, and seeing more of it helps me maintain context.
2. Working in my RV. I can’t take my extra screens with me (it’s a multi-use family RV, so I’m not mounting anything. Plus, there isn’t room.), and I’m so, so excited about having more screen real estate in there. We lived/worked in it for 3 months last summer, and it was really nice coming home to more screens at the end of the trip.
It's a bunch of factors. Heavy, lots of pressure on a few specific points, the dangling cable to a slippery battery which I had to leave plugged in all day, the grainy passthrough... But most of all it's just too heavy. And connection would sometimes get janky between Mac and Vision Pro.
I've got high hopes for generation 2 and 3 but it needs time to cook.
I wonder if there's something similar here going on. Since we rely so heavily on vision for everything(Especially balance). Any difference to our normal perception will cause "exhaustion" of sorts. But maybe wearing it continuously for days can cause our body to adapt to it?(Which, obviously is impossible for AVPs)
(pure conjecture, I last used lenses fifteen twenty years ago)
The software should probably force text to be aligned on whole real pixels, even if that detracts a little from the realism.
And the best would probably be to keep virtual screens completely fixed until you move by a certain, largish degree (as an option).
Then again, maybe this has nothing to do with the straining.
Also your eyes can't really focus the same, anything within about 12 ft causes you to struggle to focus leading to eye strain. This is an unfortunate reality of the lenses
I think that'd be difficult given that pixels are effectively "non-rectangular" given the warping from the lenses.
Text in streamed displays from a Mac may suffer from pixel misalignment.
Remember that you're working with two screens, not one, and they have to have coordinated projections that will also depend on the user's IPD.
Some people seem to be suggesting the higher quality of the Vision Pro overcomes this, but I'm starting to really wonder. Would even more resolution actually solve it? Or maybe there's really no way around the discomfort for some of us.
I wonder if it could largely be replaced by native AVP apps or a better way for them to send out data from the Mac to the headset once there is broader software support?
Because of lag, or why?
Many people work on remote desktop all day long, and I spend my fair share of time in SSH sessions as well. It's not like it improves the experience compared to working locally, but for me it works fine so long as you're within a few hundred kilometers without much jitter. On the VR, the screen should move as you move your head because that position isn't what's being passed through, so that can't be the difference either. I don't understand (without having a device myself) how/whether this is worse than normal video streaming over LAN?
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https://appleinsider.com/inside/apple-vision-pro/tips/why-ap...
I took it off yesterday before some friends came over for dinner and I was kind of shocked that it had gotten dark outside because my mind felt like it was still day time since the sun was out in mount hood. I had actually been sitting on my office in darkness for a least an hour.
Background: I got my AVP on Monday 5th (having gotten up before dawn to place my order when it first became available). I am a programmer with a multi-screen setup to maximize my usable workspace, which consists of editor, terminal, and browser windows. My hope is for the AVP to replace a set of fixed screens, and have in effect infinite screen space.
The AVP has worse Angular Resolution than a monitor, at average 34 Pixels-Per-Degree (PPD) vs a monitor's 64 PPD (more details in iFixit's writeup [1]).
This is an inevitable consequence of placing a screen so close to your eyes. The AVP's exceptional screen technology mitigates this (and for me completely eliminates the "screen door" effect that plagued earlier VR sets), but it can't beat Physics.
So for one thing, you cannot have the legible text density of, say, 2 27" monitors an arm's length away. In other words, the equivalent amount of text will take more space in your vision on the AVP.
This is understandable. But where the AVP really has a problem, but I really hope they improve, is window management.
Someone quipped that, from an app/window management perspective, the AVP is like sticking an iPad on your face, and I agree.
As someone who's used to moving and resizing windows around with Tiling window managers on Linux and SizeUp or Moom on macOS, the window management of the AVP is really awkward. Say you put your editor large front-and-center, but now want to switch to a terminal, or resize the editor to put a reference on the side? The hand control may feel magical, but you're going to be doing a lot of it to move and resize your windows.
But these are software UX problems, and I'm gambling on Apple fixing them over time.
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/90409/vision-pro-teardown-part-2...
It feels so perfect for this use but it’s a shame it doesn’t exist
Health applications: pretty cool for education, maybe other things, eventually.
What I think would be compelling, for me, is the ability to use it on travel. To be on a plane and not have to worry about breaking a laptop screen when the person in front of me tips their seat back, not have to worry about someone shoulder surfing me. In yet another boring hotel room? Let's escape!
Now, the problem is that, in many meetings, a laptop is barely acceptable as it is (in some cases, not at all acceptable). So, I still have to bring a laptop. So, my backback is now ... heavier? I'm already carrying multiple devices required by various security policies.
Is this juice worth the squeeze? I can't bring myself to spend my own money on this. And I helped develop an AR device. I'd be happy to use it if the company bought it. But you're in for almost $5k after applecare, accessories, etc.
At 49ppd it's on par with AVP if the goal is just to mirror a laptop display.
Running late, took a webex call from the back of my minivan on my MacBook Pro. Except I had enough screen real estate with the virtual monitor to do work during the boring parts. The best part was going full immersion and hearing the rain falling on a high mountain lake in between people speaking.
I also usually wake up overnight and want to work, but can’t because my office is located in the master bedroom. Now I can sit on my couch and not have to hunch over.
Finally, I took my dog to the dog park and worked with no screen glare and big virtual display
Also, watching movies on the moon is pretty cool.
I didn’t even think about how nice they’d be to use outside on sunny days, compared with a laptop (or, coupled with one).
I'm not necessarily criticizing that - more thinking that we're likely approaching a fidelity threshold where you no longer care it's a screen (I still don't think we're quite there yet and suspect this is just one gen before the device that will survive the few months in VR great filter).
I can definitely see pixels on the device if I’m wearing contacts unlike what most of the early reviewers claimed.
But it’s not so bad as to be unusable and you don’t really notice them in most contexts - the main place I notice pixels is using it as a screen for macOS. VisionOS apps are rendered very large by default so the resolution deficiencies aren’t as apparent.
Overall it is very impressive but there’s also much room for improvement in resolution.
Vision Pro is approaching a quality that I feel is acceptable, somewhere between "flawless reality" and a decent screen. The virtual environments are crisper than the camera passthrough mixed environments.
There is definitely room for improvement on screen quality, but in general I am impressed.
I just went to an Apple Store to demo the Vision Pro and walked out feeling like I had a religious experience. I was overcame with emotion over that immersion demo, those baby rhinos completely blew my mind. I'm booking another appointment soon to get another taste. I really hope the price becomes manageable for consumers like me; I love the tech and want the future but can't afford it.
Despite its imperfections, wow is it fantastic. I'm writing now from a Mac virtual display (which, yes, is a bit blurry). But how could I return this thing? It's the most impressive product Apple's ever made and it's genuinely useful. It's not an expensive novelty by any means. What an achievement.
The Vision Pro wants to be a VR headset that throws away the existing VR ecosystem. No VR controllers, no beat saber, no Oculus Link, no PC VR.
At the same time, it wants to be a productivity machine that can’t compile its own code and has the same software limitations as iPadOS.
Mobile airplane computer? It fits in a backpack worse than a regular laptop and gets 1/10 the battery life. You could buy an economy plus subscription from United Airlines for 7 years for the same price and just use your laptop on the plane.
I agree that Apple has paths forward to fix all of this, but I disagree that they will go down those paths. I see Apple products like the iPad stagnating because Apple refuses to take them beyond a constrained vision. Apple will never let you install applications outside of their walled garden and they’ll never let you compile code on the Vision Pro.
That’s fine for an entertainment device like a $500 Quest 3 but a $3,500 “spatial computer?”
But, I think you should consider a pair of AR glasses from xreal or rokid. They cost a fraction of the price, have less latency, and you don't need to worry about battery life.
They're also much much more portable. I think using AVP primarily as an external display is a huge huge waste.
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